It was me. Reinstalled three times a couple days ago because I'm an idiot.
But I'm an idiot who uses FOSS and I rather be dumb in a world of genius than a genius in a world of dumb.
this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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Linux
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'ate dependency hell
'ate outdated packages in distro repos
'ate snaps
luv flathub
simple as
I like how know one wants snap but everyone chose flatpak.
I like flatpaks
Now I'm just hoping AppImage will follow in Snap's footsteps.
Appimage is better for cli apps. Different purposes. Neovim appimage is very useful
Appimage is broken in many ways. Use a container
I've never had problems with appimage, and for me, containers are for my servers. I don't want stateless, sandboxed applications for my workstations.
In what ways is it broken?
Containers don't need to be stateless. I use Distrobox to create environments that I run my software in. Podman is the best for Distrobox but it can use the docker backend as well.
appimage aren't bad
WDYM? I thought canonical was kinda standing their ground with snaps.
I am really glad Flatpak exists, it made using Linux much easier for me ^^
I know there's abit of a war going on about the technical merits of flatpaks which I don't know enough about the Unix world to fully understand.
As a newer user flatpaks have been pretty great, I like having the Android like permissions system through flatseal especially for my proprietary apps like Discord.
I dunno if I'd go all in on using only flatpaks but for what it is, consider me a fan.
The issue with those numbers is that they don't account for people having multiple devices. My PC, Laptop, and Steam Deck all download apps from flathub, so I'm likely counted multiple times. On the other hand most people only use one device, so the actual numbers probably don't doffer much. It's an estimate anyway.
Edit: I'm not surprised the amount of people using flatpak/flathub increased so much. It's my preferred method of installing proprietary software and works on any distro, even unconventional ones like NixOS or Alpine. Sandboxing continues to get better, be it isolation or usability.
As a noob, can someone briefly explain flatpaks and why they may be preferred?
Glad you asked
- containerized apps
- more secure than regular install
- less clutter
- no dependency hell
- open source (in opposition to snap)
Containerization is not mandatory, some flatpaks are not air-gapped at all which is a real bummer. I wish they all were.
Are you referring to the ones with excessive sandbox permissions that flathub allows by default? Or is this something else?
Thanks for mentioning this. I didnt know.
For some apps this is just annoying. Like on Cryptomator
Can they not be closed down with flatseal?
It is also much easier to install and update, since it don't require restarting the computer, and also works on all distro.
Exactly. Thanks for pointing it out.
That was my guess, from others' context. Hits almost all of the good points.
How containerized though? Could it be a replacement for a docker server "farm" on a single machine or is it know for apps to simply use locally?
Good question. Docker can be used for orchestration which I‘m pretty sure is a lot more than flatpak is designed for. So if this interests you (I‘m fine with docker) feel free to try it out and update me.
I love flatpaks
I am not one of the million, but I'm glad flatpaks exist. Anything to increase ease of use and hopefully wider linux adoption is a good thing.
I like flatpaks but bundling everything as flatpak is a overkill.
Lets gooooo 🔥
Glad to see growth on flathub 💪
Why does it only have git sign in? What If I don't want to use those shitty git services?
You mean GitHub signin?
Because Flathub operates on GitHub. If you hate it that much, you could use a different Flatpak distributor (I heard Fedora has its own?)
By choice or by force? I'll take flatpaks over Appimages and literally rocks over snaps, but what is this metric actually saying?
It is saying that more than one million people are actively using Flathub. What do you mean by force?
Well if there's an application that the developer only releases a flatpak for, do I have a choice in being one of those million if there's no easy way to compile it myself? What if I'm a newbie linuxer and cannot get all the dev tools installed?
There are no cases of this that I know of. There are some developers that don't encourage repackaging their apps, though.
What do you currently do if a developer doesn't package their software for other distros? Maybe they only provide an AUR package or a .deb, so someone else has to package it.
With flatpak the only difference is that a distro independent package exists, that anyone can install. It being possible to do cross-distro apps with a single package doesn't make it any harder for distros to also package it.
I'm not arguing against flatpaks I'm just calling the number suspect to meaningless as a metric.
Thanks, I think I understand now what you mean. I still disagree on the notion that people are forced to use flatpak and that the number is meaningless because of that. People choose to use flatpak because it solves their problem.
I'd say it's similar to many people who use Ubuntu because of its big user base and software support. It's still an achievement to be recognized.
Anyway, I do agree that the number itself isn't really relevant. I'm pretty tired and maybe I'm a bit pedantic, so good night (or have a nice day, depending on your timezone).
what's your point? if flatpak makes it easier for developers to package their software and easier for users to install it, there's nothing wrong with it being famous
do I have a choice in being one of those million if there's no easy way to compile it myself?
You always have a choice. Just yesterday, I had an app's documentation say "install brew so you can download our application and themes". I noped right out of there and found a different application altogether.
I don't think there's any business entity artificially forcing the users to use it (like Firefox on Ubuntu 😉) if that's you're asking.
Otherwise, the only case where the user is "forced" to use flatpak would be when the software they're looking for is not available under their distro's repo, which happens a lot especially in point release distros.