What does your ideal app distribution look like on linux as a linux user/enjoyer? What is the one “killer” thing that obsoletes the status quo? Also, do you publish apps as a Linux developer?

^ I've been shipping tarballs or self extracting tarballs. All have their benefits and drawbacks. But I think the direction RedHat is moving in (more immutability) there will be a place for system packages (RPM) and self-contained user-app packages (flatpaks).

Agreed

It wouldn't be GNU/Linux if people couldn't easily build and use the alternatives they want. Unfortunately for some people, that results in too much of a lot of things.