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> Flatpak wants to download a gazillion dependencies before the actual package

Ah yes unlike other package managers that magically make applications not need dependencies.

Standard Debian packages share their dependencies. Every Flatpak package is a special snowflake with its own dependencies. That's the point of it. But it makes download and install sizes enormous.

Flatpaks also share dependencies. Usually not quite as much as distro-specific packages, but it's wrong to suggest that each Flatpak ships all dependencies separately.

I know this was sarcasm, but my experience is that I download much less with Debian's APT than I did with Flatpak.

I can think of two explanations: (1) Debian packages have more shared parts, and (2) they have optional dependencies ("recommends" and "suggests") which I disable by default. Because of (1), there will be many library packages to download, but the overall volume is reduced.

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