Yes but my main issue is that installing software can be a pain in general. The script that someone made just to download and install firefox from mozilla.org is evident of that:

“The objective is to provide a method to easily install Mozilla Firefox directly from Mozilla’s website and enable Firefox’s automatic update feature for the latest releases. Providing a pure stock Mozilla Firefox experience for everyone using your Linux computer at home.”

Isn’t it kind of odd that this has to have a script in the first place? Or is it actually easy and this script is redundant? From a windows perspective the fact that you can’t just download an installer that works it’s pretty weird. I notice that other software often offers .deb or .rpm files and maybe those are more what I want…

But also repositories can be a pain, I remember trying to install the emulation thing RetroArch via the app store thing on ubuntu and that was outdated and installing cores was very different from how I did it on PC.

https://retroarch.com/index.php?page=linux-instructions

“Cores should be downloaded from within the program using the Online Updater’s Core Updater, if possible. Some distros patch out the Online Updater, in which case you’ll need to install cores using your package manager. There are core packages available in the PPAs, as well, and they will continue to be updated, but new packages for new cores will not be created.”

Everything you said is true but it’s beside the point, all this app store stuff shouldn’t affect how easy or hard it is to install something the old fashioned way.

I know Firefox is there but I would to have the option to install it and programs like it without some kind of app store.

You mentioned android and it’s a perfect example of what I want, you have a nice app store but you can if you want download any app or anything from a website and it’s just one file that’s easy to install and it won’t update along with everything else or they can often check for updates on their own.

I tried to use Ubuntu for a bit but I just wanted to have regular Firefox with the built in updater, turns out this is way more of a hassle than it is on Windows.

It shouldn’t be that hard to “install” a program like Firefox directly from a website but all you get is an archive thing that you have to manually “install” basically, it’s tricky enough that someone wrote a tool just do do this: https://gitlab.com/Linux-Is-Best/Firefox-automatic-install-for-Linux

APT and Flatpacks are all cool but an offline installation should still be available and easy to use without being forced to use a terminal. Maybe I’m incorrect and I would love to hear about it but this is my experience.

Steam for whatever reason is basically installed the same way on windows as on PC in terms of user experience, you download a file and double click it. Maybe it’s Mozillas fault? Who knows, it’s frustrating in any case.