Stolen from linuxmemes at deltachat

  • SavvyWolf@pawb.socialEnglish
    289·
    1 year ago

    Recently switched to using Flatpaks instead of random .debs for a number of apps on my system. /var/lib/flatpak takes up 7GiB, which honestly isn’t that much (even though it’s like quarter of the OS size), given that’s the software I use most of the time.

    Was skeptical at first about Flatpaks, but SteamOS showed me that is great at just giving OS developers access to a fully populated app store with minimal work.

    Honestly, nowadays I’d say “ability to install flatpaks” should be the criteria on which we decide whether an OS is really “linux” or not (that is, SteamOS is, but Android isn’t).

    Edit: Okay. I said something stupid here, my bad. What I was trying to get at is the distinction between Android, etc. and “Desktop” Linuxes like traditional distros, Chromebooks and the Steam Deck. Even though it technically runs Linux, it’s hard to argue that developers for Android are really writing apps that work on “Linux”. Wheras if someone releases a Flatpak version of their app because they think the Steam deck is cool, it works on other distros “for free”.

    • starman@programming.devEnglish
      221·
      1 year ago

      Honestly, nowadays I’d say “ability to install flatpaks” should be the criteria on which we decide whether an OS is really “linux” or not

      I think you should check out what Linux means

    • Pantherina@feddit.deOP
      8·
      1 year ago

      Yup, Flatpaks are indeed great. Isolation, modern versions, no weird dependencies.

      I have to manage a Debian PC fleet and I am too stupid for Ansible, so they all just got cleaned up extremely, all that bloat gone, apps replaced with flatpaks and now the system has like ⅓ the packages. Automatic updates then, VirtualBox is the only stupid thing with their kmod and all, but Virtmanager is also already on there.

      Not all apps can be flatpaks, for example virt-manager, gnome-boxes can but its really restricted then.

      But keeping the system slim just makes so much sense, its like removing this distro randomness which I am sure is needed for Linux to get their shit together and stop doing the same work at 10 different places.

    • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
      3·
      1 year ago

      There are some (few) apps where flatpak may be the right solution. Many apps should NOT be flatpak

  • BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca
    15·
    1 year ago

    Pro tip: Use /var/lib/flatpak instead of /dev/null for a neater result, you avoid having to clean up spilled bits.

  • Synthead@lemmy.worldEnglish
    151·
    1 year ago

    Flatpak: “I would switch from Windows to Linux, but Linux is too bloated”

    • ichbinjasokreativ@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 year ago

      Having compared snaps in ubuntu 23.10 to flatpaks on opensuse tumbleweed, I can safely say that snaps tend to be faster for me with less weirdness happening during usage. Some programs were the same (obsidian for example) other comparisons were done from the same category (Firefox snap vs chromium flatpak). I genuinely prefer snap and don’t see the issues people often quote. Also, that the backend isn’t open isn’t a big deal to me, as snaps themselves generally still are.

    • Pantherina@feddit.deOP
      3·
      1 year ago

      Uhm I do, daily since a year or so.

      Most apps are slim, but needing 8 runtimes or so is nothing rare at all.

        • Pantherina@feddit.deOP
          1·
          1 year ago

          Yes I have do the same, layer small packages, use Flatpaks and complex stuff like (R + rstudio + COPR + Modules) or (QGis + grass + python + plugins) or IDEs in a distrobox.

          At least in Distrobox you can also create rootful containers which could run an entire DE, or run libvirtd in there and use virt-manager in a rootless box, connected over ssh. Totally works but its a bit complicated. But for software with systemd or USB access this is needed.

          Flatpaks share libraries, but they are sometimes not packaged well, contrary to distro packages, which on the other hand may pull in loots of dependencies.

          Would be interesting to run all packages in a rootful distrobox and have Fedora RPMs on the other hand.

          There are some hardening problems though, that I dont really understand, with user namespaces being blocked in the hardened kernel. On Arch there is bubblewrap-suid which fixes that in a way I also dont understand yet, but Podman, Distrobox, Toolbox, Docker etc dont work yet, and may not work too.

  • m_r_butts@kbin.social
    1·
    1 year ago

    I think this is funny, but it’s hard for me to hate too much on flatpaks. Disk space is practically free now, and having spent a good chunk of my career fighting DLL hell, I have a lot of sympathy for the problem it’s trying to solve.

    • neclimdul@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 year ago

      Yeah I mean it’s taking 500G of my terrabyte ssd. What else was I going to use that for? Installing games off steam? Two node modules folders?