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My first impressions of Flatpak have been positive, with a few caveats. As an end-user, I want my apps to be getting regular, automatic updates, which means it

My first impressions of Flatpak have been positive, with a few caveats. As an end-user, I want my apps to be getting regular, automatic updates, which means it's vital to get them from some kind of official repo. I sympathize with the one-man developer who just wrote some cool little Electron app that he designed to be cross-platform and promptly gets bombarded by requests from his 10% Linux userbase that wants the app to be packaged for Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora/SuSE/Arch repos. I get it, I've been that annoying guy[0]. So to that end, packaging once as a Flatpak and working everywhere has been great. A handful of those pesky apps I used to have to regularly check for new RPM releases are now on flathub and I can update them automatically. With that said, flatpak support is still spotty. DNF doesn't support flatpak yet, so I had to install GNOME Software on my Cinnamon DE just to be able to easily support and update them. There's also the issue of the greatly inflated installation sizes. I'm hopeful that support will get better soon now that it's finally at 1.0. [0]https://github.com/MarshallOfSound/Google-Play-Music-Desktop-Player-UNOFFICIAL-/issues/2567 https://github.com/MarshallOfSound/Google-Play-Music-Desktop...

deadbunny 8y ago
> With that said, flatpak support is still spotty. DNF doesn't support flatpak yet, so I had to install GNOME Software on my Cinnamon DE just to be able to easily support and update them. There's also the issue of the greatly inflated installation sizes. I'm hopeful that support will get better soon now that it's finally at 1.0. Could you not just use the cli? (Not trying to start a holy war, just a question)
- AdmiralAsshat 8y ago
  The CLI wasn't terribly intuitive for app discovery, and to be honest until I googled around I couldn't even find the flatpak command to update already-installed apps.
  - vetinari 8y ago
    update installed apps: "flatpak update" list whatever is available in repository: "flatpak remote-ls repo-name", i.e. "flatpak remote-ls flathub". list installed packages: "flatpak list"
    - TingPing 8y ago
      Searching is easy too: `flatpak search $foo`.
vetinari 8y ago
> DNF doesn't support flatpak yet, DNF probably won't support flatpak, as it is something entirely different. Gnome Software does support multiple backend thought. If you want to install/update/remove flatpaks from command line, just use the flatpak command ("flatpak update" will check all the configured flatpak repositories for newer versions and update whatever is available).

deadbunny 8y ago

> With that said, flatpak support is still spotty. DNF doesn't support flatpak yet, so I had to install GNOME Software on my Cinnamon DE just to be able to easily support and update them. There's also the issue of the greatly inflated installation sizes. I'm hopeful that support will get better soon now that it's finally at 1.0. Could you not just use the cli? (Not trying to start a holy war, just a question)

AdmiralAsshat 8y ago
The CLI wasn't terribly intuitive for app discovery, and to be honest until I googled around I couldn't even find the flatpak command to update already-installed apps.
- vetinari 8y ago
  update installed apps: "flatpak update" list whatever is available in repository: "flatpak remote-ls repo-name", i.e. "flatpak remote-ls flathub". list installed packages: "flatpak list"
  - TingPing 8y ago
    Searching is easy too: `flatpak search $foo`.

vetinari 8y ago

> DNF doesn't support flatpak yet, DNF probably won't support flatpak, as it is something entirely different. Gnome Software does support multiple backend thought. If you want to install/update/remove flatpaks from command line, just use the flatpak command ("flatpak update" will check all the configured flatpak repositories for newer versions and update whatever is available).