The tone here is surprisingly negative. Personally I’m happy with the efforts of the Flathub team 🤷
As a newer Linux user I really like flatpaks.
I don’t use them for most things I install but proprietary apps I want sandboxed or programs that have weird issues with dependencies I grab the flatpak.
Lemmy (and phoronix) people are generally extremely repelled by new stuff in the Linux world
Lemmy people are generally extremely repulsive.
For me on Arch, Flatpaks are kinda useless. I can maybe see the appeal for other distros but Arch already has up-to-date versions of everything and anything that’s missing from the main repos is in the AUR.
I also don’t like how it’s a separate package manager, they take up more space, and to run things from the CLI it’s
flatpak run com.website.Somethinginstead of justsomething. It’s super cumbersome compared to using normal packages.fwiw those simple names exist, you just haven’t added it to your PATH
Agreed, flatpaks are great for desktop apps. I use Nix for the majority of my packages, but I use flatpak for proprietary for the sandboxing.
I honestly prefer Ansible. It can do lots of configuration and setup and install flatpaks.
I honestly prefer Ansible.
I use Ansible all day. For work. Oh, god, is it sad compared to everything else in the space. RedHat had the choice between two in-house products and they chose poorly.
It can do lots of configuration and [set up] and install flatpaks.
We had that 20 years ago, just with a different product. The state of the art is now two generations newer.
What are the alternatives you prefer?
Oh wow, a lot of people use it in countries with a lot of people!
Lol, what a pointless map.
It’s impossible to tell at a glance which countries have more or less downloads, other than a couple of countries with a slightly lighter colour.I’m gonna be honest I’ve never had a flatpak version of something ever work properly.
There was even one popular media player that only came in flatpak form or otherwise build from source.
So obviously, for no reason at all, it barely functioned compared to other applications I had already tried.
Congrats to you people put there somehow running things like Steam with no problems lmao.
Your system might be messed up
I’m gonna be honest I’ve never had a flatpak version of something ever work properly.
As someone once involved with OS Security, I beg you not to use FlatPaks.
Why?
You can’t just make a statement like this without giving a hint of evidence or justification
North Korea: 316 downloads
Interesting…
In all seriousness, in both my home country and the country I live in, the number of downloads surpasses the population numbers which is kinda insane.
I think they count every download of every package, every version, every time. It’s not the number of unique users or even packages.
If you install 3 apps you might need to download 3 versions of graphics driver, 3 versions of desktop environment libraries and so on, It won’t count as one user installing 3 apps, it will show up as 10 -20 downloads. And that’s just the initial install, every time you update them it counts another 10-20.
It is per download not per person.
It could be simple download requests, rather than MAC or IP address downloads.
Still no proper way to mirror the thing and have it working offline / on internal networks. Great job self-hosters and sovereign citizens ;)
Offline/internal network installs can be handled with
flatpak create-usb- https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/usb-drives.htmlOne can distribute flatpaks along with their dependencies on USB drives (or network shares, etc.) which is especially helpful in situations where Internet access is limited or non-existent.
Cache/mirroring would be great for those who need it.
Edit:
Thinking about it, I wonder if there’s enough “core features” with ‘create-usb’ that its just matter of scripting something together to intercept requests, auto-create-usb what’s being requested and then serve the package locally? If a whole mirror is required, it may be possible to iterate over all flathub packages and ‘create-usb’ the entire repo to have a local cache/mirror? Just thinking “out loud”.
Thinking about it, I wonder if there’s enough “core features” with ‘create-usb’ that its just matter of scripting something together to intercept requests, auto-create-usb what’s being requested and then serve the package locally?
The issue is that… there aren’t enough “core features”. It doesn’t even handle different architectures and their dependencies correctly. It wasn’t made to be mirrored, nor decentralized.
Apt for instance was designed in a much better way, it becomes trivial to mirror the entire thing or parts and for the end tool it doesn’t even matter if the source is a server on the internet, a local machine, a flash drive or a local folder, all work the same.
Apt is a package manager. Flatpak is an app format that happens to have a package manager. It isn’t designed to manage a OS.
You absolutely can as Flatpak can run completely local. You can create a custom repo if you want.
Sorry to ask, I’m not really familiar with Linux desktop nowadays: I’ve seen Flatpak and Flathub talked about a lot lately and it seems to be kinda a controversial topic. Anyone wanna fill me in what’s all the noice about? It’s some kind of cross-distro “app store” thingy?
Flatpak is a universal application packaging standard for Linux. It allows devs to create a single application that gets bundled with all necessary dependencies including versioning.
These apps run in their own semi-isolated “container” which makes immutable distros possible. (Distros like Fedora Silverblue that are effectively impossible to break by installing or removing critical system files.)
This means that a Linux app doesn’t have to have a .deb version, an .rpm version, or be pre-compiled for any other distros. A user can simply go to Flathub, (the main repository for Flatpak apps), download the flatpak, and install it on their distro of choice.
It’s quickly becoming the most popular way for users to install apps on Linux because it’s so easy and quick. But there are a few downsides like size on disk, first party verification, per-distro optimizations, and the centralization of application sources. That’s why some users aren’t fully endorsing or embracing how popular they are becoming.
Interesting breakdown, thank you.
Do you happen to know if the containerization is similar to docker containers? Or more like android apps?
It’s more like android apps from early versions of Android before the permissions became user-managable.
It won’t prompt you to give the application access to certain permissions, all the permissions are predefined in the manifest by whoever published the application to flathub. When you run the application you just hope it won’t cause too much havoc (you can of course verify the permissions before running it, but I guarantee most people won’t)
Flatpak supports sandboxing but due to how most desktop applications want access to your home folder, network etc many apps simply disable it.
Regardless of the level of sandboxing applied to the app, Flatpak is a great way for a developer to package once run anywhere. Prior to Flatpak, if you wanted to support multiple distros, you had to build a package for each distro or hope somebody working on that distro would do it for you.
Inb4 AppImage was here first. And if you mention Snap then GTFO
Appimage is probably the most similar to a naked .exe in Windows. They are useful for small apps or simple indie games, but I prefer Flatpaks for my everyday big applications.
Agreed, Snaps are like Flatpaks but worse because locked down back end and Canonical’s sketchy nature. Imagine a really delicious pastry that anybody can make and sell, then imagine the same pastry but only one bakery in the world can make and sell it. Which would you prefer? Lol
Cool, thanks for the explanation.
a single application that gets bundled with all necessary dependencies including versioning
Does that mean that if I were to install Application A and Application B that both have dependency to package C version 1.2.3 I then would have package C (and all of its possible sub dependencies) twice on my disk? I don’t know how much external dependencies applications on Linux usually have but doesn’t that have the potential to waste huge amounts of disk space?
Most dependencies are bundled in the “runtime” images, and it uses file deduplication to reduce the size of the dependencies, but it’s still a little more than a normal package manager.
Essentially yes, if you start using lots if older applications or mixing applications that use many different dependency versions, you will start to use lots of extra disk space because the different apps have to use their own separate dependency trees and so forth.
This doesn’t mean it will be like 2x-3x the size as traditional packages, but from what I’ve seen, it could definitely be 10-20% larger on disk. Not a huge deal for most people, but if you have limited disk space for one reason or another, it could be a problem.
It CAN get pretty wild sometimes, though. For example, Flameshot (screenshotting utility) is only ~560KB as a system package, while its flatpak version is ~1.4GB (almost 2.5k times as big)
Flameshot is 3.6MB on disk according to
flatpak info org.flameshot.Flameshotno, that number don’t reflect the shared runtimes and deduplication
Most of the issue is that they’re unreliable. Sometimes the app will work. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you have to fiddle blindly with flatseal settings, which ones? Who knows? Guessing is part of the fun.
It’d be a great thing if it just worked.
I guess mileage varies here because flatpaks have always just worked for me. I only use flatseal to revoke excessive permissions.
Was controversial when it was new and full of problems. Now it is mostly the standard for apps.
Well, just by looking at responses in this thread, the controversy most definitely still exists. Some seem to like it and others hate it fiercely.
I think the haters are louder than the people who just use it occasionally
To everyone saying you can’t mirror a flatpak repo… you’re absolutely right. There should be a far easier way to set up your own mirror without needing to build everything from scratch. That being said, if you wanted to try to make your own repo with every one of flathub’s apps, here you go:
https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/hosting-a-repository.html
Edit: Some did get a flathub mirror working. The issue is that a. Fastly works good enough and b. There is no concept of “packages” on the server side. It’s just one big addressed content store because of ostree, and syncing is apparently difficult? Idk, not being able to sync the state of content is like the entire point of ostree…
Honestly I would prefer to just donate
It’s not about funding. Many prefer mirrors because the main instance isn’t globally available (the GitHub issue I linked, for example, is all about people trying and failing to access flathub in China) or because they can’t for compliance reasons (many businesses already mirror stuff like epel, too, which is what throws off Rocky’s stat counters). Neither of those issues can be assessed by throwing more money at a CDN.
Well that isn’t the fault of Flathub. If a country or organization blocks it that’s a local issue. This is especially true in China where they need to control the movement of information. Blaming flathub and Flatpak for censorship is frankly unfair.
Just to be clear I do not support Chinese Authoritarianism
Oh no, this is Flatpaks’ fault because they made this twisted repository system instead of doing sane things and then it is Flathub’s fault as well because they aren’t opening their storage to rsync or other sane syncing methods.
Twisted repo system
Oh no, the evil repos
Even Microsoft’s Winget repository is easier to deal with than Flathub.
Yeah no, it isn’t. I know that from experience. It constantly goes down and is controlled by Microsoft so it favors there way of thinking.
It is noteworthy that builds of Chrome, VLC, Dolphin, Steam and Spotify are created by third-party enthusiasts not associated with the main projects.
What great news, that’s why there is no trust in Flathub.
Why don’t you open an feature request on their git if you have an issue with volunteer work.
It’s funny thinking this guy uses a distro package manager potentially with unofficial patches applied to the package.
What’s the issue? I installed mint because I know fuckall about Linux, and tbh it’s a dice toss if I have used the Flatpak option not knowing what the actual difference between them are
