this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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I am currently using Linux Mint (after a long stint of using MX Linux) after learning it handles Nvidia graphics cards flawlessly, which I am grateful for. Whatever grief I have given Ubuntu in the past, I take it back because when they make something work, it is solid.

Anyways, like most distros these days, Flatpaks show up alongside native packages in the package manager / app store. I used to have a bias towards getting the natively packed version, but these days, I am choosing Flatpaks, precisely because I know they will be the latest version.

This includes Blender, Cura, Prusaslicer, and just now QBittorrent. I know this is probably dumb, but I choose the version based on which has the nicer icon.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I use system packages for everything unless I need a newer version of a specific package for some reason.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I was using Flatpak and Toolbx exclusively until I discovered Nix. It's much better than using those two.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No, because I don't have a very powerful computer

Even if I did, I would still prefer to have native applications because it would be more permissive

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I am totally ignorant, do flatpaks use a lot more processing?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Flatpak and Snap definitely make installation more simple. The packages come with their own dependencies so you have way less issues with conflicting dependencies. I like them when they are officially supported by the distribution or developer, but I prefer the official installations over supporting a random person making a package (not sure if this is a thing with Flatpak, but with Snaps that was definitely a thing).

Some software really benefits from not begin inside flatpak though, I had to switch back to the deb version of Visual Studio Code as the integrated console didn't have access to some software outside the package and was also logging weird errors.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I prefered AppImages, but now that I'm on Nix, I've gone back to native. Native packages work well in the NixOS ecosystem.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

For sure certain package managers are better than others, and NIX seems to be in a class of its own.

I don't know how much time I am willing to invest in NIX, or Guix for that scheme power, but I can do myself a favor experiment with a few VMs.

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

In place of snap OF COURSE.

I can state without any doubt that i had problems with 80% of the programs coming from snap..

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Are they related to PPAs in any way? It seems like anything Canonical does to improve package management ends up sucking.

[–] Crow 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I didn’t like them before I used flatseal. Now I love them.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Definitely not me. I am on LiveUSB right now which makes my disk volume limited. And native packaging satisfies my needs (even when packages are old)

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Absolutely not, and this article goes into quite a few reasons why:

https://blog.brixit.nl/developers-are-lazy-thus-flatpak/

Sadly there's reality. The reality is to get away from the evil distributions the Flatpak creators have made... another distribution. It is not a particularly good distribution, it doesn't have a decent package manager. It doesn't have a system that makes it easy to do packaging. The developer interface is painfully shoehorned into Github workflows and it adds all the downsides of containerisation.

While the developers like to pretend real hard that Flatpak is not a distribution, it's still suspiciously close to one. It lacks a kernel and a few services and it lacks the standard Linux base directory specification but it's still a distribution you need to target. Instead of providing seperate packages with a package manager it provides a runtime that comes with a bunch of dependencies.

If you need a dependency that's not in the runtime there's no package manager to pull in that dependency. The solution is to also package the dependencies you need yourself and let the flatpak tooling build this into the flatpak of your application. So now instead of being the developer for your application you're also the maintainer of all the dependencies in this semi-distribution you're shipping under the disguise of an application. And one thing is for sure, I don't trust application developers to maintain dependencies.

Even if there weren't so many holes in the sandbox. This does not stop applications from doing more evil things that are not directly related to filesystem and daemon access. You want analytics on your users? Just requirest the internet permission and send off all the tracking data you want.

Developers are not supposed to be the ones packaging software so it's not hard at all. It's not your task to get your software in all the distributions, if your software is useful to people it tends to get pulled in.

Another issue is with end users of some of my Flatpaks. Flatpak does not deal well with software that communicates with actual hardware. A bunch of my software uses libusb to communicate with sepecific devices as a replacement for some Windows applications and Android apps I would otherwise need. The issue end users will run in to is that they first need to install the udev rules in their distribution to make sure Flatpak can access those USB devices. For the distribution packaged version of my software it Just Works(tm)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Flatpaks are okay but they take too much space

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

For me the perfect example is GNOME Builder (I use KDE Plasma) but this package has it all. No, you dont need to download any dependencies, the sandbox handles it all!

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[–] 418teapot 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I haven't used any flatpacks, mostly because they don't seem to have a good solution for running terminal programs. (Also I don't like that the application developer chooses the permissions to expose rather than the user.

However, I have been using bubblewrap which is what flatpack uses under the hood to sandbox. This allows me to run both gui and non-gui programs, and I have the control of exposing the minimum required permissions that I'm comfortable giving an untrusted piece of software.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I will be honest and reveal my naivete about the permissions. I don't really mess with permission for any program, but I can see how some defaults may be bad.

I will look into bubble wrap, since the sandboxing is important, but the sheer convenience and availability of software is what is appealing.

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