There is still no Linux app store

Software was not meant to be someone's 'property' that can be bought or sold. Everyone has a right to free download, modify and share, that's the point of GNU and Linux.

If you want Windows, you know where to find it.

This man is in desperate need of both tar and feathers

Flathub

Wtf? No. Fuck all the way off.

It's called "The package manager". :^)

Elementary OS has a pay-what-you-can app store https://appcenter.elementary.io/

You can build in subscriptions or support licenses to your open source apps. Look at cryptomator and bitwarden for example. I know others do it. (And the free version is about as good as paid. But you can pay for a few near features and to support the devs)

And the beauty is that the package management takes no cut and puts no rules on payment methods.

I think I would like to see Amazon, Google, Netflix etc to pay for the free and open source projects they use to make money and sell in their AWS and database offerings.

I -personally- don't miss a store for end users. Marketshare for Linux on the destop is slim anyways. That's not where you earn a considerable amount of your money.

And i like things like the value-for-value model. So maybe instead include donation links in the package managers and into the databases of the gnome-software etc. (I think it's called packagekit.)

The real "problem" is how you make it work without a monopoly system like Google's or Apple's or Steam or Microsoft. They have to varying extents made monopolies where app makers want to list in their store, and accept they take 30% of the revenue because they are the sole gatekeeper to a large number of users. That model doesn't work in Linux because you can't create a monopoly to force someone to use your store.

Microsoft keeps trying in Windows via sheer scale but UWA's are not a monopoly so people currently largely bypass it. Microsoft even now lets App makers keep every penny of money generated "in-app" (except for games) as it's desperate to try and grow. Canonical has tried it with Linux and has also failed because ultimately it isn't a monopoly and it's method of Debs as the article said didn't really work. Steam works cross platform because of sheer size and it's managed to make a convenient cross platform library which gradually locks users in to an extent, and also forces publishers to list it's game there. It's very difficult to get to that kind of scale to be compelling.

For an "App store" to work in Linux under the currently "accepted" business model, you'd need to find some way of making it a monopoly or compelling somehow so that users will buy in and the 30% price tag to App makers becomes impossible to ignore due to the scale. I can't see that happening. Google did it with Android by forking Linux and making it an entirely walled garden it controlled; the free route into that garden is there but is very marginal and you have to bypass security measures to get to it.

The only way I can see it working in a limited fashion in Linux is if someone makes an "at cost" model where the share of revenue taken by the app store is purely to maintain the store (including the payment system, any "drm" that might be needed etc). That sounds like the Flathub route. But I can't see it growing rapidly or being compelling for App makers to take a risk on - it'll probably take a long time to gradually grow and prove itself as a reliable way of monetising apps.

Whether or not we need monetised Apps in linux is a whole other question. For me personally, aside from Games, all the software I use on Windows and Linux is free OR a subscription service (such as Office paid for by work, or my Email, Password manager and Backup software which I pay for). On my phone, the only software I've ever bought has been low level - like a music player or a theme app; and that has been an engineered demand because Google has a monopoly, which largely keeps out the opensource community allowing app makers to step in. I bypass that now with F-droid. I accept I'm part of the exception in Android, but most users have that expectation in Linux and Windows.

I don't see a substantial "app store" type eco-system growing in those environments. If someone is willing to give it away for free as FOSS, then it leaves little room for App makers for low level software. The only route to make money is then the "premium" or value added models, and a lot of that is going subscription model - software as a service. App stores are largely the result of closed eco-systems; in an open eco-system like Linux and even Windows it just doesn't make much sense.

Ow my head

Is there anything stopping something like connecting your credit card to GNOME Software Manager and then putting a big fat "donate" button next to the "install" button? I imagine there are legal considerations.

Well, elementary OS had that implemented, and Flathub was trying to make that a thing, but I'm not sure what happened there

Steam.

ITT a lot of people who don't read anything but the title

The AUR does exactly this, nothing else needed.

Well there were/are attempts to make flatpak with flathub an universal app store on linux. If I remember correctly, there were some ideas mooted on adding paid apps in to flathub.

Linux Mint has Software Manager, that is pretty close to an app store.
It's installed by default. Some other distros might have something similar.

(Versions since that article was written can have an "ad" picture at the top for a recommended package, which, somewhat bizarrely, does make it look even more friendly than the interface shown.)

True, it's not a Linux-wide common interface, but then the gap between two distros can be as wide as between commercial operating systems, and it would be foolish to expect their app stores to have a common interface.