"Portable" apps on Windows just don't write into the registry or save state in a system directory. They can still assume every Windows DLL since the beginning

"Portable" apps on Windows just don't write into the registry or save state in a system directory. They can still assume every Windows DLL since the beginning of time will be there. Versus Linux where you have Gnome vs. KDE vs. Other and there's less emphasis on backwards compatibility and more on minimalism, so they need to package a lot more dependencies (potentially). If you only install Gnome Flatpaks they end up smaller since they can share a bunch of components.