Fan of Flatpaks ...or Not?
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It's a neat concept. The distro-agnostic aspect is definitely a plus for some people but I still prefer distro-specific installation methods. The only time I would seek out the Flatpak version of a particular software is when it's the only version available.
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flatpaks are fine and useful, i just wish we didn't move into a scenario where applications that used to be easily available in distro repos start moving away from them and are only available through flatpaks. distro packages are just so much more efficient in every way. flatpaks are easier on maintainers and developers but that comes at a cost to the user. i have about a dozen or less flatpak apps installed and already i have to download at least 2 gigs of updates each week. i run debian
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conflict when trying to just update things naively
Sounds like AUR problems. IMO using AUR helpers that tie AUR packages to your full system update command is a trap. AUR never professed to be a stable repository (in fact it's the opposite). AUR has a place, but it should be used sparingly and thoughtfully.
i agree with this but this isn’t the reality of the arch ecosystem. AUR is explicitly promoted on the wiki for a large amount of tasks the average user is going to do. it feels skeevy to acknowledge the problems with the AUR and then abscond arch’s responsibility for them, because the AUR is not like PPAs or anything. it is significantly more integrated into the ecosystem.
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runtime have versions too. If one runtime version use only one flatpack than exactly same as just static linking binary. Flatpack have just docker layeredfs and firejail in base.
id: org.gnome.Dictionary runtime: org.gnome.Platform runtime-version: '45' <- here sdk: org.gnome.Sdk command: gnome-dictionaryfor some reason, i have both gnome platform 46 and gnome platform 47 installed in my system. that's probably it
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Ubuntu Core, based on Snaps, is very much not ready for prime time IMO. It's kind of a mess outside of server use.
Look instead at Fedora Silverblue, Vanilla OS, and for the bleeding edge of immutable systems, GNOME OS.
KDE is about to launch their analogue to GNOME OS relatively shortly, named "Project Banana". These two are not exactly distros as they do not distribute the kernel, they are simply platforms that layer a bunch of images together to create a stable, reproducible system. There's also OpenSuSE Aeon, but I don't like its style of immutability as it's immutable by rootfs lock-out rather than immutable by image.
As for advice, learn how to use Distrobox / Toolbx containers. If you're a developer, this is where you will be working.
Immutable Linux is still young, and a lot of software isn't written with it in mind, so expect some growing pains.
Thanks. In the past I have worked in Slackware, and even had Gentoo on my home system for a couple of years, but otherwise I've been fully saturated in Debian and its children - so that's my "comfort zone." I used to like KDE, but drifted away from it when I got a 4K screen notebook and KDE hadn't figured out resolution scaling yet, while Ubuntu/Unity had. I never quite warmed up to GNOME, but definitely have done my time with it. XFCE has matured enough for me to daily drive it without too much pain now, and I love the ways it can be de-featured (don't want a launcher bar? Don't run it, nothing else breaks.)
Server-side, I have been filling my Raspberry Pis with Docker containers for a while now... it's not completely alien, but I do kind of tend to "set it and forget it" when it comes to container deployments.
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i agree with this but this isn’t the reality of the arch ecosystem. AUR is explicitly promoted on the wiki for a large amount of tasks the average user is going to do. it feels skeevy to acknowledge the problems with the AUR and then abscond arch’s responsibility for them, because the AUR is not like PPAs or anything. it is significantly more integrated into the ecosystem.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]The wiki article :
- specifically says that packages are not thoroughly vetted
- does not recommend using yay or another AUR helper (which is the primary thing I recommend against)
- has a frequently asked question section that is fairly technical and should indicate that it is not for the faint of heart
The aur helper wiki has a fun red disclaimer at the top that no one reads
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The wiki article :
- specifically says that packages are not thoroughly vetted
- does not recommend using yay or another AUR helper (which is the primary thing I recommend against)
- has a frequently asked question section that is fairly technical and should indicate that it is not for the faint of heart
The aur helper wiki has a fun red disclaimer at the top that no one reads
you (rhetorical you, not you) can recommend not using the AUR officially all you want. it doesn’t mean anything if a large number of tasks the average user is going to do require AUR packages. i’m kind of drunk rn but i’ll go find specific pages of the wiki that demonstrate what i’m talking about, i stg this isn’t nothing. the core system itself can entirely be managed with pacman, yes, but the average user is going to be doing a lot more than just that. there is a certain discord in the messaging of arch as a whole.
this is exactly my point. arch can either be a nuts and bolts distro or it can be made for normies. it can’t be both.
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you (rhetorical you, not you) can recommend not using the AUR officially all you want. it doesn’t mean anything if a large number of tasks the average user is going to do require AUR packages. i’m kind of drunk rn but i’ll go find specific pages of the wiki that demonstrate what i’m talking about, i stg this isn’t nothing. the core system itself can entirely be managed with pacman, yes, but the average user is going to be doing a lot more than just that. there is a certain discord in the messaging of arch as a whole.
this is exactly my point. arch can either be a nuts and bolts distro or it can be made for normies. it can’t be both.
To reiterate, I don't think there is anything wrong with using the AUR. I think that using an AUR helper that ties updating AUR packages to your pacman -Syu is a trap that people keep falling into despite the warnings in the wiki.
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Is there no other way on your system to see what the default browser is? On Gnome you can see a few of your default applications in the settings. And what happens if you open an html file for example? Does it open in Zen? If yes then it appears that Zen is set as your default browser, what more is there to check?
Functionally, it's the default because links do open in it, but why isn't it able to tell that it's already set?
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There was a few years where I pretty much only used Flatpaks because I was scared of the terminal. But now that I've learned how to use the terminal, it's so much more convenient because I can quickly update all my applications all in one place without having to open a separate app. Plus, some Flatpaks can fall really behind on software updates.
There might be a Linux userbase someday where no one other than developers actually knows how to use the terminal, because users can run everything they want without a command line, but maybe that's actually a good thing because it'll drive up how many people use a Linux distro.
With Windows and Mac, there's a shareholder incentive to enshittify. With Linux, if a distro goes bad and gets commercialized, there's always another distro people can move to, not to mention there's no financial incentive. The more people get on Linux, the less power these tech companies have. Personally, that and privacy are what drew me to Linux much more so than being able to tinker or fine-tune my experience.
Yeah I just wanted off mr corporation's wild ride
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The parent comment mentions working on security for a paid OS, so looking at the perspective of something like the users of RHEL and SUSE: supply chain "paranoia" absolutely does matter a lot to enterprise users, many of which are bound by contract to specific security standards (especially when governments are involved). I noted that concerns at that level are rather meaningless to home users.
On a personal system, people generally do whatever they need to in order to get the software they want. Those things I listed are very common options for installing software outside of your distro's repos, and all of them offer less inherent vetting than Flathub while also tampering with your system more substantially. Though most of them at least use system libraries.
they added “bash scripts you find online”, which are only a problem if you don’t look them over or cannot understand them
I would honestly expect that the vast majority of people who see installation steps including
curl [...] | sh(so common that even reputable projects like cargo/rust recommend it) simply run the command as-is without checking the downloaded script, and likewise do the same even if it'ssudo sh. That can still be more or less fine if you trust the vendor/host, its SSL certificate, and your ability to type/copy the domain without error. Even if you look at the script, that might not get you far if it happens to be a self-extracting one unless you also check its payload.wrote on last edited by [email protected]Yea, that's why I added the, "not that they're wrong..." part. Interesting how no one actually understands what those simple words mean.
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I like flatpak, but I can't download Flathub flatpak applications and (specially) Flathub flatpak runtimes from my phone. I hope Flathub learns from F-Droid
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I'm happy to use Flatpaks but the annoyances I've had are like when one application says to use you'll need to point to the binary of another application that it depends on but very understandably doesn't package together, figuring that out to me can be annoying so I'll switch to a regular installation and it all just works together no fuss, no flatseal, no thinking about it really. Also some applications where it's really nice to launch from the terminal especially with arguments or just like the current working directory and with Flatpaks instead of just right off the bat it's application name and hit enter, Flatpak hope you remember the whole package name
org.wilson.spalding.runner.knife.ApplicationName ...
Ya alias but got to remember to do that. So far anything I'd ever want to run from terminal, no Flatpak
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The person you're replying to is talking about the permissions manager flatseal, not flatpaks
Oops. I got confused
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I've never had a problem with flatpaks or snaps.
I think people who dislike flatpaks or similar aren't having "problems". They work, but they're using using a sledgehammer to drive a nail.
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As long as software is available in the Software Manager to be installed that way... I don't care what format it's in.
But don't make normies go to the terminal. It's inhumane, and really does not help the masses get away from big tech - which is a worthier goal than keeping your software terminal-only.
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This post did not contain any content.wrote on last edited by [email protected]
While I wouldn't want flakpak going deep into the OS I think the advantage of using them on the desktop is obvious. Developers can release to multiple dists from a single build and end users get updates and versions immediately rather than waiting for the dist to update its packages. Plus the ability to lock the software down with sandboxes.
The tradeoff is disk consumption but it's not really that big of a deal. Flatpaks are layered so apps can share dependencies. e.g. if the app is GNOME it can share the GNOME runtime with other apps and doesn't need to ship with its own.
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Perhaps ironically, this is mocking a strawman. Flatpacks can be installed and managed using the terminal! Not only that but Linux-Distros have had graphical package managers for decades.
The primary reason that distros have embraced flatpack / snap / appimage is that they promise to lower the burden of managing software repositories. The primary reason that some users are mad is that these often don't provide a good experience:
- they are often slower to install/start/run
- they have trouble integrating with the rest of the system (ignoring gtk/qt themes for example)
- they take a lot more space and bandwidth
Theoretically they are also more secure... But reality of that has also been questioned. Fine grained permissions are nice, but bundling libraries makes it hard to know what outdated libraries are running on the systems.
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My guess was the point is that it's difficult to install CLI tools using Flatpak
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Installing them is not difficult. It's the same as any other flatpak.
The problem is when running them (actually, when running any flatpak, not just CLI tools) you need to type out the whole backwards domain thingy that flatpaks use as identifier, instead of having a proper typical and simple executable name like they would have if they were installed normally.
I end up adding either symlinks or aliases for all my flatpaks because of this reason. After doing that it's ok.. but it's just an extra step that's annoying and that the flatpak devs have no interest on fixing apparently.
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I seem to have constant issues with AppImages. Every single one I have currently won't open. I get an error message relating to either qT or GTK. Tried searching for the error and get a bunch of old forum threads talking about either not being compatible with Wayland at all, or comments stating that the one specific AppImage in question must have been "packaged badly". Thankfully, nothing 'mission critical' for me is an AppImage currently, but it is quite upsetting that I have the most problems with the supposed "just works" app packaging/distribution option.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Yes, Flatpak is overall a better approach when compared to AppImages, since being dependent on a known runtime ensures the program will run whenever the runtime is available.
What I wish they would add is a way to run the flatpak in a portable way. Because as it stands, AppImages is the only option for that. Flatpak doesn't really allow to have a portable installation in a pendrive, for example. At the moment there's no replacement for AppImage in such use cases, which is a pity.
But there's no fundamental technical design roadblock in flatpak that would prevent it from supporting this in the future, imho. theoretically one could create a program that mounts the flatpak file into a ramfs layered with the runtime and run it.
