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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Is there a downside to Flatpak? (self.linux)

submitted 4 months ago by 0485919158191 to c/[email protected]

171 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Basically title.

I’m wondering if a package manager like flatpak comes with any drawback or negatives. Since it just works on basically any distro. Why isn’t this just the default? It seems very convenient.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

This should be pinned somewhere https://blogs.gnome.org/wjjt/2021/11/24/on-flatpak-disk-usage-and-deduplication/?ref=ypsidanger.com

Edit: the speed shouldn't be a real issue. You may measure a difference but that's not an issue as it was with snaps until they improved upon it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Using flatpak on low end devices (like Linux phones), I can tell you from experience, the speed liss is noticeable. Specially for application startup. As is the resource overhead.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

That's a fairly good point. On mobile startup can be crucial because sessions are short in comparison to desktop where you have longer sessions and startup time is negligable (even the slow startup times of snaps could be ignored for e.g. a video editing session)

Low specs shouldn't keep the community from moving into newer technology.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Precisely. I've been playing with Mobian on a One Plus 6 (works great) and while I really like the idea of using mostly sandboxed app much like things work on Android, right now it certainly negatively impacts the experience.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

One thing I always wondered is whether libraries in memory would be duplicated or not. I have seen a lot of people talking about storage space which is cheap and shouldn't really be the focus for desktops. But I haven't seen anything about in memory usage.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Good question. With 16 GB RAM 8 haven't seen RAM issues for normal stuff

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Me neither but I if we're considering having all but the core of the distro in Flatpacks, this policy might mean Linux becoming less accessible to more modest configurations.

Unless Flatpacks deal with it somehow like regular packages do. If two app packages contain the same library within (as opposed to packaged in a dependency), can Flatpack figure out they're the same and share code memory between the two? For library packages with two apps depending on different versions of the same third party flatpack, does it assume the newer version can be applied to both, optimizing memory usage? If so, wouldn't that break the premise of flatpacks?

Can I convince my autocorrect that flatpacks and flapjacks are different things?

Inquiring minds want to know.