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.
I do most things via flatpakk by default. It provide an aditional layer of reliability to the apps I use. When somehing goes wrong, with a new update or st like that, it would just break the app rather than my entire system. The sandboxing is definitely a plus when using something like WINE, as a lot of games/apps required a specific version of it. Managing them when they are installed natively is really stressful, since mistake there can break you system as well. All of these Flatpak benefits is doublely important when I recommend Linux to less tech-savy people, i.e. my cousin/mom.
Nevertheless, there are apps that have worse-that-native flatpak version, or required to be native to be full-featured (system configuration, i.e. Dconf).
i avoided flatpacks before.
but now that i tried out silverblue and had to rely heavily on them,
i have to admit that flatpacks are not nearly as bad as i thought.the only issues i encountered are with steam (might not start propperly on first launch)
and with ides(terminal starts inside the sandbox)other than that it works great.
I use Flatpaks for everything I can. I like how Flatpak keeps apps in a container isolated from my system. Also, Flatpaks contains every lib in every version I need for my installed apps, which means It does not rely on my system libs, and I like It, cause my system libs is to make my system works only.
Flatpaks are just the future of packaging
Great explanation and rationale for using Flatpaks! I hope others with questions see this.
I understand how people may be annoyed by the redundancy of every app packaging their own lib, but I swear those are measured in kilobytes, and people tend to be so obsessively minimalist it is a non-issue. Then again, minimalist are probably compiling their software.
I disagree. The other day I wanted to install some audio app that came in flatpak install format (I’ll check and add the name later). The app was less than 30MB in size, but the installation included 300MB of a previous version of org.freedesktop!
I think that is one time download of a library so the app can run. Also, any other app that needs it.
It seems to me that the biggest complaint people have with flatpaks are the space it takes.
I wonder if the blow up in GBs was an early buggy behavior?
I don’t like flatpak or snap or any of them. System libraries exist for good reason, just because your computer is stupid fast and you have enough disk for the library of Congress a couple times over doesn’t mean you should run a veritable copy of your whole operating system for each program. IMO it’s lazy.
Sandboxing is a different thing though, if that’s the purpose then it’s doing it right.
I have a ton of flatpaks which means packages are shared between them, so no it’s not lazy or a copy of the whole system. It makes a ton of sense for stability.
Updates are diff’s so downloading and updating is fast. Not entire packages.
Making every package work with only a certain version of a dependency and hoping it is stable doesn’t make a lot of sense.
You’ve just moved the packaging problem from distributions to app developers.
The reason you have issues is historically app developers weren’t interested in packaging their application so distributions would figure it out.
If app developers want to package deb, rpm, etc… packages it would also solve the problem.
