I feel like arguments like this expose one of the central problems with Linux, that (unlike the take-it-or-leave-it corporate world) most Linux distributions want to be all things to all people. This includes people who range from what I call the “pathological hobbyists” (Linux should be insecure, hard to use, and infinitely configurable, because it entertains them), Free Software purists, people who weirdly seem to only support the Linux kernel (so a Chromebook or Android tablet is “using Linux”) and love running proprietary software, people who want Linux to look like something else (a web browser, a giant phone, whatever), people who just want a general-purpose computer without big-corporate entanglements, and so forth. And a lot of the time, those factions outright refuse to believe that the other groups exist.
That’s a long way around the idea, but it’s hard to design a solution when stakeholders don’t agree that a problem exists, let alone what the problem is.
Honestly, standards for libraries seem like they would’ve been a better move. If the worry is “I can’t install X because version Y of the operating system is Z versions behind on a required library,” the problem is that either versions of libraries ship breaking changes, or the operating system can’t host multiple versions of libraries. The problem is not that the operating system doesn’t have enough bespoke copies of the same library to be distributed among applications.
Mostly, though, I’m just irritated that I need to care which application gets packaged which way at all. “Just search each repository for the latest version” is equivalent to “build from the source, which you’ll need to track down,” except that you don’t know that you have an official version without something-something-blockchain-something or whatnot.