Comment by gnuvince

And I don't understand why. Take the two most popular mobile platforms, iOS and Android: people there routinely download and install new applications and typically never interact with Facebook, Twitter, Gmail or Instagram via their browsers. Why should the situation be different on the desktop? I feel that the efforts should not be going into making the browser into an OS that can run general-purpose software, but rather getting a packaging system that is cross-platform and easy for users to use. My own preference would be something based off of Nix so that you can avoid many problems related to library versions and whatnot, but anything where a user could be pretty much guaranteed that if he clicks "install", he'll be able to use his application in the next couple of minutes.