I do use a desktop environment. I don't use many additional productivity tools, though, and that is likely why I have a blind spot about that part of the software market.

My question was more geared towards the seeming lack of a robust software ecosystem (i.e., there appears to be at most one leading product in each category, with one or two alternatives), to whit: - there's Xcode/VSCode. - Photoshop/GIMP. - Sublime Text - not sure about DAW software - the field has changed since I was involved

I'll have to check macupdater out, thanks for the tip.