Anyone else starting to favor Flatpak over native packages?

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.

db2,

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.

DidacticDumbass,

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.

arirr,

You can manage Flatpak permissions with Flatseal.

DidacticDumbass,

Great! I knew it was possible. That is one less argument against it.

greybeard,

Flatseal is super easy for anyone with a tech background to use. You can very quickly expand or reduce the access an app has to your system. Even below what the app comes with by default.

I do kinda wish the guis for installing flatpak apps were more forthcoming with the permissions, and possibly integrated some of the features of flatseal so you could modify the permission set before installing.

DidacticDumbass,

It does seem pretty intuitive.

Honestly I just sometimes want the app to see a file outside of Downloads.

Tippon,

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 :)

DidacticDumbass,

Trying to purge orphan dependencies is absolutely annoying. Talk about wasting space!

zephyr,

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.

onTerryO,
@onTerryO@lemmy.ca avatar

As a long time Arch user, it’s not perfect, but it is perfect for me.

ebits21,
@ebits21@lemmy.ca avatar

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.

db2,

You know you can have many versions of a library on your system at once, right?

ebits21,
@ebits21@lemmy.ca avatar

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?

stevecrox,
stevecrox avatar

Nice out of date dependencies with those lovely security vulnerabilities!

ebits21,
@ebits21@lemmy.ca avatar

Touché

Developers shouldn’t be out of date, but yes.

GregoryTheGreat,

That got so spicy so fast.

azvasKvklenko,

Besides that it’s only partially true (unless we speak Nix systems) That’s also not the point of it. It’s more about having runtime environment that an app was built against and tested with.

stevecrox,
stevecrox avatar

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.

ebits21,
@ebits21@lemmy.ca avatar

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.

manpacket,

Makes it much more attractive for actual developers to package since it’s only done once.

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?

true_blue,

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.

Daeraxa,

Nope, don’t like them. Nor snaps. I find the sandbox nature annoying and many developers don’t actually seem to understand it correctly anyway meaning you have to use flatseal etc. Then having to deal with some apps writing config within the sandbox and some writing it outside the sandbox…

My order of preference is generally I pick the “official” supported version as opposed to any community maintained ones. Then within that:

  • Install via the language’s package manager (cargo, npm, pipx, cabal etc.)
  • Appimage
  • Native package (.deb, .rpm etc.)
  • Plain binary
  • Build from source
  • Snap
  • Flatpak
StudioLE,

Out of interest why do you favour snap over flatpak?

Daeraxa,

I’ve just had fewer issues with snaps. Honestly I don’t care for either of them so the difference between them for me is pretty slim but I just find Flatpak to be particularly annoying, Snaps just haven’t caused me any real issues other than polluting my device list with endless loop devices.

tony,

I handle it by spinning up an lxd container to try new apps… then they have the whole machine to do what they like, and if the install doesn’t work or I hate the app, just delete the entire container.

lemmy was one of the harder ones to deal with because it needs docker… I have a special profile that runs docker in a container for apps like that (I never run docker bare, it f…s around with the firewalling and breaks stuff).

DidacticDumbass,

True. I have run into a lot of dumb issues with sandboxing, mostly in choosing a folder other than downloads for file interaction.

I have overlooked Appimage, and I will consider it. I am intrigued that you put it before native package. I had not considered using the package manager of the language it is built in, which honestly is probably the optimal way to install a package.

Alright, I have some reading to do. I love learning new ways to do things. I am glad I asked!

Daeraxa,

There is a bit more nuance to it I suppose - I like Appimages for “complicated” apps, i.e. big GUI apps like Inkscape where I prefer native packages for terminal tools. The nice thing about Appimages is that there just isn’t much in the way of integration and therefore its really easy to just try something out with no risk of installing a bunch of extra dependencies and no way of breaking your system - I use Appimagelauncher for managing them but have been considering swapping to something like Appman/AM.

The other thing that sometimes puts me off of native packages is having to deal with excessive numbers of PPAs or other repos when they aren’t in the main ones.

DidacticDumbass,

That is a great consideration that I have not looked into in awhile. It seems to be the ultimate third, or perhaps second, solution for getting software to just work. I will look into Appimagelauncher, and try out that version is native or flatpak fails me somehow.

Yeah, user submitted packages are such a risk sometimes.

Lamy,

No

DidacticDumbass,

Fair

Lamy,

😂

AntY,

Nope. I’ve been running Debian for the past six years after I got tired of messing with arch. I’m over my shiny new thing syndrome and am happy with old but stable software. I’ve tried some flatpaks but the only two that I use are Spotify and signal. They take a lot of space and updating is slow.

DidacticDumbass,

I agree that stability is important, perhaps paramount, in a computing system. Still, some software like Cura, improve with every release, and it is worth upgrading for every new feature.

Anyways, I have never been concerned with space. On the whole programs don’t take up that much space compared to everything else I would put on my system like games. Also, I am the kind of person who wants all the software they would ever use installed on their system. I want my computer to be useful even when the internet goes out.

AntY,

If you’re playing games, then latest software in terms of kernel and libraries are important. There’s a reason why valve switched to arch as a base for steamos. For my use case, I do a lot of coding in C using emacs so thing don’t really change that much. To each their own, that’s the beauty of Linux!

DidacticDumbass,

Thank you for saying this! The negativity here has been jarring. I understand preferences, but no reason to be mean about them.

I wanted to stay with Arch awhile back but I kept messing up the install of Nvidia drivers in like every distro, so I just have a lot of apprehension. Maybe it is better now. Still, I am in a good place distro wise.

Emacs the portable lisp machine that can do virtually everything. That must be so fun.

pipyui,
pipyui avatar

I had fedora installed the last few years, and was digging flatpak.... until I wasn't. One day I ran out of disk space - 230 Gb of flatpak dependencies. I run a pretty slim system, so what the actual heck? Did some research, learned how to flush cached and redundant packages, shrunk my flatpak deps to.... 150 Gb

I've since been trying Endeavor

DidacticDumbass,

That is unreal. I had no idea it can get that bad. Makes no sense, honestly.

pipyui,
pipyui avatar

It was likely the build up of a few years' packages, updates, and so on, but it eventually came to a head and I had to wipe and load. Maybe it's better now, but I think I started that install around Fedora 34? So not too long ago

DidacticDumbass,

Weird. That is unfortunate, and I hope it was just an ugly bug that unfortunately effected you.

ebits21,
@ebits21@lemmy.ca avatar

I think fedora fixed this recently

Dosage9321,

I do most things via flatpakk by default. It provide an aditional layer of reliability to the apps I use. When somehing goes wrong, with a new update or st like that, it would just break the app rather than my entire system. The sandboxing is definitely a plus when using something like WINE, as a lot of games/apps required a specific version of it. Managing them when they are installed natively is really stressful, since mistake there can break you system as well. All of these Flatpak benefits is doublely important when I recommend Linux to less tech-savy people, i.e. my cousin/mom.

Nevertheless, there are apps that have worse-that-native flatpak version, or required to be native to be full-featured (system configuration, i.e. Dconf).

aadil,

My experience with Flatpaks has been so stable and hassle-free that it motivated me to switch to Fedora Silverblue.

DidacticDumbass,

Hell yes! Feeling futuristic.

ImpossibleRubiksCube,

I’ll say this. Last time I used Snap, it resulted in a seemingly unfixable GStreamer dependency issue which ultimately required a fresh(-ish) start with a LiveUSB to fix. I installed the package through Flatpak the second time around, and everything runs flawlessly.

Even ethical issues aside, I’ll take Flatpak over Snap any day.

DidacticDumbass,

I cannot count the number of times I installed seemingly well documented software only to have it kill my system. Snaps, the very thing that would prevent that kind of misery, has inexcusable behavior.

Yeah, Flatpaks are great. Although I will say I am pretty agnostic, I don’t need my computer to follow some kind of paradigm for anything other than the comfort of organization. In fact just now I installed software through a PPA, because that is the official way for my system at the moment. Not the greatest, I think I could have chosen a different way in a drop down menu, but it detected Ubuntu (Mint), so whatever.

The_Zen_Cow_Says_Mu,

recently rebased from fedora to debian, and reinstalling apps through flathub was ridiculously easy because all the settings and data were preserved in /home. also flatpaks incorporate newer mesa than what comes with debian stable, so it’s an easy way to stick with a stable distro but also be up-to-date in userspace.

fugepe,

almost all my apps are flatpaks

DidacticDumbass,

Nice! May I ask what is your base system?

fugepe,

Opensuse TW.

DidacticDumbass,

If I ever get bored of Mint I am jumping back on there. OpenSuse is as perfect a linux distro I have ever used, excepting my graphic driver woes.

Sailor_jets,

I use Gentoo so when I want to try a package that has a butt ton of dependencies or other fun things I give it a whirl via flatpak if available. It’s super nice, not gonna lie, and I see the use case of immutable distros. I think they are neat.

DidacticDumbass,

That is actually pretty cool. I know about portage, but I think it defeats the point of gentoo. Compiling from source is the point, right? That way the user gets all the speed benefits and optimization for their particular hardware.

Flatpaks are a great preview to see if the compiling is worth the time! Or a permanent solution for some software. I am happy that people don’t seem to have qualms about mixing software managers.

Sailor_jets,

The point of Gentoo is it’s configurability. Gentoo has binary packages in it’s main repo’s and even an experimental binhost for precompiled packages. Forcing one to use any one thing is against the Gentoo philosophy.

DidacticDumbass,

That makes sense. Thank you for clarifying my misconception. I think I will set that up. I have a couple of Dell Optiplexes that are bumming it out right now. I can put one to work with Gentoo.

Sailor_jets,

Gentoo is pretty rad but be prepared for the compile times and to fail a few times (it’s a learning experience!). You could even speed things up by setting up Distcc on a beefy rig to build stuff for your optiplexes.

DidacticDumbass,

Okay, that seems cool. I had not considered that a possibility. It would be fun to “stream” any compilations to the Optiplexes.

Sailor_jets,

Also one of the use cases for flatpaks I forgot to mention was for proprietary software like Steam, Spotify, and Discord. It makes installing those a breeze.

DidacticDumbass,

That is probably the most important use case. It is good not to allow proprietary software to extend their tendrils beyond the sandbox.

mojo,

I have been for awhile. It also all exists in my home directory, so when I format my root and throw a different OS on, all my flatpaks are ready to go without installing any native packages. It’s just a more consistent experience using flatpaks.

DidacticDumbass,

Whoa. I had not considered backing Home that way! That is slick.

Honestly, reinstalling or moving to a new distro is such a bear precisely due to the time setting up my environment and all the software. I KNOW I can script all this, or at least have a list of packages I use, but it does not really work when different package managers use different naming schemes.

mojo,

Yeah as long as you at least copy your home user folder, then you’re golden. I plan for my root to be wiped at any given time, so my important stuff lives in my home. That’s why it’s super nice with flatpaks! I believe if you install as user and system flatpaks, I think they both install in home? I’d stick to installing as a user for flatpaks if you can, it’s the same end result anyways and I’ve never had an issue.

DidacticDumbass,

This has officially won me over. I am not a minimalist, nor do I have some principled view of package management. I care about computing, and I am all for anything that makes it easier. I am the kind of person who wants all the software I will ever think to use already installed. I see my computer like a library. It is a castle, not a tiny home. I don’t give a shit about “wasted space.” I can always buy more.

Containerization is awesome, and I will embrace it.

Just curious, what distro are you on right now?

mojo,

I’m using Fedora, but thinking of swapping to Silverblue. If you’re going full on containerization, I’d try Silverblue as an immutable system + containerized apps is definitely the future. Fedora/Silverblue is developed by Red Hat, who also develops flatpaks, so they all have some serious man power. But flatpaks are system agnostic so you can use whatever. I’d just recommend looking for immutable distros to future proof your system. Which flatpaks also has some of that built in too. I think the exact same way as you :)

DidacticDumbass,

Okay, I was between this and OpenSuse MicroOS. I guess it makes sense to use the distro by the company that makes the technology I want.

mojo,

I was looking at trying MicroOS but I got the feeling it was for servers, but I haven’t tried it so I’m guessing lol. I do know it’s immutable though.

DidacticDumbass,

I will trial both I guess. See which I like more.

I am leaning towards Fedora just to have Pipewire and Walyand standard.

I am comfortable with any desktop enviroment as long as it is not KDE. I would rather use a mouseless tiling WM than that.

mojo,

Then I’d try Silverblue. It’s literally just Fedora Workstation but with their new immutable tech. It’s incredibly stable once you install it and is built around having all your things running in containers. If shit fucks up, you can easily roll back to previous versions. Silverblue also has flavours in KDE and Sway. Since it’s literally Fedora, it’s also made by Red Hat and is what Fedora will eventually turn into.

DidacticDumbass,

I just remembered I have a lenovo gaming laptop that gets no love because it is huge and I stopped lugging it around when I inherited a MacBook Air.

Time to try it!

erro,

@mojo @DidacticDumbass As somebody who's not very knowledgeable about Linux, what is an immutable system?

DidacticDumbass,

I think what it means is that your OS layer is totally isolated from your User layer. So, installing software won’t directly mess with your system, possibly breaking things.

Everything is isolated, so it is easy to add thing or roll back with practically no obstacles or consequences.

noisypine,

I use system packages for everything unless I need a newer version of a specific package for some reason.

DidacticDumbass,

Most software does not change that significantly, so there is no loss in holding back, and usually just the benefits of not breaking your workflow, or your system.

subutai,

For convenience, it’s great. The sandboxing is good as well. Flatseal is a must have for me, though.

ryannathans,

Yeah, having apps updated in the last year is enjoyable

DidacticDumbass,

Hahaha! I think developers seem to prefer it? My uses cases are 3D modelling and game engines like Blender, Cura, and Godot.

All those need to be the latest because often the updates are tremendous (as in great or awesome), making the software so much more functional and better to use.

ryannathans,

Yeah, it also lets us ship working environments. At !2009scape we have been shipping our flatpak with an old environment because there was a regression in recent mesa versions that caused graphical issues on amd. We could simply deploy an update to resolve the issue for everyone instead of making everyone downgrade their system mesa…

DidacticDumbass,

That is a cool use case! I am learning so much about the benefits of Flatpak, not just an easy way to get software.

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