Yup. I've been using linux/unix since before package managers were common and debian was like a breath of fresh air. Even with RPMs it was generally always just easier to build stuff from source than to deal with RedHat's funky package system. And APT? APT was easy mode, it worked like magic. If you needed something you just installed it and the OS picked up the latest package
and all the dependencies and installed all of it for you. It seems trivial today but back when always connected broadband internet was not the norm it was transformative. It took years and years for RedHat to catch up. I still have a sore spot about RedHat because of those earlier experiences.
Things are so much easier now in so many ways. For one it's a lot less common to have a computer that can't access the internet because it doesn't have the right drivers already. For another it's a lot less common to only have one computer (including smartphones) and thus only one way to download stuff. Computers are also way faster so doing anything that requires installing or compiling stuff isn't as big of a time sink.