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> I don't really like AppImage too much, nor Snaps or Flatpak, though. It's a terrible workaround for open source OSes not being able to provide a stable ABI.
by twblalock 8y ago
> I don't really like AppImage too much, nor Snaps or Flatpak, though. It's a terrible workaround for open source OSes not being able to provide a stable ABI.
It's a lot more than that. The point is that applications should be self-contained and should not depend on the host operating system, and can be installed and run in isolation without affecting each other unless you want them to.
Hopefully it will one day mean that app developers can make just one package that can be installed on all Linux distributions.
- jchw 8y agoThat's a different issue imo. Isolation is one thing. We can accomplish that with kernel primitives we have today. Yeah, a distribution mechanism like snaps would be needed. But snaps are simply doing too much. Like, I should be able to download and run software like I can on Windows and to a lesser extent, Android. The deployment mechanism and the sandbox and the ABI issues all need to be solved separately. Boxing an entire distro per each app is Not necessary for isolation, Not good for security, and generally not a good solution to the ABI issue that prompted it. If it weren't for ABI stability problems, there would be no issue with still having the isolation of snaps while being able to update components of the base system like libssl. On a side note, I really dont like how these things clutter the shit out of mounts. Like, I appreciate that they are doing so for isolation, but the side effect is that merely having an app installed adds n mounts? That seems unsustainable.