As a user, the best way to handle applications is a central repository where interoperability is guaranteed. Something like what Debian does with the base repos. I just run an install and it’s all taken care of for me. What’s more, I don’t deal with unnecessary bloat from dozens of different versions of the same library according to the needs of each separate dev/team.
So the self-contained packages must be primarily of benefit to the devs, right? Except I was just reading through how flatpak handles dependencies: runtimes, base apps, and bundling. Runtimes and base apps supply dependencies to the whole system, so they only ever get installed once… but the documentation explicitly mentions that there are only few of both meaning that most devs will either have to do what repo devs do—ensure their app works with the standard libraries—or opt for bundling.
Devs being human—and humans being animals—this means the overall average tendency will be to bundle, because that’s easier for them. Which means that I, the end user, now have more bloat, which incentivizes me to retreat to the disk-saving havens of repos, which incentivizes the devs to release on a repo anyway…
So again… who does this benefit? Or am I just completely misunderstanding the costs and benefits?
So again… who does this benefit?
It benefits me because I can install 32 bit software as Flatpak without any troubles and without messing up my whole system with 32 bit libraries dependency hell.
Flatpak permission system also. Flatseal ftw.
It benefits the end-user.
People do not want to be in dependency resolution hell; where they have three programs that all use different versions of libssl and require them to install all of them properly and point each application to the correct one. Most users have no ability to resolve problems like that. By not bundling, the application developer is forcing them to either try anyway or just not install their software.
Bundling dependencies with Flatpak or Snap helps the end user at the cost of only a few extra megabytes of space, which most users have in abundance anyway.
Traditional distro repositories also solve these dependencies for the user.
Only if everything you need is in the repository. If you have a application you want to install that doesn’t work with your repo supplied version of library, then you are gonna have fun making it work without messing other stuff up. And end users don’t really want to deal with that. Also disk space today is cheap, compared to the time it takes to learn and fix such issues.
Snaps benefit Canonical. They’re trying to build their own walled garden, and anyone else benefiting is not a consideration.
Flatpaks are different, because they aren’t purpose-built to benefit a single company. I wouldn’t use them to install most things, but there’s a few places where there’s benefits for at least some people. It’s a lot easier to maintain large projects like Firefox on older distro releases for example. You get sandboxing, so that say a bug in Firefox won’t let malicious javascript take over your system. It lets vendors release closed source software that would never be included in your distro’s repos. These are all things that may not benefit you, but in theory they’ll benefit enough people that it’s worth it.
I’ve also moved onto NixOS so don’t use either one anyways. I think Nix or something like it is the future, even if you’re running a more traditional distro, though that might just be misplaced optimism, see the success of worse is better.
That’s a fascinating topic, and I wonder how AppImages sit in this argument.
OH I asked a question like that not to long ago. Appimages do tend to be smaller, they have sandboxing, and getting updates can be hard. Sometime you have just download the new appimage and delete the old one. Other then that is does serve the same function of universal install format.
AppImages are kind of harmless in this, as they are just bundled up binaries and dependencies. They don’t force you into a store, update system or even installing of the app, they are just files that sit on drive. They can be very useful if you want to quickly change between old and new versions of an app.
They wouldn’t work for replacing a traditional Linux package manager, but as for portable Linux binaries, I quite like them.
As for Flatpaks: Me. It’s easier, simpler, cleaner, more secure and overall more convenient. It’s like on mobile, permission based. But without the shady corporations behind it.
About Snaps: some edge devs but more importantly: Canonical.
Dev’s and End users can know stuff “just works” also i no longer need to add 5000 repos to my system.
It helps distributing applications that don’t break left and right. Deepin is creating its own thing as well and they said they are gonna check host system first then supplement missing components if needed. This should result in maximum space saving, but allow developers to cherry pick dependencies.
How this is gonna play out remains to be seen.
thanks you for explaining that. I had asked around a few times about Linglong but there is nothing that really talked about them.
I think it benefits the distro maintainers. They can vet and ship version 0.13.1 of some multi-player video game, and support that for two years without bothering to package multiple backward-incompatible releases from the game developers. People won’t come demanding that they break their distro’s stable version no major version upgrades rule because everyone actually playing the game can just use the snap/flatpak published by the developers.
But then why bother to package the game for the distro in the first place?
I think it’s usually because someone asked for it, or the maintainers thought it would be wanted. Or to pad out the games section of the repos.
Mainly software vendors.
The fact that you can build a package with all dependences built in etc. Means software vendors can release a product for Linux. Without worring about all the different versions of library’s out there.
This is useful for os when trying to support less common distress. As you are not rellying on the distro to package everything. Then destros that wish to may compile more efficient versions based on there own dependencies can. But other distros are supported if they do not want to compile. Without your team having to compile for every distress.
But it also allows commercial closed source vendors to package once and know every linux system (on the hardware they choose to support) will have the dependencies expected. No matter the distro choice or other software requirements. Removing the issue with supporting every distress. As this is a common reason commercial software avoids Linux. As 100s of different distress divided between a relatively small customer base. Means support is often not cost effective.
Users who want to have software accessible
Me. A flatpak Firefox means not adding a repo to install non-free codecs. A flatpak steam means not installing a hideous number of 32 bit libs. Can’t remember what software it is because I rarely use it, but another flatpak prevents me needing to build it from source.
The main benefit of Flatpaks for me as a user, is that I can upgrade my system without fear of anything breaking (I use Silverblue, which relies heavily on Flatpak to enable this).
I think you should look at the runtimes basically as a repository. There are a bunch of libraries in there, and you make sure that your application works with those versions. Except that now, these libraries and versions are consistent across distributions, so you can support multiple distributions in one go. Additionally, it’s the application developer, who knows the application well, who ensures this compatibility, rather than a packager. Which, again, benefits me as a user, in that I can use the app even if my distro doesn’t have someone to package it.
Snap is just up Canonical trying to build an AppStore that they control so they get a bit of every software sale on Linux. It’s straight up evil. They neither support third party repositories nor is their AppStore server Open Source. It’s build such that they retain all the control and only employs the minimum amount of Open Source to get away with it.
Flatpak is more tricky, I am not sure there is any company behind it actually controlling it directly. But it is very much build for KDE and Gnome apps. As a general Linux package manager it’s completely useless, as it has no dependency management, the only thing you can depend of are the KDE and Gnome runtimes, there is no separation of individual libraries and such. Support for more than one binary per package didn’t exist last time I checked, the support for command line in general is terrible and the whole thing is geared towards an Android’ish experience with simple monolithic apps you can click on. The fact that it runs on multiple distributions is great, but everything else about it is awful.
There is also Nix, this is by far the best package manager we currently have. Runs on all distros, completely reproducible builds, git repositories can themselves be treated as actual packages, everything is easily overridable and changable by the user and best of all it is all build on regular Unix tooling, i.e. just some symlinks and environment variables, very transparent and easy to understand, no weird container magic that hides what is going on.
Removed by mod
however much I love NixOS, I would argue that in it’s current form (steep learning curve and horrendous documentation), the better option is using Nix package manager on a proven distro like Arch (or Debian but I’ve had some issues there). you get the benefits of nixpkgs while also having other pacman repos if you must.
this is just my opinion but if you aren’t after the sandboxing benefits then don’t bother with them. if you want to avoid dependency hell go with nix, if you are worried about storage space use your standard package manager, and if you want higher security without the knowledge/effort to manually do it, go with flatpak or snaps (although many flatpaks need to be further hardened via Flatseal as the dev gets to configure the sandboxing. I’m unsure how this operates under snap as I refuse to use it.)
I’d agree with mainly the developers. And maybe sometimes me, when there isn’t a packaged version available.
But you’ll certainly lose the benefits your distro’s maintainers provide. They coordinate all the software and make sure it works together. Give it some polish, keep things updated, patch things when there’s a vulnerability. Strip tracking libraries and change default settings so it fits into your distro’s politics. And a flatpak doesn’t use the distro’s libraries which get maintained painstakingly by the maintainers. And distros oftentimes promise to maintain software for a certain timespan and not abandon it. (Of course in case you use a distro that does these things properly.)
You’re now at the mercy of whoever made that flatpak.
And like mentioned in this post you now have multiple sources of software and you have maybe 3 things to keep up to date instead of 1 that does this on its own.
And if there is a vulnerability in some library like there was with webp this week… The distros are likely to do something about it. And if you have several independent other versions of that library on your system, maybe you’ll stay vulnerable until a developer chooses to release a new version with a new or patched library. Some library package managers will show you open vulnerabilities while programming. But I’m unaware of such a thing being included into flatpak, snap etc. Your distro will have a mailing list or something like that.
There are a few runtimes which provide quite a few things already (for desktop and system integration) and there are a growing number of modules for other commonly used stuff, example ffmpeg (de/encoding) which other flatpaks can reuse. Also flatpak uses OSTREE to try and prevent duplication.
The more the devs work with it the better their packaging and bundeling is gonna get. At the moment it is new and they have to re-learn some things and not everything might be done in the best way possible, but that will improve with time.
And i think it benefits everyone. Devs and distro maintainers dont need to repackage, test and integrate stuff for all distors and users have stuff that has an almost 100% chance of working out-of-the-box that is also quicker with updates/fixes.
IMO, overall an improvement in comparision to the current state with deb/rpm/pkgs/… for userspace applications.
