I wouldn't say that there's an organized attempt to "paint Linux distros as dangerous". It's just what happens when you have people being people (as we see here) and there are structural vulnerabilities to software supply chains.

It's a juicy target, and it's being exploited. We can either learn from it or continue to suffer.

This isn't even new. Hell, I remember when Linux Mint was hacked a decade or more ago. They compromised the forums, the disk image downloads, the whole shebang. I haven't used it since.