I wonder if flatpak will (hopefully) become the standard for linux apps in one or two years time, and if in 20 years we'll just be able to go back and install the flatpaks and have solved that problem.
Valve seems to be betting on it, as Steam on Linux seems to use runtimes that are very similar to flatpaks.
I am 100% sure that this will not be the case. In my experience static linked binaries from a couple decades ago are _harder_ to run, not easier. Or at least much harder to fix once any of the pieces is broken.
Oh right, I forgot that the libraries themselves still need to run on the host system. Can that ever be a problem for binaries? Will flatpaks start bundling python 2.x at some point?
Valve seems to be betting on it, as Steam on Linux seems to use runtimes that are very similar to flatpaks.