Remember why containers were invented, though. A PaaS provider wanted customers to be able to run any app without a lot of hassle. So they made a way for the cu

Remember why containers were invented, though. A PaaS provider wanted customers to be able to run any app without a lot of hassle. So they made a way for the customer to essentially ship their computer to the PaaS, so the apps could run on computers that were never set up to run those apps. In that situation, where any customer could have any kind of environment, it's much less effort for both the provider and the customer to just duplicate an environment, rather than spend time trying to make portable or compatible environments. And it's more accurate. As you say, a lot of people can't or won't write portable software. Many devs use Macs, and then ship their apps to Linux... more than a few inconsistencies, to say nothing of packages, versions, system files. So if we want to do more work, faster, more reliably, with people who don't write portable code, on incompatible systems, containers are the best possible option. And it's great for frontend / GUI apps. I use Alpine Linux for a desktop, because I'm a moron. But that means there's many GUI apps that just won't run on my system, for many reasons. Docker and Flatpak allow me to run those GUI apps, like 1Password and FreeCAD, on my wacky non-portable system. It's a boon for me, the user, and for the developers/vendors. (Alternatives like 'AppImage' don't work on musl systems)