[api]

Packaging is “hard” but mobile and app stores do it.

They do it by having standards in the OS, partial containerization, and above all: applications are not installed “on” the OS. They are self contained. They are also jailed and interact via APIs that grant them permissions or allow them to do things by proxy. This doesn’t just help with security but also with modularity. There is no such thing as an “installer” really.

The idea of an app being installed at a bunch of locations across a system is something that really must die. It’s a legacy holdover from old PC and/or special snowflake Unix server days when there were just not many machines in the world and every one had its loving admin. Things were also less complex back then. It was easy for an admin or PC owner to stroll around the filesystem and see everything. Now even my Mac laptop has thousands of processes and a gigantic filesystem larger than a huge UNIX server in the 90s.

[vinceguidry]

I can't think of a single thing that would kill the bit last of joy I take in computing more. If I woke up in such a world, I'd immediately look to reimplement Linux in an app and proceed to totally ignore the host OS.

[icedchai]

I agree. Though it helps that Apple (NeXT, really) got it right with their .app directory format, even outside the app store.