It of makes a lot of sense to do that. One thing I appreciate with running server side stuff in containers is just how easy it is. Instead of installing mysql, having to worry about setting that up, creating a mysql user, etc. I just run it with a one liner and it runs. And when I stop it, I can cleanup the containers and volumes and it is gone. No surprise that this has become the norm for server side deployments.

It seems that that could be a nice thing to have with basically any kind of software package on the desktop as well. In a way that is the attraction of having browser based software: you just go to a particular website to run a web app. No installation needed. No need to worry about updates. Just run it.

I actually get the architectural purity that drove this person to do this. Why settle for less? Why accept all the kludges, legacy cruft, stupid hacks, and ugliness that we accept as normal? As, she's demonstrated, there's no good reason.

I've been running Silverblue (https://silverblue.fedoraproject.org/) for the past month or so and for the most part you can use it as a daily driver. The OS itself is an immutable image created and updated with OSTree, and you can layer RPMs on top if they don't fit a containerized workflow. For applications, you either run Flatpaks (for desktop) or Docker/OCI images through podman.

I am new to Silverblue, but also using it daily for the past month.

An important aspect of it, I think, is "rootless" podman -- I can create and manage containers without elevated privileges. Any required root escalation is done in the containers.

Still, it is weird. GUI apps do work, but hmm.

Solaris Zones are better-integrated than this newfangled podman stuff that you kids are using these days.