Originally posted by oiaohm
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There are clear downsides to virtualization which many have pointed out though including:
- additional complexity
- additional storage space used due to duplication of data and general bundling of dependencies
- performance overheads (there will always be some, even if they are small)
- allowing the sandboxed app to as seemlessly as possible interact with the non-sandboxed host system
- apps being held back by the limitations of the available runtimes to maximise compatibility with many distros.
Personally I think games are the ideal apps to be made portable with tech like flatpak and snaps. However, I'm perfectly happy using the version of my window manager, my GNU userland tools and my bittorrent client that comes supplied with my distro from a repo (eg from deb or rpm packages).
This is pretty exciting really. Flatpak and snap may, for the first time be bringing GNU/Linux, practical, secure and easy to use cross-distro software packages. This has been a huge barrier for users of our system and it might finally almost be solved. How amazing will it be if whenever you go to a game or program home page, there is a flatpak file there (or some similar tech) which you know will work on your distro? How amazing will it be if the various places that sell games all provide a secure and easy to use GNU/Linux installer (again: flatpak or similar) that just-works on your system.
When you tie this tech with the upcoming advancements being made with Wayland and also the great Open Source driver work being done by AMD, I think GNU/Linux has a bright future ahead on the desktop.
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