Flatpak uses OSTree, like Fedora Atomic Desktops (Silverblue, Kinoite etc) and similar to BTRFS snapshots.
So many files are deduplicated and linked, not actually there
https://gitlab.com/TheEvilSkeleton/flatpak-dedup-checker
50GB without
31GB with deduplication
21,4GB with BTRFS compression
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Yes, Appimages lost the race. The apps are old afaik, and often dont work. It sucks when distributors use Appimages as they are simply a bad app format.
There is a way to convert Appimages to Flatpaks, but I havent got that complete.
https://github.com/trytomakeyouprivate/Appimage-To-Flatpak