This is a little bit more than an app request and I realize this has sora been asked before. The thing is that I think its very possible not in a way it was not way back when. Portable apps was a game changer for me making it much easier to move to a new machine or upgrade a machine. I could always back up the portable apps and have most all my software going very shortly in windows. With windows 11 I think many, especially techie types that might use portable apps, who have not yet moved to linux have taken the plunge. The thing is there is a portable solution already for linux, appimage, but nothing that is set up in such a sleek way like portable apps is for windows. Don't get me wrong there are several open source software solutions for helping with appimage installation but as I said they fall a little short and its more in format that anything. So here are the things im going to point out:
https://appimage.org/ - the app image standard
https://portable-linux-apps.github.io/ - specifically the appman version is an app image software center but it is command line and installed via wget. What it gets right is the functionality with finding and updateing apps
https://github.com/prateekmedia/appimagepool/releases - app image pool is a gui manager that has the right idea in that its gui and is itself installed as an appimage but does not have the actual usability of appman
None of the three have the nice just setup of portable apps but all together they are so close to whats needed if it had the portable apps look feel. So basically I am basically just pointing this out in the hopes maybe you will get inspired. I know im just a pleb gloming onto your guys hard work but I hope you will look and see what I see which is basically. If an appimage sotware akin to app image pool but in the portable apps style was made as a gui frontend for appman to get linux appimage software I think you could have something every bit as good as portable apps but on linux instead of windows.
Anyway thank you for your time not only in thinking about this but of course for portable apps to begin with.
EDITE - I should note that app images for some reason does not behave with local settings but if folders are made which appman does when running it using -C and -H then it saves configuration and downlodes and such to the local area of appimages. Bascially it just automatically mkes the folders that cause appimage to use the settings from those folders which it always checks for first.
I would be interested in something like this as well. I've been on windows forever, but with WIN 10 being abandoned and me not being able to upgrade to 11... Not to mention all the AI garbage, bloat, forced updates, and general frustration with Windows. I am pretty much done, and am currently running Mint XFCE on a spare laptop, as I prepare to move my main rig over to Mint Cinnamon. I used to like to have my passwords saved on a portable drive and also had some disk and malware utilities.