I think this is what Flatpak is trying to solve - each application is run in its own sandbox and requests its own priviledges in a manifest file. It is current

I think this is what Flatpak is trying to solve - each application is run in its own sandbox and requests its own priviledges in a manifest file. It is currently in a pretty early stage of development, but it's usable and looks pretty great. Maybe this time creating a new package manager will make the package manager wars on Linux quieter :)