Linux

I don’t really care about all these different things, as long as none of them become a crazy confusing mess, like Windows DLLs.

I use Aurora DX so most of my apps are flatpaks. Its fine.

Not.

Furniture? Integrated circuit packaging?

Is that supposed to be Ed Norton, or just an uncanny coincidence?

I would be, but the promise is just broken. Let's say you want to do the new cool thing and run Bazzite on your console gaming PC on your TV. Now you also want to watch videos that are any normal format these days or (GASP) HEVC like you could on an XBox. You install flatpak VLC because it "just plays everything" in your experience. Your experience is ruptured for both VLC and flatpak now. Flatpaks run on system .so's actually sometimes and installing a Flatpak doesn't mean an app "just works" like Mac or Windows...

I like them as an option, there are some programs like Bottles or specific game launchers that work under flatpak better than the versions available via native package manager (with Bottles in particular, you can use various built-in sandbox features via flatpak which makes things a bit more secure), but it's also a bit of a pain because it's an additional package manager you have to update separately now, or tweak if things go wrong.

I'm relatively new to Linux. I honestly don't see what the problem is.

Honestly, i'm not entirely sure what Flatpaks are all about. Not sure I could explain them. But I use them. I've used apt. I've even used Pacman and Yay in Manjaro for a few years. Now, I also Flatpak (no longer on Manjaro, though. I no longer boot to a blank screen every 6 months or so! Very nice!)