Can I ignore flatpak indefinitely?
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Ok, show me how you compile Emacs 29/30 on a fresh Debian 10 install in a few minutes...
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https://lwn.net/Articles/335415/
The evince PDF reader ran into this issue back in 2005. It is now rare to find a distributor shipping a version of evince which implements copy restrictions. Xpdf implements copy restrictions unconditionally, but Debian patched that code out in 2002, and that patch has spread to other distributors as well. In general, as one would expect, free PDF readers tend not to implement this behavior. Okular is about the only exception that your editor can find; it's interesting to note that the version of Okular shipped with Fedora Rawhide also implements copy restrictions by default. Perhaps this behavior is result of the relative newness of this application; as it accumulates more users, the pressure for more user-friendly behavior is likely to grow.
I see, it was Xpdf where Debian patched it out in 2002.
Also lmao @ the fact that Okular's
ObeyDRMoption still defaults to true today
(Including in Debian, as their KDE maintainer declined to carry a patch to change it.)
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I'm admittedly yelling at cloud a bit here, but I like package managers just fine. I don't want to have to have a plurality of software management tools. However, I also don't want to be caught off guard in the future if applications I rely on begin releasing exclusively with flatpak.
I don't develop distributed applications, but Im not understanding how it simplifies dependency management. Isn't it just shifting the work into the app bundle? Stuff still has to be updated or replaced all the time, right?
Don't maintainers have to release new bundles if they contain dependencies with vulnerabilities?
Is it because developers are often using dependencies that are ahead of release versions?
Also, how is it so much better than images for your applications on Docker Hub?
Never say never, I guess, but nothing about flatpak really appeals to my instincts. I really just want to know if it's something I should adopt, or if I can continue to blissfully ignore.
Just use Nix. It can run all the packages on whatever platform. It has the largest repository of software & are some of the most up-to-date.
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apt install build-essential apt build-dep emacs wget https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/emacs-30.1.tar.xz tar -xf emacs-30.1.tar.xz ./configure —prefix=/usr/local make make installDid I ask for a command? Give that a try in Debian 10...
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This is what's so great about Linux, you can use whatever the hell you want.
Flatpaks provide some cool security functionalities like revoking network access to a specific application. Maybe you care about this, maybe you don't.
My personal policy is to always install from the repos. Occasionally something is only available in flathub, which is fine for me. I really understand how hard is maintaining something for every single package manager and diatributions and totally respect the devs using a format that just works everywhere. If I were to release a new Linux app, I would totally use flatpak.
But for apps distributed in your system’s package manager, it’s not the devs that are distributing them in every package manager. It’s the distribution itself that goes to each repository, checks and tests the dependencies they need and create the package for the distribution, along with a compiled binary version of it.
When they aren’t offered in the distro’s package manager (or the version is outdated because the distro isn’t rolling release) things become more complicated.
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Personally it depends on distro and package manager.
If your on arch yes you can in a easyish way
Other distros you can either compile the software from source or convert .deb to .rpm (for example) this is mediumish and takes time to do.If the distro is rolling release, it can always support the latest software in theory, you’d just need to have the correct package formula, which is exactly what AUR is.
The problem with AUR is just that the author of the package is likely not the author of the software so you should normally check what the script is doing.
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Did I ask for a command? Give that a try in Debian 10...
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I'm admittedly yelling at cloud a bit here, but I like package managers just fine. I don't want to have to have a plurality of software management tools. However, I also don't want to be caught off guard in the future if applications I rely on begin releasing exclusively with flatpak.
I don't develop distributed applications, but Im not understanding how it simplifies dependency management. Isn't it just shifting the work into the app bundle? Stuff still has to be updated or replaced all the time, right?
Don't maintainers have to release new bundles if they contain dependencies with vulnerabilities?
Is it because developers are often using dependencies that are ahead of release versions?
Also, how is it so much better than images for your applications on Docker Hub?
Never say never, I guess, but nothing about flatpak really appeals to my instincts. I really just want to know if it's something I should adopt, or if I can continue to blissfully ignore.
Maybe but probably not. People that develop applications can save a major headache by choosing flatpaks so the ecosystem will gravitate towards it.
At some point new applications that didn't launch a Linux version will do so but only on flatpak and older applications will start moving towards flatpaks since it's less dev time.
It looks to me as inevitable that the best versions of an app will be a flatpak but if you're on Ubuntu based system you can probably get by for very long without them.
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Downsides of distro pacakges:
- someone needs to package an application for each distro
- applications often need to maintain support for multiple versions of some of their dependencies to be able to continue to work on multiple distros
- users of different distros use different versions of the application, creating more support work for upstream
- users of some distros can't use the application at all because there is no package
- adding 3rd party package repos is dangerous; every package effectively gets root access, and in many cases every repo has the ability to replace any distro-provided package by including one with a higher version number. 3rd party repos bring the possibility of breaking your system through malice or incompetence.
Downsides of flatpak:
- application maintainers are responsible for shipping shipping their dependencies, and may not be as competent at shipping security updates as distro security teams
- more disk space is used by applications potentially bringing their own copies of the same dependencies
Many of the problems with security and disk space are limited by flatpaks using same base layer for applications that is shared and easy to update.
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Just use Nix. It can run all the packages on whatever platform. It has the largest repository of software & are some of the most up-to-date.
But then I'd have to run Nix.
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I'm admittedly yelling at cloud a bit here, but I like package managers just fine. I don't want to have to have a plurality of software management tools. However, I also don't want to be caught off guard in the future if applications I rely on begin releasing exclusively with flatpak.
I don't develop distributed applications, but Im not understanding how it simplifies dependency management. Isn't it just shifting the work into the app bundle? Stuff still has to be updated or replaced all the time, right?
Don't maintainers have to release new bundles if they contain dependencies with vulnerabilities?
Is it because developers are often using dependencies that are ahead of release versions?
Also, how is it so much better than images for your applications on Docker Hub?
Never say never, I guess, but nothing about flatpak really appeals to my instincts. I really just want to know if it's something I should adopt, or if I can continue to blissfully ignore.
The real thing that Flatpak offers is one place to publish for Linux. You put your app in the App Store for Apple, you put it in the Play Store for Android, you put it in Flathub for Linux.
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But then I'd have to run Nix.
So? Not everything is packaged on all distros & you can benefit from sharing & reusing declarative configuration even if for specific scopes (meaning not just NixOS).
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I might be an exception here, but I really like flatpaks. I like their sandboxed nature and using Flatseal, you can cherry pick the permissions you want to give to a flatpak application. Don't want to give n/w access, boom done, like that. And finally if anything goes wrong, delete the app data and you are fresh to go. Also from a security standpoint, you can grand or deny access to specific directories and most apps don't have root access.
I love Flatpaks. It's always the default for me and I use Arch. Packages from the Arch repos or the AUR are almost always the last resort.
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I'm admittedly yelling at cloud a bit here, but I like package managers just fine. I don't want to have to have a plurality of software management tools. However, I also don't want to be caught off guard in the future if applications I rely on begin releasing exclusively with flatpak.
I don't develop distributed applications, but Im not understanding how it simplifies dependency management. Isn't it just shifting the work into the app bundle? Stuff still has to be updated or replaced all the time, right?
Don't maintainers have to release new bundles if they contain dependencies with vulnerabilities?
Is it because developers are often using dependencies that are ahead of release versions?
Also, how is it so much better than images for your applications on Docker Hub?
Never say never, I guess, but nothing about flatpak really appeals to my instincts. I really just want to know if it's something I should adopt, or if I can continue to blissfully ignore.
Flatpak is supposed to "just work" everywhere.
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No missing/outdated/renamed dependencies while building it?
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No missing/outdated/renamed dependencies while building it?
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I'm admittedly yelling at cloud a bit here, but I like package managers just fine. I don't want to have to have a plurality of software management tools. However, I also don't want to be caught off guard in the future if applications I rely on begin releasing exclusively with flatpak.
I don't develop distributed applications, but Im not understanding how it simplifies dependency management. Isn't it just shifting the work into the app bundle? Stuff still has to be updated or replaced all the time, right?
Don't maintainers have to release new bundles if they contain dependencies with vulnerabilities?
Is it because developers are often using dependencies that are ahead of release versions?
Also, how is it so much better than images for your applications on Docker Hub?
Never say never, I guess, but nothing about flatpak really appeals to my instincts. I really just want to know if it's something I should adopt, or if I can continue to blissfully ignore.
It really only makes sense to me when your distro is older or doesn't have the software you want.
I fully prefer native packages too, though, but I use Flatpak on phone. -
So? Not everything is packaged on all distros & you can benefit from sharing & reusing declarative configuration even if for specific scopes (meaning not just NixOS).
That’s why Arch has the AUR.
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That’s why Arch has the AUR.
AUR has a lot of packages but still nowhere near as much as Nixpkgs
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Can I ignore flatpak indefinitely?
Sure, at least until software you want to use is flatpak only, e.g. Bottles
Well, you can get Bottles as an AppImage... unofficially
https://github.com/ivan-hc/Bottles-appimage
