Comment by aragilar
For user-facing stuff, I agree it's hard because of the challenge of managing access to data (and I would argue no system does this well, Android has a different set of failure modes, and I've not used QubesOS but presumably it has it's own issues as well), but in the top-level comment, the concern was around using pip/npm, which to me is almost a solved problem if you care enough and are willing to put the effort (and money) in.
It's also not like Linux is any different with respect to installing random PyPI/npm packages on any other desktop/laptop OS (https://xkcd.com/1200/), so I'm not sure anything desktop Linux does here would change the fact that installing random software from the internet may be a bad idea sometimes ;)
Completely agreed on this. Linux, by and large, should actually be far easier here? Have a "work account" for your machine where you do these tasks and you are basically there. Switching to a gaming account or your banking/etc. seems easy enough?