If packages worked more like containers then: * the producers of the package could produce a universal container that would run on all distributions. * the di

If packages worked more like containers then: * the producers of the package could produce a universal container that would run on all distributions. * the distributions would only need to be sure they properly included a suitable container runtime. After all, Microsoft doesn't worry about packaging every third party software. * the registry of software packages would need to include the software package * this would work regardless of the technology a particular software package uses. (eg, whether it's written in C, Java, Python, .NET, etc) The package would pull in the dependencies. * another thing that would be really nice, that I wanted since 1999, is that when you install a package it doesn't vomit files all over the filesystem. * it might even be possible to install multiple versions of the same package (eg, Gimp 2.6, Gimp 2.8, etc) Aren't Snap and Flatpack somewhat like this? What I am describing may work great for end user software applications -- like Gimp, Inkscape, Audacity, Eclipse, etc. It might not work so well for languages, eg Python 2.7 vs Python 3.6.