To me, it feels similar to what’s happening on the server side. Server Side, most application handling got replaced with containers, because the dependency management becomes untenable if you’re pushing around just a couple of in-house applications. Here you use the distribution to offer a stable platform (container engine, monitoring, storage and such) and then run container on top.

And I think the desktop is on a similar journey for similar reasons, at least for faster moving or more complex applications.