That exists, it’s called SteamOS.

And if memory serves one of the important features of Proton is to control how each app is configured individually, precisely to let you do needed tweaks at a local level.

Yes, and you can do this application specific tweaking but it’s largely less required now than it was in the past.

Less required in general or by the user? I sort of had it in my head that part of what Proton did was to just bundle all of those tweaks so you didn't have to think about it, but I haven't actually looked under the hood.

Correct. Parent is misinformed.

SteamOS is very clearly Linux which is not what the blog is suggesting.

as I read it, Linux was exactly what the blog was suggesting.

It's possible to use docker as a package manager. I worked jobs where did exactly that, because we needed to compile certain dependencies for our application, and it streamlined the whole process.

There's zero reason you couldn't create a small abstraction layer around docker so you can install "executables" that are really just launching within a container. I mean, isn't that the whole idea behind flatpak, snaps, and appimages?

The point is to leverage modern abstraction techniques so that people don't need to learn a new system.

This could be done using something like llamafile, in the sense that it would be a small universal executable containing a package.

It could even support running as a self contained application on Windows, with all needed DLLs provided.