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> It is heavily restricted in what you can do with it.

And that's what makes it more useful to more people.

That's because operating systems are fundamentally broken in terms of how they handle application installing, application uninstalling, etc.

OSX's .app drag-and-drop is the closest to the right answer. Linux's package management is a working but hugely complex solution to a problem that should be entirely sidestepped. Windows is totally broken.

Each app should live in its own world. Management of libraries and support infrastructure should also be neatly modular. An app should not have an "installer" and should not be allowed to mess with the OS.

Which is easy on any modern OS (including Windows) ... provided the app doesn't need to interact with others (by giving them a way to handle its file format, for example). At which point it you have the same problems which need to be dealt with one way or another.

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