> And community-maintained repositories aren't a solution, that's just the app store model but on a smaller scale so it's less of a Target for bad actors. If ubuntu's universe repo had to suffer the same amount of abuse as the play store does, it would crumble in a day.
I disagree strongly.
Most community supported Linux distributions have fairly arduous processes by which members of the community become trusted users / MOTUs / etc. It is not simply a matter of deciding to upload something, creating an account, and clicking a button. To deliberately upload a malicious package into Universe (or similar repos in other distributions), you would have to methodically worm your way into a community over time, participating on IRC, helping contribute innocuous changes to other packages, training new users, and so on. You'd then have to apply for the ability to upload, having demonstrated both skill and the ability to work with other members of the community, as well as the need for permission to upload a specific package. This process would take months or years.
And then, you'd have to keep any changes you made pretty cleverly hidden. Anything obviously phoning home or popping up full screen ads would instantly blow your cover, wasting the whole effort you put into it. It's simply not worth it. And that's before you realize how extensively open source the build pipelines for most distributions tend to be. (I can - and have - examined the actual build process used by multiple Arch Linux packages.)
This is completely incomparable to the process for uploading to Google Play. At best you're going to have to pass some automated checks. But it's an ecosystem built around closed-source (so no peer review) software, quasi-anonymous developers, and software funded by advertising. It's infinitely easier to sneak something into an app store, get a bunch of users, and get away with it (temporarily) than it is to put malware in the repositories of a modern Linux distribution.