[sjellis]

Yes, for me the sandboxing is not the immediate benefit.

The instant value is providing channels for developers to ship apps to their users without either side having to mandate the OS that the other uses. Right now, even well-funded projects like Visual Studio Code have to pick and choose which Linux distributions and versions that they package for.

They don't provide packages to the main repositories for Linux distributions, partly because the release cycles are so wildly different. I don't want Debian stable to ship a completely new base system every few weeks, but the release cycle of my Web browser is a new version every six weeks.

In the ideal Flatpak world, I can run Solus or whatever distribution I choose, and the app developers that I rely on can not care about distribution market share, and just target Flatpak runtimes.

The challenge is going to be to ensure that Flatpak repositories and the Canonical App Store (the server end of snap) enforce good enough legal and security checks once vendors have started using them.