I am currently using Linux Mint (after a long stint of using MX Linux) after learning it handles Nvidia graphics cards flawlessly, which I am grateful for. Whatever grief I have given Ubuntu in the past, I take it back because when they make something work, it is solid.
Anyways, like most distros these days, Flatpaks show up alongside native packages in the package manager / app store. I used to have a bias towards getting the natively packed version, but these days, I am choosing Flatpaks, precisely because I know they will be the latest version.
This includes Blender, Cura, Prusaslicer, and just now QBittorrent. I know this is probably dumb, but I choose the version based on which has the nicer icon.
I don’t like flatpak or snap or any of them. System libraries exist for good reason, just because your computer is stupid fast and you have enough disk for the library of Congress a couple times over doesn’t mean you should run a veritable copy of your whole operating system for each program. IMO it’s lazy.
Sandboxing is a different thing though, if that’s the purpose then it’s doing it right.
I have a ton of flatpaks which means packages are shared between them, so no it’s not lazy or a copy of the whole system. It makes a ton of sense for stability.
Updates are diff’s so downloading and updating is fast. Not entire packages.
Making every package work with only a certain version of a dependency and hoping it is stable doesn’t make a lot of sense.
You’ve just moved the packaging problem from distributions to app developers.
The reason you have issues is historically app developers weren’t interested in packaging their application so distributions would figure it out.
If app developers want to package deb, rpm, etc… packages it would also solve the problem.
Sure. Except you gain universal compatibility for all distros that have flatpak and aren’t building all the different package formats. Makes it much more attractive for actual developers to package since it’s only done once.
There’s no right answer here, but there are definite benefits.
I’ve had many little issues since I moved to Linux years ago, most of which would never have been an issue if flatpaks were there at the time. My experience has been better with them.
You know you can have many versions of a library on your system at once, right?
As long as they don’t cause conflicts. You know dependency hell is a thing right? The reason flatpaks were thought up in the first place? Right?
Yeah, that’s why Arch is almost the only distro that keeps everything installed natively. All other distros either have a troublesome workaround or only support flatpaks.
Rolling release just keeps everyone on the same pace. Yes, they break sometimes, but on the long run it just works.
I see your point, and I agree. No need to spend resources just because we have them.
Sandboxing is definitely a benefit, but alas as I am learning I have no control of it’s permissions, so that can potentially go wrong.
I like them for the opposite reason. I’m still quite new to Linux, so I’m figuring out which software is best for me. I set up my server with Xubuntu and installed everything through Apt. I uninstalled a lot of software, but inevitably missed some things like libraries and config files.
Using Flatpak seems to keep track of everything, so uninstalling gets rid of everything that I would otherwise miss.
If it’s doing what it says on the tin, Flatpak is making my life much easier :)
