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.
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.
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.
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. :)
AUR has a lot of packages but still nowhere near as much as Nixpkgs
If there is nothing appealing on flatpak, then sure. But for me it was really appealing and I still ignored it because you need to download big files at the beggining. But later on i started using it for steam and all because that thing is better staying as user-installed files in some form of permission sandbox
So far I have also completely ignored them. From what I understand they technically allow you to install old versions of software, potentially having multiple at the same time. This could come in a clutch when working with stuff like Godot or Blender where constantly upgrading to the latest version would cause issues on bigger projects. This is the only thing I can see myself using them for, at least in the near future.
I never use flatpaks and am doing just fine. I don’t want my packages to be installed from a bunch of different places; I want it all managed by one package manager, which for me is my distro package manager. I’ve never noticed a problem arising out of not using flatpaks; everything I want is either already packaged for me, or I can make a package myself.
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.
I really understand how hard is maintaining something for every single package manager and distributions
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 creates the package for the distribution, along with a compiled binary.
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 indeed, and sometimes you can’t even do it because the dependencies are older than the ones you require.
Same boat. As a user, I greatly prefer everything to come from the repos. However, as a distributor, Flatpak makes so much more sense.
The only Flatpak I have installed is pgAdmin. I looked at the build on Flathub with the idea of porting the package myself but got scared off. It was a maze of Python dependencies running in Electron. That seems like exactly the kind of thing that may be better off in its own sandbox.
Personally it depends on distro and package manager.
If your on arch yes you can in a easyish way some aur packages may require you to compile it.
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 offers.
The problem with AUR is just that the author of the package is likely not the author of the software and not affiliated with the distro, so you should normally check what the script is doing.
I’m using MX Linux AHS, it is Debian based, it is always up to date, like latest firefox a few hours after it’s out, kernel 6.12.17 as of today, etc.
It has no systemd, no snap, no flatpak. It just uses the good old .deb and everything is working fine.
Glad it is working well for you. What does that have to do with this post?
Adopt
nixand you will be able to ignore it forever! 😉Seriously though, as others have said, use whatever fits you best. I avoided snaps and flatpaks due to the increased size requirements. So many things were duplicated for no apparent benefit (to me). However, with their introduction of permissions and portals, it does seem like a safer option. Although, we’re in a phase right now where not everything is flatpakked and applications trying to talk to each other is a pain (keepassxc unable to talk to flatpak
firefoxlibrewolf, chromium, etc.).Now that I use nix, I have a whole bunch of other problems, but at least getting packages is quite low on the list.
Thanks for the suggestion. I am interested in nix, but haven’t explored it yet.
I wasn’t being very serious about
nix. IMO, it’s quite the time investment due to its poor documentation and it has a lot of gotcha’s if you aren’t on NixOS e.g one example is that it’s great for terminal applications, but horrendous for GUI applications as it’ll be hit or miss. Again, this is if you’re not on NixOS. So, it can feel like an “all or nothing” approach.If you have the time and will, then it can be very rewarding. But if you just "want something that works ™ " side by side in your current system, personally, I wouldn’t recommend it - unless it’s hidden by some other tool like
devenv(which is a great tool for reproducible developer environments).Lol thanks for clarifying your sarcasm. 😂 I can be an airhead at times.
I was actually interested in trying NixOS on a laptop that is gathering dust. I did see a few months ago that there was some drama surrounding the project owner, though. I never investigated enough to understand what that was all about, but I’m less excited about digging into something if it may suddenly end.
Yes. Yes you can.
Ignore it. Move on.
As someone who develops an distributes a small application exclusively on Flathub, I prefer that everyone uses the exact same package on every system. That way I know that if something doesn’t work, the issue should be easy to reproduce.
Recently, there was a situation where a user indicated in the comments of a release announcement that a newly introduced feature “doesn’t work”. It turned out that they installed a third-party package from the AUR (that wasn’t updated yet) without knowing that this isn’t the official and up to date version.
It just has to always be the first question in a big report or forum question. Have they verified their issue with the Flatpak version?
I prefer packages from the AUR myself but I do not expect the software authors to support me. Distros need to support their own packages but the AUR is not part of the Arch distro. Arch does not support the AUR. The only support I should expect would be from the package author (the AUR package) and they likely do not have the ability.
I think the right way to understand Flatpak is that it is essentially its own Linux distro without a kernel. You have to be running that version if you expect support. People think of Flatpak as a “sandbox” which it is. But it is also like running an app in a Docker container or Distrobox where you have to pick a distro to run in the container. With Flatpak, you are running on the “freedesktop” distro. It is not the same environment as the rest of your system (right down to the filesystem layout and C library).
This seems to be a dependency failure.
I’m sad that we had this solved 20 years ago. It’s like Texas measles.
What do you mean by this? Flatpak definitely solved the Linux distro balkanization problem for application developers without trying to destroy the benefits of having different distros. Having a distinction between system software, utilities, and advanced end user applications does solve a problem.
Arch based distros (except for Manjaro) has every FOSS and some proprietary software on the AUR
Let me try to clarify what you are saying.
You are saying that the AUR “has every FOSS and some proprietary software”. Yep. That is why I add an Arch Distrobox to every system regardless of the host distro.
But what do you mean by “except Manjaro”? Most Manjaro fans will say that Manjaro also supports the AUR. They are correct that you can certainly enable it and start installing packages from there.
I assume you are warning that, because Manjaro maintains its own base repos and has different package versions in it than Arch does, that Manjaro is incompatible with the AUR and that using the AUR with Manjaro will cause problems. If that is what you are saying, I agree with you.
it comes down to how you use your system. if you’re fine using is as described and you’re on a distro that gets newest versions, keep on truckin’.
for me, I hate rebooting. I like to leave my system and return to it, be it laptop or desktop, and continue where I left off. sometimes that goes on for days, sometimes weeks. that’s virtually impossible when updating both system and app stuff constantly, i.e. to get new apps you also get new kernel, mesa, plasma, whathaveyous.
so I keep my system stuff that’s handled with the package manager and my app stuff separate. almost all of my GUI apps are flatpak and they are on a systemd timer so they get updated daily. my systems don’t bother me with update alerts, don’t do shit in the background and that’s how I like it. once a month or so I do a system upgrade and reboot.
This is exactly how I do things too.
FLOSS used to include the ability to build software. Perhaps that’s not important anymore but now a days some developers don’t attend problems with their build recipes because they only consider what they release through binaries, whether on flatpak or whatever other binary repository they like. At least I dislike that, it’s ok to me some or most users would prefer to grab a bloated binary rather than building anything, but that doesn’t mean forgetting about those actually wanting to build from source, or wanting to use shared libraries and software from their distros, actually that’s a requirement for free/libre software repositories. Not sure if the tendency is to move the gnu+linux users into app stores like the ones on windows, now ubuntu snaps, android play store and the like. Sure there’s more security with sandboxing, but nothing one can’t get with firejail, and if wanting MAC as well then firejail + apparmor for example.
At any rate, just my little rant. And if you’re wondering, I use AUR on Artix, and I really hope I won’t have a need for a flatpak stuff.
