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this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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Linux
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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.
I maintain a few apps that are included into some distributions with no participation from my side apart from tagging what I consider releases in my git repo. How is doing something only once is more attractive as not doing it at all?
Because you can make sure it was done right. You don't have to worry about bugs or other issues being the result of faulty packaging if you're the one doing the packaging. Plus It makes reproducing bugs easier when everyone's using the same package, and declaring the flatpak as the official package makes it much more likely that people will use the flatpak.