Good question. Docker can be used for orchestration which I‘m pretty sure is a lot more than flatpak is designed for. So if this interests you (I‘m fine with docker) feel free to try it out and update me.
The issue with those numbers is that they don’t account for people having multiple devices. My PC, Laptop, and Steam Deck all download apps from flathub, so I’m likely counted multiple times. On the other hand most people only use one device, so the actual numbers probably don’t doffer much. It’s an estimate anyway.
Edit: I’m not surprised the amount of people using flatpak/flathub increased so much. It’s my preferred method of installing proprietary software and works on any distro, even unconventional ones like NixOS or Alpine. Sandboxing continues to get better, be it isolation or usability.
I know there’s abit of a war going on about the technical merits of flatpaks which I don’t know enough about the Unix world to fully understand.
As a newer user flatpaks have been pretty great, I like having the Android like permissions system through flatseal especially for my proprietary apps like Discord.
I dunno if I’d go all in on using only flatpaks but for what it is, consider me a fan.
I don’t think there’s any business entity artificially forcing the users to use it (like Firefox on Ubuntu 😉) if that’s you’re asking.
Otherwise, the only case where the user is “forced” to use flatpak would be when the software they’re looking for is not available under their distro’s repo, which happens a lot especially in point release distros.
Well if there’s an application that the developer only releases a flatpak for, do I have a choice in being one of those million if there’s no easy way to compile it myself? What if I’m a newbie linuxer and cannot get all the dev tools installed?
what’s your point? if flatpak makes it easier for developers to package their software and easier for users to install it, there’s nothing wrong with it being famous
What do you currently do if a developer doesn’t package their software for other distros? Maybe they only provide an AUR package or a .deb, so someone else has to package it.
With flatpak the only difference is that a distro independent package exists, that anyone can install. It being possible to do cross-distro apps with a single package doesn’t make it any harder for distros to also package it.
Thanks, I think I understand now what you mean. I still disagree on the notion that people are forced to use flatpak and that the number is meaningless because of that. People choose to use flatpak because it solves their problem.
I’d say it’s similar to many people who use Ubuntu because of its big user base and software support. It’s still an achievement to be recognized.
Anyway, I do agree that the number itself isn’t really relevant. I’m pretty tired and maybe I’m a bit pedantic, so good night (or have a nice day, depending on your timezone).
do I have a choice in being one of those million if there’s no easy way to compile it myself?
You always have a choice. Just yesterday, I had an app’s documentation say “install brew so you can download our application and themes”. I noped right out of there and found a different application altogether.
Containers don’t need to be stateless. I use Distrobox to create environments that I run my software in. Podman is the best for Distrobox but it can use the docker backend as well.
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