Oh my god. You're talking to competent computer users on Hacker News, not people who use crapware download sites and need to be warned away from them by "HowToGeek".
Of course there is trustworthy freeware. You can get it using Apt, Yum, Ninite, Chocolatey, Homebrew, or just by going to the actual site of a trustworthy software product.
The fact that the people who run most download sites are scum isn't a problem with the software. It's a problem with those sites.
this guys is trolling, seriously, just stop responding to them.
ksk - many hn readers build using free software for places like google, amazon etc, that are trusted all the way up to places like the CIA. Seriously, please troll somewhere else. Basically no one working in almost any open source project wants to be working with an author that bundles in crapware, ESPECIALLY if the author doesn't actually even control the crapware. If you don't get why this is a bad idea you'll have to trust folks who use open source software regularly that this is a bad thing.
Of course there is trustworthy freeware. You can get it using Apt, Yum, Ninite, Chocolatey, Homebrew, or just by going to the actual site of a trustworthy software product.
The fact that the people who run most download sites are scum isn't a problem with the software. It's a problem with those sites.