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Flatpak is one of those pieces of software that's clearly made by people with nice computers on fast internet You want to install a calculator app? That'll be

Flatpak is one of those pieces of software that's clearly made by people with nice computers on fast internet You want to install a calculator app? That'll be multiple gigabytes of download. Mere mortals now have to wait half an hour to get the app. What's even more insane is at the command line when you Tab to autocomplete the thing makes network requests and hangs! It's the only CLI app I know what requires the internet to autocomplete! I think the thing has been a complete flop. The multi gig "backends" are all versioned weirdly and I find they're very rarely reused between applications. Static builds in AppImages are smaller and faster and don't have weird UI issues. AppImages just need maybe an external update mechanism and more standard system integrators. But I'm glad that fundamentally the app format and the updater and system integrator are decoupled. These kitchensink app "systems" seems just big and ugly

haspok 3y ago
And what kind of security do AppImages offer you? You might find this shocking, but in many parts of the world "nice computers on fast internet" is kind of a given now. So for those, even if it is "gigabytes", it is worth it for the various benefits like security or convenience, for example.
- ristos 3y ago
  It doesn't, it's the whole "do one thing and one thing well", where it's only concerned with having a single executable without any dependencies. You run them with Firejail for security/sandboxing.
- debok 3y ago
  You might find this shocking, but in many parts of the world "nice computers on fast internet" is kind of a high-end luxury right now.
  - Zetobal 3y ago
    Come on it's not. A good midrange machine from 2015-2018 is still running fine today.
- contrarian1234 3y ago
  Security of my calculator..? Is this a theoretical or actual concern? Are you getting hacked through outdated AppImages? The Snap/Flatpak sandboxing has been widely criticized but I'm not an expert to judge. I'm guessing you can run your AppImage from something like a chroot if that's a real concern I've never had an AppImage hacked.. (or honestly anything else hacked on a Linux machine) though I'm not running AppImage servers > in many parts of the world "nice computers on fast internet" is kind of a given now Well if they want to be an appstore solution for the Linux ecosystem then they need to cater to everyone, not just rich kids in silicon valley
  - dale_glass 3y ago
    The concern isn't the calculator getting hacked, but the calculator itself being malicious, and there being a desire to safely install programs without opening up your whole system to them. A calculator should be run as a fully isolated application, with no filesystem access and no ability to damage anything even if it tries.
  - chlorion 3y ago
    >Security of my calculator..? I could upload a "Calculator" application that looks harmless, and even functions as a calculator, but actually steals your GPG keys and logs keyboard input. With a sandbox this would not be possible (in theory). A "calculator" app isn't really unique here, it can be malicious just as well as anything else could be. You do not want "apps" to be able to do this at all! A calculator shouldn't really have access to many things anyways, ideally only access to things it requires to function.
- heavyset_go 3y ago
  You can enjoy security and convenience without requiring users to download, install and update a dozen different system images just to run some simple apps. I have a few apps installed via Flatpak there are multi-gigabyte updates several times a week, usually for the base images under the apps themselves. I apparently have 3 different copies of GNOME, more than half a dozen platform images, and several copies of the Freedesktop SDK. Many Flatpaks aren't sandboxed, either.
- kovac 3y ago
  It's this kind of comment that makes me worried for the future of computing.
- matrss 3y ago
  > And what kind of security do AppImages offer you? None and no one said that it does offer any kind of security. The criticism was entirely unrelated to that. On the other hand, flatpaks sandboxing is also severly limited by the fact that most packages do not make use of it much. In the past the runtimes offered by flatpak were also lacking behind on critical security updates [0]. Did that change in the meantime? [0] https://flatkill.org/2020/ https://flatkill.org/2020/
  - nani8ot 3y ago
    Flatkill is full of misinformation or no longer true information. There're many posts debunking most of their points [1]. Some parts were true a few years ago but aren't anymore. Edit: They removed many of their examples at some point, so it's no longer as bad of an article. For example if VSCode wouldn't have direct access to the file system, it would be unuseable since it doesn't support portals to ask the user to grant it access to specific folders (by selecting them through the file picker). In the process of packaging an app for flathub, the packager has to provide some reason for why for example full file system access is necessary. The discussion to add or remove permissions are always open [2]. [1] https://theevilskeleton.gitlab.io/2021/02/11/response-to-flatkill-org.html https://theevilskeleton.gitlab.io/2021/02/11/response-to-fla... [2] https://github.com/flathub/net.lutris.Lutris/issues/229 https://github.com/flathub/net.lutris.Lutris/issues/229
- Nasreddin_Hodja 3y ago
  > And what kind of security do AppImages offer you? It shouldn't. Security should be implemented as a separate tool, not tied to any package management system.
Beijinger 3y ago
When the RPM felt out of time, I switched from SuSe Linux to Kubuntu. Now I use a ubuntu based distro (Bodhi). This flatpak stuff may make me leave ubuntu.
- ColonelBlimp 3y ago
  Ubuntu uses Snaps by default. Flatpaks are an option in Ubuntu only if you install the application.
  - Beijinger 3y ago
    My current version uses mainly DEB. Due to some personal issues I am not up to date with my OS. I install 99% of my software with apt and deb packages. I don't like Snaps and Flatpaks. Yes, I have to update soon but I will do this when I buy a new Dell XPS
orra 3y ago
> You want to install a calculator app? That'll be multiple gigabytes of download. Mere mortals now have to wait half an hour to get the app. The SDKs are shared between applications, just like a traditional package manager. So this is a fixed cost. Also I think the sum of GNOME and Freedesktop SDKs is closer to 1GB, than multiple gigabytes.
- contrarian1234 3y ago
  As others have pointed out, in reality the SDKs are very often not really shared and you end up with multiple copies. This doesn't happen (and is basically impossible) with a traditional package manager
  - ChocolateGod 3y ago
    Not sure if you've used Flatpak before, I have 108 flatpaks installed with just 3 runtimes, and one of those runtimes is for a deprecated app that won't even update for my distro anyway. Flatpak means I can continue to use it far into the future.
    - seba_dos1 3y ago
      You end up with just 3 runtimes only when you're either very lucky or very picky. I have a handful of apps and 3 flatpak runtimes on my phone right now and that's only because I'm the latter (and have to be because of 32GB eMMC).
      - linmob 3y ago
        I have a similar 5.7" 32 GB eMMC device that runs a debian-ish distro with Phosh GUI, where I have been installing flatpaks left and right (without caring which runtimes they use) for a reason ([0]) since early 2022. I am now at 107 total flatpaks, 18 of which are platform packages (= 89 apps+locales). If I were to remove five outdated apps, that are archived or inactive upstream, I would be able to get rid of four platform packages (I really should, but I don't want to for sentimental reasons). I have found things to scale similarily across devices: The more flatpak apps you use, the better the ratio gets. If you just use one app, you may end up with 3 Platform packages for it if you are unlucky, making that one app an incredible disk space eating monster. When you have 50 flatpak apps, things will look way better. Now, would I like to have all these as native deb, rpm, tar.xz (arch), apk? Yes. But I would also like to use the latest version, making that pretty much a pipedream - and in some cases the distro packages (mostly on Alpine and the AUR) aren't always as functional. I am really glad flatpak and flathub are a thing. OT, regarding alternatives discussed in other threads: AppImages aren't really a thing on aarch64 (also, I use Wayland, which probonopd does not seem to be a fan of [1]). Snaps: I had 'wrong arch' failures when attempting to run what was promoted as arm64 on Snapcraft. [0]: https://linuxphoneapps.org https://linuxphoneapps.org [1]: https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d1f2277 https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d...
INTPenis 3y ago
I've been using it as a digital nomad on shaky southern european airbnb and hotel connections for the past year and I have no complaints. I was skeptical to it, until I realized it uses cgroups for isolation. Now I'm actually quite fond of it, because I've recently converted to using immutable linux distros.
Timshel 3y ago
I certainly would not use it for all apps. But for things like Steam or Lutris, I happily sacrifice some GB to run a more stable and isolated version.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  > Note: This is a community package of Steam gaming plaform not officially supported by Valve. Report bugs through linked issue tracker. The flatpak is not officially supported by Valve
  - doubled112 3y ago
    Is the Arch Linux or Debian package shipped with those distros officially supported by Valve? I’d still take an unofficial wrapper over that time Steam was wiping home directories.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
      Ah, that's a very fine point. The rpmfusion RPM isn't officially supported by Valve either. Edit: Valve releases tarballs and a .deb package. Why would they release a .deb when Arch (which steamos is based on) doesn't use .deb? Releasing a .deb makes me think they test the thing on Ubuntu or Debian
      - rascul 3y ago
        If I recall correctly, Ubuntu has been the only officially supported distro since Steam first came to Linux.
        PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        The've moved to arch in recent years, the steam deck itself is running a modified version of arch linux.
figmert 3y ago
> Flatpak is one of those pieces of software that's clearly made by people with nice computers on fast internet But like, it's 2023... Having that requirement isn't a hard sell. Especially considering the base of Windows and macOS have fancy requirements as a base. Also, Flatpak allows for lib dependencies to avoid duplicate libraries from filling up your disk. Not really sure what else you expect.
- bheadmaster 3y ago
  > Also, Flatpak allows for lib dependencies to avoid duplicate libraries from filling up your disk. Not really sure what else you expect. Assuming that the app developers play nice and all agree to use the same (latest?) version of the libraries. In which case Flatpack becomes just a clone of Debian/Arch. If app developers don't play nice (which is most likely), Flatpack becomes more of a bloated version of Nix/Guix.
  - nani8ot 3y ago
    Part of this "bloat" is sandboxing, which is the main feature I recommend anyone to use flatpak for apps like Discord or Zoom.
- josefx 3y ago
  > But like, it's 2023... Having that requirement isn't a hard sell. I know several people who are on a shitty data limited connection. Their internet becomes basically unusable after a windows update tore through it. Hell the company I work for still hasn't found anyone willing to replace its ancient line with anything remotely modern and the multi connection + mobile network workarounds we have going breaks down the moment there is even a drop of water in the air. 2023 just like the years before it is a year where the network providers don't give a shit about decent service.
  - 9cb14c1ec0 3y ago
    There are still plenty of people who do not have access to fiber or even cable. I am one of them. I have a single flatpack app installed, and I rarely apply available updates because each update weighs in at close to 1 GB.
cherryteastain 3y ago
AppImages are also very big. Example: Blender [0] (210MB), OBS [1] (105MB), Ungoogled Chromium [2] (166MB) The only alternative that does not lead to downloading 100s of MBs of files is .deb/.rpm files and the associated "the prebuilt binary needs libfoo.so.4.0.1 but Debian ships libfoo.so.4.0.0" problems. Which ultimately means you pull even more dependencies than the Flatpak runtime for building (gcc, make, CMake, libfoo-dev, libfoo-dev's *-dev dependencies,...) and spend a long time compiling the application (also suited only for high memory, high core count machines). [0] https://www.appimagehub.com/p/1169218/ https://www.appimagehub.com/p/1169218/ [1] https://www.appimagehub.com/p/1409898 https://www.appimagehub.com/p/1409898 [2] https://ungoogled-software.github.io/ungoogled-chromium-binaries/releases/appimage/64bit/119.0.6045.123-1 https://ungoogled-software.github.io/ungoogled-chromium-bina...
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  Right; one way or another a program needs all of its dependencies. The traditional model was that a distribution would include one version of each dependency (most of the time) and share that between all the programs on the machine. Of course, that didn't work if you couldn't use that version, so the alternative is to somehow bundle dependencies in with your program (appimage, Firefox-like tarballs, plain static binaries) or ship them separate (flatpak, maybe docker).
arghwhat 3y ago
Flatpak itself is not enforcing this. You can ship a statically linked binary with no dependencies if you want. The runtime thing that flatpak supports is, ironically, to minimize and deduplicate common dependencies, and to be fair they are only downloaded with the first app that needs it with many apps using the same handful of runtimes. The fetish for shared dependencies within Linux and the pains it causes are a bit frustrating, but that's not new to flatpak. > What's even more insane is at the command line when you Tab to autocomplete the thing makes network requests and hangs! It's the only CLI app I know what requires the internet to autocomplete! nit: CLI tools do not implement auto-complete themselves. What you are seeing are auto-complete scripts for your shell that make network connections. Not sure if flatpak keeps a local repo list. That would be the only way to implement tab-completion of installable items without making network connections.
- contrarian1234 3y ago
  It does not keep a repo list bc the CLI needs to be constantly directed to the particular repo you want to use/inspect. It doesn't default to flathub and there is no sources.list equivalent. So therefore there is no cache and it needs to constantly ping the server to do anything. This makes the whole interface incredibly sluggish to the point that it's frustrating to navigate and explore. So you end up using the crappy website (as compared to something snappy like aptitude) Frankly shared dependencies makes sense when they're sort of wide-consensus. Debian-stable or Ubuntu-LTS. Everyone is building to work with the same set of version numbers and they are all rock stable for years. Rolling shared dependencies is just a recipe for broken apps. It's just a combinatorics problem. You can't test against every combination of every version of all your dependencies. And multiversion shared dependencies .. I don't even understand the point (and why Nix has always confused me)
  - tapoxi 3y ago
    There is shared consensus: https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/available-runtimes.html https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/available-runtimes.html
- IshKebab 3y ago
szszrk 3y ago
> It's the only CLI app I know what requires the internet to autocomplete! Oh that's actually a killer feature of kubectl for me. It's also used by a lot of tools around Kubernetes as well. It makes me not only faster, more certain of results of my commands in advance, but also makes me easier to understand to others when I share what's going on on environments. Yeah, it does suck if API is far away, but the benefits are too great.
demomode 3y ago
> What's even more insane is at the command line when you Tab to autocomplete the thing makes network requests and hangs! It's the only CLI app I know what requires the internet to autocomplete! I'm pretty sure that it's a bash-completion feature / "fault". No command is really executed while your are typing in a terminal until you press "enter".
- contrarian1234 3y ago
  not entirely true. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38302908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38302908
  - demomode 3y ago
    Well, technically is still bash who does the tab-completion, flatpak just provides a helper. Try tab-completion under pure sh or powershell
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hospitalJail 3y ago
>You want to install a calculator app? That'll be multiple gigabytes of download. Mere mortals now have to wait half an hour to get the app. The top 2 calculator apps were under 5mb in size. I'm not sure what point you are making because the hyperbole was too extreme. <2s? I have every shade of computer and wifi connectivity and waiting <60s-<5min for a download, one time, isn't going to change any experience. We forgive one time downloads. We do not forgive weekly forced reboots and dealing with autosaves M$.
panick21_ 3y ago
Recommended video from Distro maintainer who advocated AppImage and didn't like Flatpak a few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WuYGcs0t6I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WuYGcs0t6I Its a recommended watch.
schemescape 3y ago
Which calculator app is multiple gigabytes in size? How is that even possible!?
mikae1 3y ago
> The multi gig "backends" are all versioned weirdly and I find they're very rarely reused between applications. I find that they're generally rather well shared between apps. I use Tumbleweed and only install apps via Flathub. I have around 40 apps and I don't have this problem. It was a problem when I used 4 Flatpaks and the rest came from system repos.
josephcsible 3y ago
> It's the only CLI app I know what requires the internet to autocomplete! Doesn't autocompleting `sudo dnf install ...` do the same?

haspok 3y ago

And what kind of security do AppImages offer you? You might find this shocking, but in many parts of the world "nice computers on fast internet" is kind of a given now. So for those, even if it is "gigabytes", it is worth it for the various benefits like security or convenience, for example.

ristos 3y ago
It doesn't, it's the whole "do one thing and one thing well", where it's only concerned with having a single executable without any dependencies. You run them with Firejail for security/sandboxing.
debok 3y ago
You might find this shocking, but in many parts of the world "nice computers on fast internet" is kind of a high-end luxury right now.
- Zetobal 3y ago
  Come on it's not. A good midrange machine from 2015-2018 is still running fine today.
contrarian1234 3y ago
Security of my calculator..? Is this a theoretical or actual concern? Are you getting hacked through outdated AppImages? The Snap/Flatpak sandboxing has been widely criticized but I'm not an expert to judge. I'm guessing you can run your AppImage from something like a chroot if that's a real concern I've never had an AppImage hacked.. (or honestly anything else hacked on a Linux machine) though I'm not running AppImage servers > in many parts of the world "nice computers on fast internet" is kind of a given now Well if they want to be an appstore solution for the Linux ecosystem then they need to cater to everyone, not just rich kids in silicon valley
- dale_glass 3y ago
  The concern isn't the calculator getting hacked, but the calculator itself being malicious, and there being a desire to safely install programs without opening up your whole system to them. A calculator should be run as a fully isolated application, with no filesystem access and no ability to damage anything even if it tries.
- chlorion 3y ago
  >Security of my calculator..? I could upload a "Calculator" application that looks harmless, and even functions as a calculator, but actually steals your GPG keys and logs keyboard input. With a sandbox this would not be possible (in theory). A "calculator" app isn't really unique here, it can be malicious just as well as anything else could be. You do not want "apps" to be able to do this at all! A calculator shouldn't really have access to many things anyways, ideally only access to things it requires to function.
heavyset_go 3y ago
You can enjoy security and convenience without requiring users to download, install and update a dozen different system images just to run some simple apps. I have a few apps installed via Flatpak there are multi-gigabyte updates several times a week, usually for the base images under the apps themselves. I apparently have 3 different copies of GNOME, more than half a dozen platform images, and several copies of the Freedesktop SDK. Many Flatpaks aren't sandboxed, either.
kovac 3y ago
It's this kind of comment that makes me worried for the future of computing.
matrss 3y ago
> And what kind of security do AppImages offer you? None and no one said that it does offer any kind of security. The criticism was entirely unrelated to that. On the other hand, flatpaks sandboxing is also severly limited by the fact that most packages do not make use of it much. In the past the runtimes offered by flatpak were also lacking behind on critical security updates [0]. Did that change in the meantime? [0] https://flatkill.org/2020/ https://flatkill.org/2020/
- nani8ot 3y ago
  Flatkill is full of misinformation or no longer true information. There're many posts debunking most of their points [1]. Some parts were true a few years ago but aren't anymore. Edit: They removed many of their examples at some point, so it's no longer as bad of an article. For example if VSCode wouldn't have direct access to the file system, it would be unuseable since it doesn't support portals to ask the user to grant it access to specific folders (by selecting them through the file picker). In the process of packaging an app for flathub, the packager has to provide some reason for why for example full file system access is necessary. The discussion to add or remove permissions are always open [2]. [1] https://theevilskeleton.gitlab.io/2021/02/11/response-to-flatkill-org.html https://theevilskeleton.gitlab.io/2021/02/11/response-to-fla... [2] https://github.com/flathub/net.lutris.Lutris/issues/229 https://github.com/flathub/net.lutris.Lutris/issues/229
Nasreddin_Hodja 3y ago
> And what kind of security do AppImages offer you? It shouldn't. Security should be implemented as a separate tool, not tied to any package management system.

Beijinger 3y ago

When the RPM felt out of time, I switched from SuSe Linux to Kubuntu. Now I use a ubuntu based distro (Bodhi). This flatpak stuff may make me leave ubuntu.

ColonelBlimp 3y ago
Ubuntu uses Snaps by default. Flatpaks are an option in Ubuntu only if you install the application.
- Beijinger 3y ago
  My current version uses mainly DEB. Due to some personal issues I am not up to date with my OS. I install 99% of my software with apt and deb packages. I don't like Snaps and Flatpaks. Yes, I have to update soon but I will do this when I buy a new Dell XPS

orra 3y ago

> You want to install a calculator app? That'll be multiple gigabytes of download. Mere mortals now have to wait half an hour to get the app. The SDKs are shared between applications, just like a traditional package manager. So this is a fixed cost. Also I think the sum of GNOME and Freedesktop SDKs is closer to 1GB, than multiple gigabytes.

contrarian1234 3y ago
As others have pointed out, in reality the SDKs are very often not really shared and you end up with multiple copies. This doesn't happen (and is basically impossible) with a traditional package manager
- ChocolateGod 3y ago
  Not sure if you've used Flatpak before, I have 108 flatpaks installed with just 3 runtimes, and one of those runtimes is for a deprecated app that won't even update for my distro anyway. Flatpak means I can continue to use it far into the future.
  - seba_dos1 3y ago
    You end up with just 3 runtimes only when you're either very lucky or very picky. I have a handful of apps and 3 flatpak runtimes on my phone right now and that's only because I'm the latter (and have to be because of 32GB eMMC).
    - linmob 3y ago
      I have a similar 5.7" 32 GB eMMC device that runs a debian-ish distro with Phosh GUI, where I have been installing flatpaks left and right (without caring which runtimes they use) for a reason ([0]) since early 2022. I am now at 107 total flatpaks, 18 of which are platform packages (= 89 apps+locales). If I were to remove five outdated apps, that are archived or inactive upstream, I would be able to get rid of four platform packages (I really should, but I don't want to for sentimental reasons). I have found things to scale similarily across devices: The more flatpak apps you use, the better the ratio gets. If you just use one app, you may end up with 3 Platform packages for it if you are unlucky, making that one app an incredible disk space eating monster. When you have 50 flatpak apps, things will look way better. Now, would I like to have all these as native deb, rpm, tar.xz (arch), apk? Yes. But I would also like to use the latest version, making that pretty much a pipedream - and in some cases the distro packages (mostly on Alpine and the AUR) aren't always as functional. I am really glad flatpak and flathub are a thing. OT, regarding alternatives discussed in other threads: AppImages aren't really a thing on aarch64 (also, I use Wayland, which probonopd does not seem to be a fan of [1]). Snaps: I had 'wrong arch' failures when attempting to run what was promoted as arm64 on Snapcraft. [0]: https://linuxphoneapps.org https://linuxphoneapps.org [1]: https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d1f2277 https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d...

INTPenis 3y ago

I've been using it as a digital nomad on shaky southern european airbnb and hotel connections for the past year and I have no complaints. I was skeptical to it, until I realized it uses cgroups for isolation. Now I'm actually quite fond of it, because I've recently converted to using immutable linux distros.

Timshel 3y ago

I certainly would not use it for all apps. But for things like Steam or Lutris, I happily sacrifice some GB to run a more stable and isolated version.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
> Note: This is a community package of Steam gaming plaform not officially supported by Valve. Report bugs through linked issue tracker. The flatpak is not officially supported by Valve
- doubled112 3y ago
  Is the Arch Linux or Debian package shipped with those distros officially supported by Valve? I’d still take an unofficial wrapper over that time Steam was wiping home directories.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
    Ah, that's a very fine point. The rpmfusion RPM isn't officially supported by Valve either. Edit: Valve releases tarballs and a .deb package. Why would they release a .deb when Arch (which steamos is based on) doesn't use .deb? Releasing a .deb makes me think they test the thing on Ubuntu or Debian
    - rascul 3y ago
      If I recall correctly, Ubuntu has been the only officially supported distro since Steam first came to Linux.
      - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        The've moved to arch in recent years, the steam deck itself is running a modified version of arch linux.

figmert 3y ago

> Flatpak is one of those pieces of software that's clearly made by people with nice computers on fast internet But like, it's 2023... Having that requirement isn't a hard sell. Especially considering the base of Windows and macOS have fancy requirements as a base. Also, Flatpak allows for lib dependencies to avoid duplicate libraries from filling up your disk. Not really sure what else you expect.

bheadmaster 3y ago
> Also, Flatpak allows for lib dependencies to avoid duplicate libraries from filling up your disk. Not really sure what else you expect. Assuming that the app developers play nice and all agree to use the same (latest?) version of the libraries. In which case Flatpack becomes just a clone of Debian/Arch. If app developers don't play nice (which is most likely), Flatpack becomes more of a bloated version of Nix/Guix.
- nani8ot 3y ago
  Part of this "bloat" is sandboxing, which is the main feature I recommend anyone to use flatpak for apps like Discord or Zoom.
josefx 3y ago
> But like, it's 2023... Having that requirement isn't a hard sell. I know several people who are on a shitty data limited connection. Their internet becomes basically unusable after a windows update tore through it. Hell the company I work for still hasn't found anyone willing to replace its ancient line with anything remotely modern and the multi connection + mobile network workarounds we have going breaks down the moment there is even a drop of water in the air. 2023 just like the years before it is a year where the network providers don't give a shit about decent service.
- 9cb14c1ec0 3y ago
  There are still plenty of people who do not have access to fiber or even cable. I am one of them. I have a single flatpack app installed, and I rarely apply available updates because each update weighs in at close to 1 GB.

cherryteastain 3y ago

AppImages are also very big. Example: Blender [0] (210MB), OBS [1] (105MB), Ungoogled Chromium [2] (166MB) The only alternative that does not lead to downloading 100s of MBs of files is .deb/.rpm files and the associated "the prebuilt binary needs libfoo.so.4.0.1 but Debian ships libfoo.so.4.0.0" problems. Which ultimately means you pull even more dependencies than the Flatpak runtime for building (gcc, make, CMake, libfoo-dev, libfoo-dev's *-dev dependencies,...) and spend a long time compiling the application (also suited only for high memory, high core count machines). [0] https://www.appimagehub.com/p/1169218/ https://www.appimagehub.com/p/1169218/ [1] https://www.appimagehub.com/p/1409898 https://www.appimagehub.com/p/1409898 [2] https://ungoogled-software.github.io/ungoogled-chromium-binaries/releases/appimage/64bit/119.0.6045.123-1 https://ungoogled-software.github.io/ungoogled-chromium-bina...

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
Right; one way or another a program needs all of its dependencies. The traditional model was that a distribution would include one version of each dependency (most of the time) and share that between all the programs on the machine. Of course, that didn't work if you couldn't use that version, so the alternative is to somehow bundle dependencies in with your program (appimage, Firefox-like tarballs, plain static binaries) or ship them separate (flatpak, maybe docker).

arghwhat 3y ago

Flatpak itself is not enforcing this. You can ship a statically linked binary with no dependencies if you want. The runtime thing that flatpak supports is, ironically, to minimize and deduplicate common dependencies, and to be fair they are only downloaded with the first app that needs it with many apps using the same handful of runtimes. The fetish for shared dependencies within Linux and the pains it causes are a bit frustrating, but that's not new to flatpak. > What's even more insane is at the command line when you Tab to autocomplete the thing makes network requests and hangs! It's the only CLI app I know what requires the internet to autocomplete! nit: CLI tools do not implement auto-complete themselves. What you are seeing are auto-complete scripts for your shell that make network connections. Not sure if flatpak keeps a local repo list. That would be the only way to implement tab-completion of installable items without making network connections.

contrarian1234 3y ago
It does not keep a repo list bc the CLI needs to be constantly directed to the particular repo you want to use/inspect. It doesn't default to flathub and there is no sources.list equivalent. So therefore there is no cache and it needs to constantly ping the server to do anything. This makes the whole interface incredibly sluggish to the point that it's frustrating to navigate and explore. So you end up using the crappy website (as compared to something snappy like aptitude) Frankly shared dependencies makes sense when they're sort of wide-consensus. Debian-stable or Ubuntu-LTS. Everyone is building to work with the same set of version numbers and they are all rock stable for years. Rolling shared dependencies is just a recipe for broken apps. It's just a combinatorics problem. You can't test against every combination of every version of all your dependencies. And multiversion shared dependencies .. I don't even understand the point (and why Nix has always confused me)
- tapoxi 3y ago
  There is shared consensus: https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/available-runtimes.html https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/available-runtimes.html
IshKebab 3y ago

szszrk 3y ago

> It's the only CLI app I know what requires the internet to autocomplete! Oh that's actually a killer feature of kubectl for me. It's also used by a lot of tools around Kubernetes as well. It makes me not only faster, more certain of results of my commands in advance, but also makes me easier to understand to others when I share what's going on on environments. Yeah, it does suck if API is far away, but the benefits are too great.

demomode 3y ago

> What's even more insane is at the command line when you Tab to autocomplete the thing makes network requests and hangs! It's the only CLI app I know what requires the internet to autocomplete! I'm pretty sure that it's a bash-completion feature / "fault". No command is really executed while your are typing in a terminal until you press "enter".

contrarian1234 3y ago
not entirely true. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38302908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38302908
- demomode 3y ago
  Well, technically is still bash who does the tab-completion, flatpak just provides a helper. Try tab-completion under pure sh or powershell

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

hospitalJail 3y ago

>You want to install a calculator app? That'll be multiple gigabytes of download. Mere mortals now have to wait half an hour to get the app. The top 2 calculator apps were under 5mb in size. I'm not sure what point you are making because the hyperbole was too extreme. <2s? I have every shade of computer and wifi connectivity and waiting <60s-<5min for a download, one time, isn't going to change any experience. We forgive one time downloads. We do not forgive weekly forced reboots and dealing with autosaves M$.

panick21_ 3y ago

Recommended video from Distro maintainer who advocated AppImage and didn't like Flatpak a few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WuYGcs0t6I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WuYGcs0t6I Its a recommended watch.

schemescape 3y ago

Which calculator app is multiple gigabytes in size? How is that even possible!?

mikae1 3y ago

> The multi gig "backends" are all versioned weirdly and I find they're very rarely reused between applications. I find that they're generally rather well shared between apps. I use Tumbleweed and only install apps via Flathub. I have around 40 apps and I don't have this problem. It was a problem when I used 4 Flatpaks and the rest came from system repos.

josephcsible 3y ago

> It's the only CLI app I know what requires the internet to autocomplete! Doesn't autocompleting `sudo dnf install ...` do the same?