Optification is unfortunate, although that's been well discussed on both sides, so I won't continue that here. I'm not sure what you mean by "extra steps", though. Sure, the App Manager isn't exactly the most streamlined package manager I've seen on Linux, but it generally does the job; I'd like to see some big improvements, but it doesn't need to be taken out and shot.
Also, "the Linux way of seeing [doing?] things" doesn't imply installation and upgrade issues. In fact, the "Linux way" generally works pretty well. The actual implementations, of course, can vary, as can the Quality Control processes, but I would argue that the repository/package model is in some ways superior to others.