Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

> the general inability for Linux distributions to make it easy to manage software installations and switch environments is a major cause of this.

Without Linux distributions, Linux is just a kernel and nothing more. Application deployment was limited to ./configure dance cycles for a long time and distributions made it very much easier to install and consume applications very quickly. The world around has changed dramatically since the early days and while distributions have somewhat tried to cope with that, they haven't caught up fast enough. xdg-app and GNOME Software seems pretty promising IMO, incidentally, both of which are very much a distro driven solution to the above mentioned problem.