> If I want to install software that's outside the stuff that the packagers have prepared, like Firefox with correct KDE integration on Kubuntu, I am relying on a number of hard to track things working correctly together. Which tehy have regularly failed to do for me in the past.
Firefox isn't that hard, all considered. KDE is necessarily hard because of how invasive that is – but no container fuckery will save you from that, because it has to be invasive to work in the first place! Either every container has to ship a full KDE, or you do it like OSX does it, and only have One Desktop To Rule Them All. (That's why Canonical and Gnome are both interested in app containers, presumably, to get rid of that filthy freedom of choice.)
> Contrast to the OSX install experience: An application is a folder which contains everything related to the application that the base system does not provide.
The difference is that OSX (and Windows) provides a lot, and you only have applications building on top of that huge, stable code base that's diligently updated by Apple (/Microsoft). OSX/Windows apps only have to keep their few third party dependencies updated.
Linux app containers have to literally ship everything outside the kernel to work, because the kernel ABI is the only stable interface in the Linux ecosystem. Everything else, up to and including the libc, varies between distributions, and versions of the same distribution, and will be incompatible. An openssl update would trigger a repackaging of every single app container. And where it doesn't, users are at risk. In contrast, without containers, I upgrade one package and the whole system is secured.
(On servers, it's a bit more nuanced, because here operations is in charge or repackaging docker/lxd/nspawn containers, and can start that process whenever they want.)
> As a user I feel more in control of the process than with apt.
That's more because apt is bullshit, even by Linux standards. pacman and other package managers not made in the 1990s are much nicer to deal with.
