[cookiengineer]

While I love bleeding edge packages, normal users don't want to have to deal with compilation workflows and they expect software to work a year after it has been installed.

To name an example: steam is a nightmare, even though they try their best to host and ship as many libraries from ubuntu as possible. The experience with botched steam installations shifted my perspective a bit, and I think for these desktop use cases, especially of proprietary software, AppImages are the way to go.

It's the easiest way to guarantee behavior and stability of software, while not putting the virtualization burden upon the end users.

[gumballindie]

Exactly. Download an app, double click it, enjoy it. Life's too short for faffing around with package managers and their idiosyncrasies :-)