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Nice breakdown. I'm new to Linux and didn't know about this: > Flatpak still uses PulseAudio even if a host system uses PipeWire. The problem with that is that
by binkHN 1y ago
Nice breakdown. I'm new to Linux and didn't know about this:
> Flatpak still uses PulseAudio even if a host system uses PipeWire. The problem with that is that PulseAudio bundles together access to speakers and microphones—you can have access to both, or neither, but not just one. So if an application has access to play sound, it also has access to capture audio
That's a pretty decent sized hole.
- gjsman-1000 1y agoI sometimes see Linux users sneering at Windows and Mac design mistakes or lack of “freedom”… but then there’s stuff like this. Of course, Linux is then conveniently redefined in a way that nobody can be responsible, with finger pointing on every issue, rather than admit design flaws like this plague Linux as a whole.
- frollogaston 1y agoI wish there were such thing as just "installing Linux" on a computer, and it shows the penguin when you boot up.
- andrewmcwatters 1y agoThere sort of is, but you can't do anything with it, because you essentially have no user space utilities? For all of the crap that people gave the term "GNU/Linux" it's even more true today considering there are Linux-based operating systems that don't use GNU utilities. gjsman-1000 talks about "design flaws" in Linux above, but Linux is just the kernel. There is no "Linux" operating system, despite everyone, and even Linus probably? using that term. If you call booting init and getting a black screen "an operating system," well... that's cool I guess. I doubt Linus ever talks to the GTK people in any meaningful way, or any other desktop environment authors. So, what design flaws? Do you call a ladder a badly designed scaffold because it doesn't have a horizontal platform? No, it's just something entirely different all together.
- frollogaston 1y ago"GNU/Linux" can still mean too many different things. Even ChromeOS qualifies as that. You want GNU/Linux help, you need to specify what DE and everything. Or as the other comment said, what Bluetooth stack. You can say you're using Manjaro Cinnamon and either that's not specific enough, or someone says it's your fault for not using KDE. I'm comparing to Windows or Mac. There's only one Bluetooth audio stack in Windows. If you want help with it, whatever you find online will apply to you, unless of course you've gone out of your way to swap it for another. Unlike Windows, Linux is open and people can build their own flavors, but those can have their own names. Don't even get me started with how Ubuntu changed its entire GUI like 3 times so that it's unrecognizable each time. Feel bad for whatever IT departments had to keep taking new screenshots of how to do stuff.
- nativeit 1y ago…it’s just too bad that Bluetooth stack is one of the worst ever conceived, you have zero options for an alternative, and you still have to get all your help from a volunteer support team.
- frollogaston 1y agoBluetooth is hard. But it'd at least be easier if the Linux community weren't maxing out on complexity before even reaching the hardware. Even Windows struggled with drivers for a while.
- bluGill 1y agoIf you don't like the above there are several BSD systems that give you a useable OS. You probably want a deskto though which none give.
- frollogaston 1y agoFreeBSD has a desktop, doesn't it?
- bee_rider 1y agoI get that you already preempted this, but: Flatpack is a weird extra layer on top of Linux. Most distros have package managers that work just fine. These package managers predate Flatpack and basically are the main thing that the distro provides (other than the community, of course).
- frollogaston 1y agoMany Ubuntu or Debian users still use Flatpak, don't they? Even though there's already apt-get.
- binkHN 1y agoYou, kind of, don't have much of a choice. There's thousands of packages and it's a ton of work. In addition, as Linux continues to get more popular, more vendors are releasing software that doesn't care to work with newer libraries, so Flatpack handles this nicely.
- frollogaston 1y agoI only use Linux on servers, so the kind of stuff I need is always traditional apt-get, but yeah I always assumed using it on a PC would involve tons of snap or flatpak apps where they don't want to deal with the complexities of dependencies. Ok, I do have one spare Linux laptop in my garage that I barely use, and I'm pretty sure how ever I installed Chromium used snap.
- pjerem 1y agoIn my experience, most of the apps, even the desktop ones, are still packaged by the distribution. Flatpack is useful for the few ones that aren’t or for actively developed apps that get new useful features frequently.
- bee_rider 1y agoI mostly use Linux on my laptop. I thought you server folks needed this kind of functionality—you guys have to, like, serve stuff, be visible on the network, install weird software for business needs, right? As an individual, I can crank up the firewall, trust all of the people who use my laptop (it is just me) and not install sketchy software.
- rendaw 1y agoHow would you do this on Windows?