[the_af]

As far as I can tell, they are "fat" distribution packages which are independent (within reason, I guess) of the Linux distro. The aim seems to be to get rid of dependency hell and dependency on exact Linux distro versions, at the cost of larger packages. They also sandbox the app. I'm not sure I understand the disadvantages, besides the larger package size due to redundant libraries.

[StavrosK]

Hmm, so something like an LXC container? That's interesting, I'll look into it. Thank you!