Flatpak's New Repo Format For Greater Flathub Scalability, More Architectures To Come

[oiaohm]

Only when libraries have the same versions. Which is unlikely over time.

This is a lot more likely than it first appears with flatpak. Comes very clear when you look at the way the runtimes are made.

https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/available-runtimes.html

Notice something here all the runtimes on this page are based on the Freedesktop runtime. So you install KDE and Gnome and Freedesktop runtime from the same time frame. Libraries are going to match. When old versions of those runtimes get updated with new libraries they are normally a binary match to newer version runtime.

Which is very likely to happen on the long run. Different repos, less often updated apps relying on older libraries, ... Within a year or two (which is only a part of the lifetime of your current OS install), I bet it'll be duplicated all over.

The reality simple thing to forgot here is if you have a stack of old applications installed the old runtimes are merged to a point with each other. So it does not in a year or two come massively duplicated. The behavour I am seeing out of flatpak from using since 2016 its about 5 years if you keep a collection of old applications around before it starts coming issue not the year or two. Most cases by then the programs causing your flatpak to blow out have better replacements. Mez I am basically not sure its a real problem from my usage it has not been so against my usage case you lose your bet. You losing this bet might be way more common and it related to the way things have been done in flatpak..

The deduplication is also helped by reproducible builds processes.

[skeevy420]

We can't have opinions, because we're fundamentalists now? It's a great spying tool, that's for sure. Enforcement 'updates' etc. Simply amazing.. /s

When comes to flatpaks vs snaps I tried installing Eclipse in Ubuntu. Packet manager displayed some error and there were no way to install it this way. The error meant it's insecure or something and I had to install it from console. It installed, but didn't work. This is my experience with snaps.

Some people here are pretty hardline and defend their choice of software regardless of anything.

[Vistaus]

Flatpaks:

• have shared runtimes (and extensions to these) that preserve disk space, bandwidth and are easier to update
• are endorsed by everyone vs Snaps merely being in distros' repos due to Canonical packaging snap for them
• are repo agnostic, whereas in order to use any other snap repo but Canonical's proprietary one you'd have to rebuild and distribute a different build of the snap package manager itself
• offer customizable permission handling and overrides
• support theming through Flatpak installed themes (Snap does sth similar), but you may also --persist=~/.themes to pretty much use system themes.
• load faster and use less RAM (as runtime libs are shared)

I only know of a few proprietary apps supporting Snap but not Flatpak, but Flatpaks generally offer more options (including an official Flatpak for Firefox from Mozilla etc).
The largest repo is obviously Flathub. There's also Flathub-beta, Gnome's and KDE's own repos as well as Fedora's to name the most notable ones.

It's actually funny that Flatpak offers a way to add 3rd party repos but Snap does not, even though Canonical was the one that popularized that same idea years ago with PPA's.

[baryluk]

I don't use Flatpak, (ok maybe sometimes when I am forced to), but the efficiency and scalability improvements are really nice and good thing. Good job.

[oleid]

Conceptually, Flatpak still is just as awful as any other glorified alternative package manager.

https://twitter.com/noobient/status/1322880845200371713

It's just a different kind of dependency hell.

No, that is a work-around for supporting proprietary drivers within flatpak. Usually, flatpak uses the GL drivers from the runtime. For nvidia drivers a packages driver is shared between all runtimes. If you upgrade your Nvidia driver, it is easy to remove the old drivers.

[Volta]

Sure, but many people in the Linux community are zealots they will hate relentlessly on Windows and accuse all people who use Windows to be heretics.

And these people are right. Windows is terrible piece of software from security and moral standpoint - no privacy at all, proprietary and monopoly.

Windows is a great operating system. Sure, updates are forced, not everyone likes that, and yeah it does have built-in telemetry, and some people do not like that, but it doesn't make it a spying tool.
Even if Windows does have some undesirable behavior that I can understand people do dislike, overall it is a very good operating system, it works great, performs well, is very stable, has lots of features, good usability, etc.

I wish GNOME was as stable as Windows, and that Linux had the Win+G gaming tools.

I'm using Linux and Windows every day and I wouldn't say Windows is great. It has some nice third party tools when comes to gaming, overclocking etc, but that's all when comes to my interests. It takes a lot of time to load, it's slow and bloated. Installing and updating games in Steam under Windows is sometimes a nightmare, using Firefox is nightmare as well - Windows has terrible I/O performance. Gnome is super stable and I'm using it since Fedora 31.

[Volta]

maybe your pc have problems I have the sanp eclipse working in mine.

My PC is fine, but did you use the one provided with distribution or from snaps repository?

[uid313]

And these people are right. Windows is terrible piece of software from security and moral standpoint - no privacy at all, proprietary and monopoly.



I'm using Linux and Windows every day and I wouldn't say Windows is great. It has some nice third party tools when comes to gaming, overclocking etc, but that's all when comes to my interests. It takes a lot of time to load, it's slow and bloated. Installing and updating games in Steam under Windows is sometimes a nightmare, using Firefox is nightmare as well - Windows has terrible I/O performance. Gnome is super stable and I'm using it since Fedora 31.

Windows is not a monopoly, if you don't like it there is Mac, Android, FreeBSD or hundreds of different Linux distributions. From a moral standpoint not everyone gives a shit about vague ideas like "free software" and "open source". From a security standpoint it is not so bad and much more secure than it used to be, of course it is targeted more since it has the majority of market share while Linux have like 0.1% of the market, this doesn't mean that Linux is any more secure, if Linux had the market share that Windows had, it would be just as targeted.

Firefox works great on Windows for me. I never noticed any difference in I/O performance between Windows and Linux. GNOME is anything but stable, and it not uncommon for GNOME Shell to freeze and crash, this becomes even more unstable when paired with extensions.

Windows is not slow and bloated, in fact its faster than GNOME / Ubuntu. Boots faster, logs in faster, shutdown faster. I like Linux but Windows is way more polished, refined, and stable.

[oiaohm]

Windows is not a monopoly, if you don't like it there is Mac, Android, FreeBSD or hundreds of different Linux distributions. From a moral standpoint not everyone gives a shit about vague ideas like "free software" and "open source". From a security standpoint it is not so bad and much more secure than it used to be, of course it is targeted more since it has the majority of market share while Linux have like 0.1% of the market, this doesn't mean that Linux is any more secure, if Linux had the market share that Windows had, it would be just as targeted.

That is a false arguement on market share. Linux due to its huge server market is quite heavily targeted as well. Linux dominance in servers and Windows dominance in desktop equal both being about equally attacked. Market share is not the explain for the malware difference between the two platforms.

GNOME is anything but stable, and it not uncommon for GNOME Shell to freeze and crash, this becomes even more unstable when paired with extensions.

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/gnome-shell-performance-improvements-in-ubuntu-20-04/15972

Gnome has not be the best choice for a long time. They have started profiling it a long last and improving thing. Yes there is a big freeze fix there removing javascript engine from mouse processing this stops bad extensions taking out your mouse.

Windows is not slow and bloated, in fact its faster than GNOME / Ubuntu. Boots faster, logs in faster, shutdown faster. I like Linux but Windows is way more polished, refined, and stable.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ryzen3-windows-linux&num=8

Saying windows is not slow need to be taken with a grain of salt. On averages like it or not Windows is slower. I using drawing tablets with blender, krita and gimp reality with Windows I have a lot worse latency than using Linux even using GNOME. If your workflow has you doing particular things Windows is absolutely slow.

Also the boots faster and shutdown faster need to be taken with a serous grain of salt. You have a lot of people saying that Ubuntu 20.08 is faster than Windows 10 and 7 on boot and shutdown.

I have seen two causes for people complaining about Linux being slow to start up/shutdown.
1) They have been in the package management have acted like a kid and candy store so have in fact installed a lot of services(like game servers and other things) that are in fact running in background so fairly much screw everything. Of course you look at the person windows install they did not install all those services enabled by default. This is one of those horrible traps of Linux for new users is how simple it is to install a package that then directly results in starting a service every single start up so harming over all performance.
2) The lack of polish in particular places causing a deceptive effect. Its like why do applications show splash screens or the like when loading funny enough you can take a 1/3 longer to start you program and person claim it faster if you entertain the user with these little things. Welcome to horrible of dealing with humans truly being the fastest by the wall clock does not mean it will fell the fastest to the end user due to this effect.


Now with general usage Linux Desktops current lack of bias for the active window. This will be coming sometime in the next 2 years for KDE and Gnome. This does give big difference in feel. Yes the bias can annoy the hell out of me under windows I started something rendering in blender switched to browser to look something up and my render on windows slowed down where it would not have on Linux. So the bias has it positives and negatives.

[uid313]

That is a false arguement on market share. Linux due to its huge server market is quite heavily targeted as well. Linux dominance in servers and Windows dominance in desktop equal both being about equally attacked. Market share is not the explain for the malware difference between the two platforms.

Servers are handled by IT professionals. Desktops are handled by ordinary people often with little computer skills.
Servers are more passive systems while desktops are more active systems hence easier to target.
So yes Windows is targeted more than Linux.

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/gnome...tu-20-04/15972

Gnome has not be the best choice for a long time. They have started profiling it a long last and improving thing. Yes there is a big freeze fix there removing javascript engine from mouse processing this stops bad extensions taking out your mouse.

Yes, and GNOME Shell is single-threaded, and extensions run in the same context as the shell, which can cause the whole shell to crash. If it is Wayland then that means the entire desktop crashes since GNOME Shell is the compositor.

The Windows desktop is much more stable and robust than GNOME. Logging into Windows is instant, that's not the case for GNOME.