That may be true but the license thing was dishonest because no one was really unlicensed in any way. That is like saying I could rake in a lot more money committing fraud than conducting legitimate business.

That won’t cause bad sectors though, that just means the data you were writing was bad.

Do you object to software repositories that install dependencies precompiled?

Your “lines in the sand” seem idiosyncratic and arbitrary. You are happy presumably to use precompiled software or at the very least rely on software written by others which is already ceding some freedom but then claim that using systems that package all the dependencies into a single runnable unit is too much and cedes too much freedom?

I agree that containers are allowing software projects to push release engineering and testing down stream and cut corners a bit but that was ever the case with precomplied releases that were only tested on a single version of a single distro.

You can host your own container repository and write your own docker files to control all your own deployments though, it’s not like your have to be at the behest of any company to use containerization to make your own life easier with the benefits of reproducibility.

Do you write all the programs you use too or do you rely on the work of others and are drawing an arbitrary line in the sand when it comes to containerising those apps?

This right here… This whole community is about learning to do things for yourself. It might be after been given resources to learn you do decide its too much for you but people should be given the chance to discover that themselves.

Which db backup app do you use if you don’t mind me asking?

Can you install arbitrary apps on androidtv or only what is available in the appstore for it without jumping through hoops that possibly involve some command line shenanigans? Similar to how you can install plugins in kodi in libreelec from the official repos perhaps but have to jump through hoops for arbitrary programs? Your real issue then is that libreelec’s ecosystem isn’t as vibrant perhaps and that it doesn’t run on locked down hardware the user doesn’t really control so the media companies allow high quality streaming to them?

Arbitrary applications isn’t a TVOS like the original poster asked for, it’s a general purpose OS.

Docker and Flatpack are both containerization technologies and work in similar ways under the hood. Docker is more geared towards running headless services that other systems access while flatpack is more geared towards desktop gui applications that are interacted with from the same system they run on.