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The Foss community is giving yet another try with an app store for all Linux OSes:
Some influential people in the open-source community are pushing for the adoption of a one-stop app store for Linux-based operating systems. The store would be built on Flatpak, a popular software deployment and package management utility, and it could provide customers with the same user-friendly approach other popular app stores in the consumer market are known for.
[...] The proposal's main goal is to "promote diversity and sustainability" in the Linux desktop community by "adding payments, donations and subscriptions" to the Flathub app store. Flathub is the standard app repository for Flatpak, a project described as a "vendor-neutral service" for Linux application development and deployment.
[...] The universal app store proponents say that "a healthy application ecosystem is essential for the success of the OSS desktop," so that end-users can "trust and control" their data and development platforms on the device they are using. Flathub has been jointly built by the GNOME foundation and KDE, and it isn't the only app store available in the Linux world.
Alternative solutions like Canonical's Snaps, however, are sitting under the control of a single corporation and aren't designed as a universal Linux app store from the get-go. Canonical has recently decided that neither Ubuntu, nor the other Ubuntu-based distros (Kubuntu, Lubuntu, etc.), will give their official support to Flatpak. Users can manually add the tool after installing the operating system, though.
Besides providing a universal app store for the entire Linux world, Flatpak supporters also want to "incentivize participation in the Linux application ecosystem," and remove financial barriers that prevent diverse participation. For this reason, the proponents are planning to add a new way to send donations and payments via Stripe within this year.
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Tuesday March 07, @09:50PM
You're thinking like a techie, whereas this proposal is targeting normal users. Package managers are great, but they do fail. And when they fail, they sometimes fail spectacularly. I have had several times in the last couple years where multiple levels of library conflicts appeared unexpectedly because package maintainers made a metadata mistake. It isn't supposed to happen, but it does.
No regular user is going to use a system that says, "Library conflicts. Please install a VM" unless the VM is automatic, reliable, installed quickly and transparently, and the troublesome program is then automatically installed quickly and transparently. And all this needs to be done in roughly the same time as if everything went right without the VM. In short, it will never work.
Most of what you typed about the VM is an argument FOR the Flatpak, as it (in theory) eliminates this failure mode. My family uses Kdenlive extensively, and they can almost download and install the AppImage without guidance. The Kdenlive AppImage has spectacular resource leakage, though, so it's not ready for prime time, but the basic proof of concept is sound.