I totally agree. The biggest thing I noticed my first few months of switching from windows to Ubuntu was that all my applications were managed through a secure pipe called the repository. The repository was filled using applications from a trusted source list which can be signed using a key. All my apps get security and functionality updates and I don't have to check every application provider to stay up to date. Nor do I have to hassle with more than the latest version crowding my hard disk.
If I had to make a top 5 list of linux features over other operating systems, #1 would be the package manager.
If I had to make a top 5 list of linux features over other operating systems, #1 would be the package manager.