Right, this is a real fear on closed platforms like OSX and Windows. Microsoft is actually going to this direction with the pluton platform. But this also means

Right, this is a real fear on closed platforms like OSX and Windows. Microsoft is actually going to this direction with the pluton platform. But this also means the "personal" from PC gets taken away. The thing is, software developers themselves can't achieve lock-in and take over the control how the code gets executed on your PC if the platform you are running does not provide this feature in the first place. So typical sandboxing on Linux will never go in the ways of DRM, or give control to the publisher of the software. Your fear will become true, if software starts targetting or even preferring a trusted platform instead of a open platform like the PC we currently have. But this is not fault of a sandboxing technology itself, it's the fault of companies looking to have control over their product and their users. Unfortunately, I can see future going towards with trusted platforms, where users on non-trusted system will be heavily handicapped, for example netflix not allowing 4k streaming, multiplayer games not allowing you online, or putting you on different servers etc... Valve's linux + proton push may make developers keep targeting the proton WIN32 subset in the future, but we'll see... Regarding modding, many online games do not allow it even in the current form, requiring you to play offline if the game is modified, or connect to a custom server. By the way, on linux you can easily achieve a sandbox using bwrap https://github.com/containers/bubblewrap https://github.com/containers/bubblewrap