Do you mean just putting each app in it's own folder? That just isn't enough for isolation and could be massively wasteful, depending how far you take it.

Flatpak and NixOS are more complex because it's worth it. For example, they don't duplicate exact versions of dependencies on disk.

> For example, they don't duplicate exact versions of dependencies on disk.

Doesn't feel like GoboLinux would either, does it?

Flatpak's complexity is also a product of trying to function as a single solution to two different problems. Runtime isolation and packaging/distribution are different things, and there is no compelling reason for them to be conflated together. How you sandbox the execution of your applications should not be dependent on any particular filesystem layout or package format, nor vice versa.

FreeBSD does a good job with this: applications are installed into a standard Unix filesystem with conventional packages and the ports collection. Isolation is then implemented via jails.

The Linux equivalent of using standalone isolation layers, like firejail, on top of standard distro packaging, is far superior to Flatpak.

You are aware that windows has each app on its own folder in program\ files and its completely fine. ext4 supports an insane amount of files, so much so that unless you're doing something really out there, you're never going to reach the limit.

snaps and flatpaks are focused more distribution and are "sandboxed" (quotes because their are security issues with them). NixOS breaks compatibility with existing programs unlike gobo, but NixOS's package repository is exponentially better maintained where gobo's is incomplete and years out of date.

All of these are all still behind how Android stores apps. On Android each application can be distributed using a single file that is easy to distribute. Each application is properly sandboxed. Each application gets its own directory. And something all of the other things mentioned here are missing, each application gets its own subdirectories in the app's directory for storing its state (there are different ones for each user).

This makes sense. If there's one thing windows can do better than Linux it's portable applications. The vast majority of my daily drivers on windows can run from my memory stick on any system without installation. Though this is not the same as what you're taking about.

What you're looking for sounds like AppImages (https://appimage.org/) . I have only used them while downloading games from itch.io, etc. (since i prefer package managers) but they seem to work out of the box on popular distros.