Installing programs from the website or through the Windows Store?

Question

Windows

Recently, I noticed that when I go to some site to download a program, instead of a download link, there is a link to the application in the Windows store. Why are programs moving there? In fact, the programs are almost the same, no matter where they are downloaded from, but I'm more used to downloading something in a regular file. Is it just a habit, or is there really a reason to install programs from the store, and not from off site? Because on the contrary, I try to minimize the applications downloaded from the store. I feel retarded for trying to always install a normal program. not from the store.

Answer 1

Because installing applications from a properly organized repository is the right strategy.
And Microsoft also has a license for a pre-installed OS (for cheap hardware, it seems starter) which prohibits the installation and launch of applications not from the application store.
ps but, I call for a boycott of microsoft initiatives, since the implementation of the microsoft store is terrible! ideologically and functionally.
windows and linux (and with a caveat macos) were 'free' platforms for a while, you controlled what apps you installed, what files you stored, and so on.
First, privacy was taken away from us, absolutely all information about launched applications, documents, and simply entered texts, including passwords (telemetry), under the auspices of taking care of us, which is naturally a lie, goes to the center.
So now they are going to do it in the best traditions of google play and the apple appstore, which decide which developer can make which applications (you need to ask permission literally, and all your digital personalities will be punished for 'disobedience', just as literally) and which user what must be installed and what files are allowed to be stored.
Proper implementation of the application repository - as it is done in Linux with deb/rpm/... package managersthe developer can offer his own repository, which the user can freely connect (this can be done automatically). And most importantly, no one can forbid you to do this, although, indirectly, through package versions, but you can control this too.
We have already lost the rights to mobile platforms, fed the terrible google monopolist, succumbing to convenience and comfort (phone manufacturers chose android because it solved all their problems for free, and then, since everyone did it, let Google dictate the conditions for them what to put and what no), so let's not support the even older and scarier microsoft monopoly.
We have already lost the web! browsers are the domain of google, search engines are google, advertising is google, attendance monitoring google and facebook, even mozilla managed to prohibit the installation of applications (extensions) not from their store. Yes, local regionals such as Baidu or Yandex are trying to pull the blanket over themselves, but they won’t make the weather any longer, plus their methods and goals are the same - power and control.
It is we, the developers, who make the decision to support this or that technology, but like the majority of the world's population, we are amenable to manipulation.
Now the windows store and the applications in it are a collection of garbage, and I really hope that it will remain so and no one will use it - which means it will not have power either.

Answer 2

There are huge reasons, one of them is security (how much pirate shit do you download and then rearrange Windows?)
The second is centralization (it is always known what is installed, what will be updated)
The third is the convenience of searching