No, I think what got us into this mess is Ubuntu being a server distro with a standard release cycle (as opposed to rolling release) getting incredibly popular on desktops.
Desktop users want the newest version of their UI apps and don't care so much about stability. Ideally, the developers of e.g. Inkscape would offer the newest version on each Ubuntu version via apt, but that does not seem to be feasible.
I am no Arch user myself, but I think a rolling release is much more suitable for desktop use. I don't have the feeling most people use Snap/Flatpack for their sandbox, but much rather for getting a new version of some software.
That would be quite surprising since Ubuntu Server appeared only after Ubuntu Desktop was already the #1 desktop Linux distribution (free CDs shipped worldwide, etc).
Canonical started developing sandboxed packages for Ubuntu phones ("click" packages which evolved into "snap" packages). At about the same time, Canonical was interested in getting other big distributions (RedHat, Suse...) to align on what software (kernel, glibc, GNOME, KDE...) to offer LTS on together, but there wasn't too big of an interest from other distributions (and tbh, I think that's a good thing: upstream open source projects would be strong-armed into caring about only a few versions that monopolist distros decided to base their LTSes on).
It is my guess that Canonical has (post-phones) invested in snaps to reduce the burden of maintaining the desktop and trying to earn some money in the process through the Snap Store. Flatpak seems to be Red Hat's slightly more open response that quickly followed.
The only benefit of Snaps/Flatpak for delivering newer versions of apps over just simply statically compiling everything into an app is that some of the things are shared between snaps (like frameworks, glibc...). You still get all of the same problems (theming, fonts,...).
> Desktop users want the newest version of their UI apps and don't care so much about stability.
[Citation needed]. Can you imagine telling this to someone who is about to present on a conference call, but zoom updated automatically and fails to start now?
If you define "care" as in, "random updates cause enough instability that they make alternate OS's favorable for accomplishing the same tasks," I'd cite Windows autoupdate as fairly hard evidence that people don't care.
I imagine MS has crunched the numbers at some point, and decided that the amount of lost work and interruptions due to forcible updates (especially contrasted with the benefits of updates) is not causing a significant number of people to ditch their OS for a competitor.
Competitor? Windows is still >85% of desktop use or thereabouts - you can buy an expensive mac or you can go to hell and try out linux; neither is really an alternative for many so they just accept what happens.
So why do they bother adding new features to Windows?
I'll answer my question: Companies make decisions on the margin. They don't care that they have 85% of the market. They want that next percentage point.
The users who might switch to or from competitors are precisely the "swing voters" they have to consider.
