&gt; <i>Do you really want to live in that world? The world where I have to get past Google&#x27;s, Apple&#x27;s (iOS and Mac app store), Debian&#x27;s and Steam&#x27;s arbitrary rules about what is and isn&#x27;t an acceptable app?</i><p>Actually yes. With the caveat that I can still install applications outside of the repositories and&#x2F;or install third party repos. With Android and Debian I can. And Steam isn&#x27;t quite the same since it&#x27;s an application rather than OS so you can bypass Steam entirely (even on SteamOS).<p>That way you have some reassurances (albeit no guarantees) about the software you install, plus a method to manually bypass those protections if you so desire.<p>&gt; <i>One of the reasons Windows flourished was the openness of the platform.</i><p>No, that&#x27;s not the reason. Or at least not the openness of the _software_ platform. The reason Windows flourished was the number of IBM-compatible clones out there and the monopoly Microsoft had -and successfully campaigned to retain for many years- on said hardware. Under those conditions Windows only needed to be &quot;good enough&quot; to compete rather than a market leader in openness, stability, security, nor any other measure that us geeks normally consider.