I guess Windows will have a hard time creating a AppCenter-like experience, as everybody has its own installer with a different look-and-feel. Harmonizing this into one user-facing frontend will be much harder than expanding the dpkg/apt-based package management in Ubuntu.

I’ve attempted to open the discussion on the issue of PPAs and establishing trust in the recent past. This looks similar to what I was getting at when I spoke about “circles of trust” in http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/14689/

” Now the question becomes, can we somehow make this process of forming circles of trust more integrated into the OS? Can we make it simpler, more obvious, more transparent? Can we push the relevant information to the user at the appropriate time so they are made available of the fuller range of their options as well as the associated risks involved?”

and referenced again in http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/14784/

“Develop a rating system for third party software sources (like PPAs), and integrate that information directly into Synaptic package manager.”

Both Brainstorm ideas are interesting reads, IMHO.

2. Establish a mechanism for establishing and conveying a trust level for software in PPAs, and for easily adding PPAs within AppCenter.

looks promising

that would be a must for me.

and… will this make that you won’t need any repos-adding and keysigning? when you need to install something not in the appcenter?