One way or another, if you want to run an application you are gonna need its dependencies (the key is the name)… they may be bundled into an appimage or come as part of flatpak ruintime, or be confined inside a container, or live in the nix store, but they will “bloat” your system anyway.

Learn how to cleanup your system (ie. uninstall all packages that are not needed by others that have been requested explicitly) and live a happy life. Only bother with other solutions if the software (or version) you need isn’t available for your distro.