But here's my (unpopular) take as a GNOME user and using Fedora immutable distros + flatpaks -- I suspect Linux is going to go in a broadly similar direction. Maybe not soon (even flatpaks aren't universally acclaimed), but sometime.
I don't even mind that they've introduced a level on the totem pole that's above root. But on my computer, -I- should be the one at that level, not Apple.
the issue seems to be that you still believe this?
However, less corporate distros that mostly just ship built upstream software as-is since they don't have to support it for long periods (think Arch, Fedora, Void, etc) don't have that problem, so I expect we'll continue seeing them use traditional packages.
Ubuntu does the exact same thing with their snap repository, the Firefox apt package from Ubuntu is fake. At least Flatpak is a community-led project unlike snap.
You can limit the file system permissions of the app, like giving only access to downloads, so that if/when there’s a sandbox leak you’re fine. You can also disable various things, like webcam or mic, this way.
In addition, you can get perpetual updates to the latest version of your browser even on old, stable distros like Debian.
Linux is pretty diverse, there are still distributions out there that haven't adopted systemd.