I “grew up” with Slackware, so I definitely understand the dependency issue.
I like flatpaks (and similar) for certain “atomic” pieces of software, like makemkv. For more “basic” software, like, say, KDE, I want it installed natively.
Enter the calm and quiet room
Pass out torches and pitchforks, guns and knives
“Snaps exist”
War erupts.
War with who? I’m posting this from Kubuntu and I’d happily agree with you that Snap should fuck off and die. (In particular, the backend being controlled by Canonical makes it objectively bad compared to Flatpak.) Even among people like me who tolerate Snap (for now…), I really don’t think you’re gonna find anybody who actually likes it, let alone enough to champion it.
Can’t start a war when there’s a consensus!
SNAP BAD
I’m a big fan of the idea of sandboxed apps. Flatpak is not great as it compromises sandboxing for compatibility (both with distros and apps) and also it’s quite stagnant now. But there are no other options anyway, so I use it.
I use Aurora DX so most of my apps are flatpaks. Its fine.
I need OBS on this new computer!
Let’s install the flatpack!
V4l problems
Plugins Problems
Wayland Problems
I’m just going back to the .deb, thanks.
Size and gnome/GTK dependencies are main reasons why I don’t use Flatpaks (I have nothing against gnome though, it just pulls in too much and KDE is worse in this regards, which is why I use Sway and River)
Naw fuck gnome and fuck GTK. Over invasive and controlling crapware.
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.
I’ve never heard anyone say that Flatpaks could result in losing access to the terminal.
My only problem with Flatpaks are the lack of digital signature, neither from the repository nor the uploader. Other major package managers do use digital signatures, and Flatpaks should too.
I was just wondering the connection between flatpaks and the terminal because I’ve never heard of flatpaks before and Wikipedia says they’re a sandboxed package management system or something?
As someone who uses Flatpak you can still use the terminal to install, uninstall and do maintenance, not sure why people believe terminal is useless with Flatpak 😞
Flatpaks are containers, same as Snaps, I personally prefer Flatpaks over Snaps, but just my personal choice. I use Flatsweep and Flatseal apps to help administrate Flatpak apps, but use terminal as well 🙂
I’ve no real preference so long as my PC starts stuff. The reason I avoid flatpaks is because I have at some point acquired the habit of anything I install that’s not an appimage I pretty much launch from the terminal and I remember trying flatpaks and them having names like package.package.nameofapp-somethingelse and I can’t keep that in my head.
I’ve actually been discussing the idea of Flatpaks offering “terminal aliases”, similar to what Snaps do, with some people involved in Flatpak. It’s something that could happen in the future, but for now, you can totally create an alias to run a Flatpak from a single word, it’s just a PITA.
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
I’m 2 months into my Linux journey and I don’t use flatpak. I’ve had the odd problem with it. I stick to pacman and yay now.
The issue I have with flatpaks is the size for most applications. It just doesn’t make sense for me. Not that it’s not useful and has it’s purposes.
and has it’s purposes
Unlike that apostrophe.
Flatpaks aim to be a middle ground between dependency hell and “let’s pull in the universe” bloat.
Applications packaged as Flatpaks can reference runtimes to share “bases” with other applications, and then provide their own libraries if they need anything bespoke on top of that.
I spent my time fighting AppImages until Canonical started to force Snap on me. I hated Snap so bad it forced me to switch distros. Now I appreciate Flatpak as a result and I don’t find AppImages all that bad, either. Also, I haven’t found myself in dependency-hell nor have I crashed my distro from unofficial Repos in well over a decade.
-It’s a long way of saying It works for me and it’s not Snap.
Appimages are ok, bloated but ok. Unless a library inside is old and won’t work.
Flatpak is annoying and I don’t like it at all, so I don’t use it. Easy solution.
Fuck snap though.
Could things like this go in linuxmemes? Memes are fun but it would be nice to keep this a place for actual information. And no, this is not a comment on what it’s saying, I’m just tired of so many memes.
Flatpaks are great for situations where installing software is unnecessary complex or complicated.
I have Steam installed for some games, and since this is a 32 bits application it would install a metric shit-don of 32 bit dependencies I do not use for anything else except Steam, so I use the Flatpak version.
Or Kdenlive for video editing. Kdenlive is the only KDE software I use but when installing it, it feels like due to dependencies I also get pretty much all of the KDE desktop’s applications I do not need nor use nor want on my machine. So Flatpak it is.
And then there is software like OBS, which is known for being borderline unusable when not using the only officially supported way to use it on Linux outside of Ubuntu – which is Flatpak.
OBS worked pretty well for me last time I used it, using the basic package Debian provided.
works perfectly with my Arch Linux
btw
And then there is software like OBS, which is known for being borderline unusable when not using the only officially supported way to use it on Linux outside of Ubuntu – which is Flatpak.
But why is that? I mean just because it is packaged by someone else does not mean its unusable. So its not the package formats issue, but your distribution packaging it wrong. Right? In installed the Flatpak version, because they developers recommended it to me. I’m not sure why the Archlinux package should be unusable (and I don’t want to mess around with it, because I don’t know what part is unusable).
But why is that?
Because the OBS developers say so.
And since I’m not on Ubuntu, I use the Flatpak version to get OBS as intended bey the OBS developers.
So its not the package formats issue, but your distribution packaging it wrong. Right?
Exactly. Most distributions fail hard when it comes to packaging OBS correctly. The OBS devs even threatened to sue Fedora over this.
https://gitlab.com/fedora/sigs/flatpak/fedora-flatpaks/-/issues/39#note_2344970813
I don’t know what you are smoking, I’ve used OBS for years installed from the AUR with zero problems…
The quoted image does not say so, they do not say the native packaging from your distribution is borderline unusable. That judgement was added by YOU. The devs just state the package on Archlinux is not officially supported, without making a judgement (at least in the quoted image).
As for the Fedora issue, that is a completely different thing. That is also Flatpak, so its not the package format itself the issue. Fedora did package the application in Flatpak their own way and presented it as the official product. That is a complete different issue! That has nothing to do with Archlinux packaging their own native format. Archlinux never said or presented it as the official package either and it does not look like the official Flatpak version.
So where does the developers say that anything that is not their official Flatpak package is “borderline unusable”?
The quoted image does not say so
It does exactly say so. Flatpak is the only supported and official method of installation when you’re not using Ubuntu.
As for the Fedora issue, that is a completely different thing. That is also Flatpak, so its not the package format itself the issue.
Exactly. And the Flatpak version from Fedora was unusable.
So where does the developers say that anything that is not their official Flatpak package is “borderline unusable”?
They don’t. It’s just unsupported.
This is the main benefit. However, i’m finding the software I use requires less dependencies and libraries these days.
I barely even use flatpaks anymore. Almost everything is in official repos. I couldn’t tell you the last time I had a dependency conflict.
?? I manage flatpaks exclusively in the terminal
