There was a few years where I pretty much only used Flatpaks because I was scared of the terminal. But now that I’ve learned how to use the terminal, it’s so much more convenient because I can quickly update all my applications all in one place without having to open a separate app. Plus, some Flatpaks can fall really behind on software updates.
There might be a Linux userbase someday where no one over than developers actually knows how to use the terminal, because users can run everything they want without a command line, but maybe that’s actually a good thing because it’ll drive up how many people use a Linux distro.
With Windows and Mac, there’s a shareholder incentive to enshittify. With Linux, if a distro goes bad and gets commercialized, there’s always another distro people can move to, not to mention there’s no financial incentive. The more people get on Linux, the less power these tech companies have. Personally, that and privacy are what drew me to Linux much more so than being able to tinker or fine-tune my experience.
Yeah I just wanted off mr corporation’s wild ride
There might be a Linux userbase someday where no one other than developers actually knows how to use the terminal, because users can run everything they want without a command line
Ideally, all the essential terminal commands could be replicated in a user-friendly GUI-applicable manner. Don’t ever have to remove the terminal for those that enjoy it, but if we could have a magic world where even the failure states could be navigated with little to no prior knowledge required and it gets everyone away from Windows and Mac for good, I’m all for it.
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.
There’s a lot to dislike about Canonical, but snaps is still relatively easy to purge and just get on with your underlying Debian package support…
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.
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.
Can someone explain why flatpak isn’t necessary for distros that have proper OS dependency management like Arch-based distros or Nix?
Seems like flatpak is solving a problem for OS’s that don’t have proper dependency management.
main selling points are isolation and having the latest version directly from developers without having to wait for your distro to package/update it.
both are debatable since they are not as good as promoted (isolation doesn’t always work correctly and it’s a mess to configure it once you use anything different than the more mainstream distros) or goes against the historical preference (using bundled everything instead of cooperating with your distro packages and trusting every individual over trusting your distro as a whole) but having the latest version on any distro without having to wait is a popular need so they gained traction quite fast. this might make little sense for rolling release distros (arch, nix) but it’s helpful if you have a stable base (years old debian) but need the latest feature on an specific application or have to use very specific libraries that are not packaged on the main distro and would require complex upgrades
You answered your own question. Arch and Nix solve the same problem Flatpak solves, but by using better dependency management. Flatpak’s main proposition is built-in sandboxing and convenience, but if you’re on an “expert” oriented distro like Arch (btw), you probably don’t care as much about those “freebies.”
In that case flatpak is basically a hack for OS’s with broken or improper dependency manangement systems. Either those OS’s should fix their broken systems, or ppl should move to OS’s that do it properly, as that’s one of the most important functions of your OS anyway.
Flatpaks make sense for atomic distros, too. It’s not always a matter of there being one right way to do things.
Also pretty much everywhere you’re using flatpaks (or snaps or…), you are doing it on top of a Linux system that’s still getting its core system updates via traditional dependency management. And flatpaks, despite trying not to, make assumptions about your kernel, your glibc version, architecture, ability to access parts of your filesystem or your devices, that can break things, and doesn’t bother to track it.
And the closer you get you tracking that stuff (like Snap tries to), you hilariously just get back to where you started, with traditional dependency management that already exists and has existed for decades.
I use Aurora DX so most of my apps are flatpaks. Its fine.
my issue with all of these gui tools ut never forces you to learn the cli to fix things just use guis
I like the sandboxing of Flatpak, but I prefer AppImage as I don’t like having the Flatpak runtime requirement.
Don’t AppImages also have a similar requirement just with stuff that is already installed on many popular distros so many people just don’t notice it? I think I read somewhere that running AppImages on systems that even slightly differ from the big popular distros is a pain since you still have to ship this stuff with them but it is more cumbersome than with flatpaks.
That is technically true with things like glibc, but I’ve never seen a system that did not already include baseline packages.
Most of us refugees just want windows but cool.
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.
works perfectly with my Arch Linux
btw
Flatpaks are great for situations where installing software is unnecessary complex or complicated.
That’s my main use for flatpaks too. Add to that any and all closed source software, because you can’t trust that without a sandbox around it.
Recently I’ve moved from using flatpak for electron apps and instead have a single flatpak ungoogled chromium instance I use for PWAs.
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
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.
I don’t know what you are smoking, I’ve used OBS for years installed from the AUR with zero problems…
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.
OBS worked pretty well for me last time I used it, using the basic package Debian provided.
never tried flatpak, snaps were so bad as to never consider non-native installs or just use docker instances when I need to run something weird. so dunno.
whats the use case for a flatpak exactly? maybe im not the target audience???
- Apps not available in distro repositories
- Apps with dependency conflicts
Flatpaks mean you don’t have to compile everything from scratch and solve dependency conflicts if you want a newer version of a program than what’s available in your distro’s repo, of if it’s something that doesn’t have a native version at all.
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.
Nah, it’s the same as with systemd, docker, immutable distros etc. Some people just don’t appreciate the added complexity for features they don’t need/use and prefer to opt out. Then the advocates come, take not using their favorite software as a personal insult and make up straw-men to ridicule and argue against. Then the less enlightened of those opting out will get defensive and let themselves get dragged into the argument. 90% that’s the way these flame wars get started and not the other way around.
For the record, I use flatpak on all my desktops, it’s great, and all of the other mentioned things in some capacity, but I get why someone might want to not use them. Let’s not make software choice a tribalism thing please. Love thy neighbor as thyself, unless they use Windows, in which case, kill the bastard. /s
i had a hard time getting used to them but now i love them in mint i can switch between the package version and flatpak version and usually the fp one is more updated
Mint took a while to handle flatpak decently in the update manager, and now it’s a nice experience.
On the other hand each flatpak uses >1Gb of disk where deb packages rarely require more than 100Mb
That’s not really true. It lists all the flatpak dependencies in that disk use, but a lot of those are shared, so they don’t actually use that much each if you install more than one, and the deb dependencies aren’t included at all. Flatpaks really do use more space, especially if you only have a small number of them, but it’s not as bad as that.
Nope, I was counting all dependencies, both for flatpak and apk installations.
No you weren’t. That would be ridiculous. The deb dependencies are most of your Linux install. Maybe counting just the new dependencies being installed alongside a typical deb install, but that’s still not an apples to apples comparison to 100% of all the flatpak dependencies, even ones shared with other flatpaks, and even that’s still very rarely over 1GB.
See, I only use flatpaks sparingly for this reason, but in some cases they’re indispensable when you don’t want an application to access certain parts of your system. The sandboxing is what makes them useful, in my opinion. For everything else, there’s the deb packages.
Plus I found on my install flatpak wasn’t cleaning up the flatpaks autoinstalled for older versions of nvidia drivers, they were all still listed as dependencies. Not sure who’s to blame but that was taking up a few much needed GBs.
I agree that flatpak should just invoke
flatpak uninstall --unusedright after uninstalling a flatpak. I don’t get why it doesn’t do this automatically. Granted, some distro package managers (used to) operate somewhat similarly in that they required theautoremoveoption.I actually tried
flatpak uninstall --unusedand it didn’t remove these ones. So there’s something odd going on there. My guess is maybe Mint manually installed them through the driver manager program? That’s a wild guess, I don’t know how it works.
That’s certainly a concern for some, but I’m using like 30 GB for all the things I’ve installed, which is a lot (12 (flatpak-system), 76 (flatpak-user)) but that’s on a 2 TB drive, which amounts to like 1½% of the total available space. I don’t think that’s a bad trade.
Compared to a pure install that can run on an electric toothbrush it’s a massive pill to swallow for some.
And not many consider the environmental impact of this either. Sure storage might be cheap (not in my country but I digress) but more space still requires more storage and across thousands of computers and then millions of computers that’s not an insignificant increase. We should be increasing technological efficiency not what were doing at the moment which seems to be just throwing more power and resources at the problems.
Lucky you. My laptop has a small HD, and all that space is a problem.
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)
I’ve never had a problem with flatpaks or snaps.
I wouldn’t say I have had a problem with snaps or flatpacks either. I uninstall all snaps first thing when I install recent Ubuntu versions, and I have never messed with flatpacks, so… no problems.
I think people who dislike flatpaks or similar aren’t having “problems”. They work, but they’re using using a sledgehammer to drive a nail.
