In addition to what groet said, I’ll add that this is a little bit like asking “what’s the difference between a public library and Amazon?”.
Yes, there are other public libraries you could go to if the one you subscribe to didn’t have something you wanted or ‘went bad’ somehow, but the most important difference is you don’t have an antagonistic relationship with your public library. Your public library doesn’t have a financial incentive to try to trap you or screw you over.
You can install packages from other places and create your own (and then install them). The distro maintainers have one (or multiple) list of “approved” software but you can add as many lists as you want to your package manager. Often software developers will have their own package list that contains only their own software and if you install it you have to add that list to your package managers trusted software locations.
In that sense it isn’t really better than going to the developers website and downloading an installer on windows but it is quite rare you have to do that
I’m not super familiar with Apple as I am with Android so take what I talk about iOS with a grain of salt, and Macos with a shovel of salt.
Android permission model is a bag of different layers, and some specific permissions have shifted to more strict layers over the years. For example, in the beginning all apps had a private space that other normal apps could never get into, and public space that everyone would be able to read and write provided they made such “request” at download time. For some time after that I think they moved it to next level, so you " requested" that both at download time AND with a pop up to the user. Currently you have to do all that AND not be a normal app and fill some forms and Google has to agree with you.
Camera, microphone and GPS has been for a long time in the middle tier of requesting at download time and with pop up, for both Android and iOS. But I think not on Mac os, and certainly not on Linux, with the exception of browsers, that have their own security models rolled up on top of whatever their os imposes, since they execute code from total strangers every time you open a page for the first time.
Some permissions like send and receive Internet data are still in the lightest tier, only asked at download time, for both Android and iOS.
I recently wanted to put my Linux obsidian without Internet access, and had to learn how to do that with a script that calls bwrap that in its turn calls obsidian. I wasn’t comfortable otherwise, because I wanted the freedom to run as many community plugins as I wanted, and this is strangers javascript code running in my machine, and I didn’t want it accessing random folders and uploading things.
If I ran vscode I’d do the same, since I’m not familiar with the vetting process for its plugins. Same for gimp, but I never needed plugins in it.
What’s the difference between that and a walled garden like apple?
In addition to what groet said, I’ll add that this is a little bit like asking “what’s the difference between a public library and Amazon?”.
Yes, there are other public libraries you could go to if the one you subscribe to didn’t have something you wanted or ‘went bad’ somehow, but the most important difference is you don’t have an antagonistic relationship with your public library. Your public library doesn’t have a financial incentive to try to trap you or screw you over.
You can install packages from other places and create your own (and then install them). The distro maintainers have one (or multiple) list of “approved” software but you can add as many lists as you want to your package manager. Often software developers will have their own package list that contains only their own software and if you install it you have to add that list to your package managers trusted software locations. In that sense it isn’t really better than going to the developers website and downloading an installer on windows but it is quite rare you have to do that
I’m not super familiar with Apple as I am with Android so take what I talk about iOS with a grain of salt, and Macos with a shovel of salt.
Android permission model is a bag of different layers, and some specific permissions have shifted to more strict layers over the years. For example, in the beginning all apps had a private space that other normal apps could never get into, and public space that everyone would be able to read and write provided they made such “request” at download time. For some time after that I think they moved it to next level, so you " requested" that both at download time AND with a pop up to the user. Currently you have to do all that AND not be a normal app and fill some forms and Google has to agree with you.
Camera, microphone and GPS has been for a long time in the middle tier of requesting at download time and with pop up, for both Android and iOS. But I think not on Mac os, and certainly not on Linux, with the exception of browsers, that have their own security models rolled up on top of whatever their os imposes, since they execute code from total strangers every time you open a page for the first time.
Some permissions like send and receive Internet data are still in the lightest tier, only asked at download time, for both Android and iOS.
I recently wanted to put my Linux obsidian without Internet access, and had to learn how to do that with a script that calls bwrap that in its turn calls obsidian. I wasn’t comfortable otherwise, because I wanted the freedom to run as many community plugins as I wanted, and this is strangers javascript code running in my machine, and I didn’t want it accessing random folders and uploading things.
If I ran vscode I’d do the same, since I’m not familiar with the vetting process for its plugins. Same for gimp, but I never needed plugins in it.