Old or limited hardware that could be used for such projects may not have an integrated sd reader and external ones won ' t really be an option for portables . Old or limited hardware cannot run modern games and old games do not use packaging systems like flatpak . Your argument here makes no sense . You can always delete unnecessary files , extract archives and so on , but all of this takes time . If you have time to install them manually you have time to remove them manually . Your time argument makes no sense . Stuff like flatpak saves you time and you also avoid getting the wrong dependency version . Some games require older versions of some library . If it ' s not readily provided for you , you ' ll have to spend hours researching old forums . I ' d like to make something clear , I ' m not saying there ' s never good reason to rewaste space for somethingo I ' m just saying that doing so cause there ' s enough space to use is wrong . Dude , it ' s just a game ! It ' s entertainment . You ' re already wasting much more space on your disk for things like browser cache you can always reload that page , mp 3 files or movies you can always stream that music or film . Flatpak and co give you convenience . This has always been a huge problem on Linux . Things rarely work out of the box . Steam does the exact thing like flatpak . There ' s a huge ass folder in your home directory that contains all sorts of dependencies that games may or may not require . It grows each time you install a new game and it never shrinks . Also , saying something is wrong because YOU don ' t have enough space is , by itself , wrong . You ' re trying to limit the possibilities of others based on your current hardware setup . That ' s wrong . Linux is all about choice . If you don ' t want to use flatpak , don ' t ! There are hundreds of distros . And , again , flatpak was never meant for core system stuff , just for big applications like libre office and games . Games , especially , can benefit from this .