I think any distributed power structure relies heavily on a “good” value system. But yes, if you somehow can ensure good values broadly, it probably works.

Do we trust a centralized app store based on Flatpak more than snapcraft, which is owned by Canonical? What is the difference between these two from a ideological perspective?

I did not know that there is a Linux Mint community. Thank you for pointing that out to me.

The most secure OS is the OS you understand to properly configure and maintain. If you know how to properly configure and maintain Windows, you can be more secure than a Linux PC that is run without much thought about security.

If the question is which OS comes with the most secure default settings, MacOS surely beats Windows and a security focused and mature Linux distro likely beats them all. However, there are great variances in security based on the distro.

I started to do some security reviews on the most popular Linux distros a couple of days ago - You can read them here: https://decrypt.fail

This problem seems similar to the discovery problem small Mastodon instances have.

On Mastodon some folks have created bots that follow new users on other instances automatically, which half of the mastodon fediverse found very annoying.

Definitely try Pop!_OS! It has a very usable and fast desktop environment and comes with a well maintained software manager.