I avoid NPM if I can for JS development (after all not all JS/TS development requires NodeJS) so it is painful to see people use npm as the installation method for their projects or tools when I am trying to write something simple.
For what it is worth, the replacement for NodeJS (Deno) is removing the use of npm, so I am not alone in my dislike of the centralised registry idea it seems.
IMHO, Deno's approach to package management, that is to say, no package management ("packages" are just source files that you'd import directly using urls or file paths), is a breath of fresh air compared to the status quo in node where to import some javascript that's already hosted at some url (say on github), you first have to "package" it by describing it with some manifest, uploading it to some registry at a different url than the original, and then "install" it using a package manager from that other url, and at the end of the day not even have any guarantee that the content of that thing you installed actually matches what you saw at the original url.
Deno's approach on the other hand is doesn't force any of that indirection onto the user, and is analogous to (and compatible with) the model of modules on the web. Package management systems can be easily layered on top of that if the use case actually warrants that extra indirection, rather than having it baked into the core of the runtime.
For what it is worth, the replacement for NodeJS (Deno) is removing the use of npm, so I am not alone in my dislike of the centralised registry idea it seems.