I think this is mostly a problem with how the modern operating systems work. Your point is still definitely valid for the real world consequences of this, but i

I think this is mostly a problem with how the modern operating systems work. Your point is still definitely valid for the real world consequences of this, but i think that theoretically things could be way more simpler. 1.) Click "download" to get a piece of software you need (a static executable) 2.) Put said piece of software in a folder called "/apps/$APP_NAME" 3.) Run said software and have it persist all of its data to "/apps/$APP_NAME/data" or some other convention like that. Perhaps that'd need to be enforced with sandboxing and limiting access to directories, which would then make sharing data across them more difficult, which would end up with something like "/data/$APP_NAME", which brings us back to the horror of Windows' "AppData" and "Documents" and "Program Data", or other folders like that, resulting in what can only be described as an Eldritch nightmare, in which you don't have any idea in which of the 20-30 different folders which particular stores its data... But theorethically things could be simpler, i've heard people mention how easy installing apps used to be on Apple devices back in the day. And recently, after running the Godot game engine ( https://godotengine.org/ https://godotengine.org/ ), which is literally a single executable, i'm inclined to agree somewhat.