Yeah, really. OSX DMG's contain AppBundles, a concept OSX inherited from NeXT. NeXT wasn't the first implementation of the idea either, in fact pretty much every non-unix desktop OS ever released used some variation of the concept including DOS and the original Mac.
Sadly, it seems the Linux world just can't wrap its head around the idea of managing applications with the same simple mechanisms we use to manage regular every day files. It would seem that Linux Desktop users just love having inflexible management tools do it instead. Well, there is AppImage, but unfortunately its use is not wide spread.
"Sadly, it seems the Linux world just can't wrap its head around the idea of managing applications with the same simple mechanisms we use to manage regular every day files. It would seem that Linux Desktop users just love having inflexible management tools do it instead. Well, there is AppImage, but unfortunately its use is not wide spread."
Seems to me they love treating application management like one manages dependencies in a software project. There are a lot of parallels with the paradigm. Its clear where the notion came from. And I think in the context of unix/linux history it makes sense. If I were an MIT grad student in 1978 there probably isn't much difference between a library and an application practically.
But that was over 40 years ago. There is a clear distinction now and the overwhelming majority of PC users are not MIT grad students. Applications should be easy to install. People don't care that there is more than one version of some dependency. They don't care that your repro doesn't have what they want. They have work to do.
Sadly, it seems the Linux world just can't wrap its head around the idea of managing applications with the same simple mechanisms we use to manage regular every day files. It would seem that Linux Desktop users just love having inflexible management tools do it instead. Well, there is AppImage, but unfortunately its use is not wide spread.