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KDE and GNOME seeks $100k to turn Flathub into a Store for the Linux desktop

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Re: KDE and GNOME seeks $100k to turn Flathub into a Store for the Linux desktop

#151

Post by zozbot234 »

sprash wrote: post #136
zozbot234 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not really user-hostile, they just have limited development resources and making a polished interface for editing the positioning of top bar widgets would be way too much work. If you want to try things on your own, that's what unofficial extensions and tweaking tools are for.

There are several full time paid developers working on it which is plenty of resources (AFAIK more than KDE). They are not only actively user-hostile but also community-hostile. Every library or project they have under their umbrella receives updates all the time that only serve GNOME and potentially break all software dependent on it that are not part of GNOME (e.g [1]). 1.: https://github.com/thestinger/termite

What you're saying is simply that GNOME developers don't want to pick up development and maintenance burden that isn't going to directly benefit their project. If you think there's opportunities to share projects or libraries across DE's, the proper venue for that would be freedesktop.org not really GNOME itself. Then the maintenance load can be shared as well.

Re: KDE and GNOME seeks $100k to turn Flathub into a Store for the Linux desktop

#154

Post by uonpopular_th »

jdoss wrote: post #34

I used to think Flatpaks were a huge pain the butt, but over the last few years, I moved to using them for all third party software that I run on my Fedora Linux workstation. Zoom, Slack, Spotify, Steam, Discord, Obsidian all run without issues and they get consistent updates. I am convinced now that they are one of the best ways to ship commercial software on to Linux desktop. Flatpak has been a key part of me becom…

>Zoom, Slack, Spotify, Steam, Discord, Obsidian

Well yes, these are all closed source binaries. In terms of usage it's not all that different to running them in a VM. In the bad old days we just did it in an XP windows VM instead.

Re: KDE and GNOME seeks $100k to turn Flathub into a Store for the Linux desktop

#155

Post by bee_rider »

zozbot234 wrote: post #124
LambdaComplex wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, GNOME is so user-hostile that I'm actually a little impressed. Personal example from trying GNOME out recently: I have an external webcam, which means I need to move the GNOME panel clock since it's in the top middle of the screen (and thus blocked by the base of the webcam). You would _think_ that would be easy, but you have to get an extension just to move the clock! Apparently each panel "widget" (this may…

They're not really user-hostile, they just have limited development resources and making a polished interface for editing the positioning of top bar widgets would be way too much work. If you want to try things on your own, that's what unofficial extensions and tweaking tools are for.

Can’t really blame them for not producing the slick configuration GUI for every option. But it is annoying that they always go for the slick configuration GUI, as if they were a for profit company with a bunch of full time devs. Meanwhile every other open source program, recognizing that it has limited developer time (and interest in boring grunt work), just sets up easier text-centric config first…

Re: KDE and GNOME seeks $100k to turn Flathub into a Store for the Linux desktop

#156

Post by mtrower »

eikenberry wrote: post #50
xen2xen1 wrote: post #4

$100,000 to build up a system that totally ignores the system package manager? Sounds great!

The system package manager is useful for updating the underlying system, not necessarily the user's environment. Think of it as a in the classic root/user divide. The system package manager is there for updating the core system and things like flatpaks/toolboxes are there for the users. They don't follow the same updating patterns so it makes sense to keep them separate.

What do you mean, they don’t follow the same patterns?

Re: KDE and GNOME seeks $100k to turn Flathub into a Store for the Linux desktop

#157

Post by apatheticonion »

I'm very in favour of improving the state of application distribution on Linux. Targeting an abstraction like Flatpack seems like a no-brainer if there are no regressions in experience to the end user.

I am not sure if this is the case, but in theory I love the idea that the app sandboxing can allow the Flatpak engine to be a source that can prompt users for permissions access (e.g. "app would like to access your location").

Last time I tried Flatpack I experienced a lot of integration issues, from GTK theming issues to applications missing features due to sandboxing.

Would love to see a high level medium-dive explainer on how Flatpack works to alleviate some of my concerns; predominantly around the limitations of sandboxing.

e.g.

Can OBS have unimpeded screen recording access? How does OBS compare in Flatpak compared to natively installed.

Can VSCode access any part of the FS without any performance overhead, what about language servers and that sort of thing?

Can applications like Discord that feature a voice-activated mic work? Can Discord access what game you're currently playing on Steam and set that as its status?

Originally, I thought Flatpack was much like old win32 applications where if you put a dll dependency next to the executable, it will use that rather than the system one. I got really scared of Linux app sandboxing engines when I tried Snapd and it started making virtual network devices and my system theme wasn't applied to the application - seemed very convoluted.

Re: KDE and GNOME seeks $100k to turn Flathub into a Store for the Linux desktop

#158

Post by bee_rider »

JohnFen wrote: post #130
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started using Ubuntu for the opposite reason: getting compiz working on Debian was a nightmare, but on Ubuntu, desktop effects just worked. This was well over a decade ago though :)

But it sounds like you got Debian to work -- you just couldn't get compiz to work, which sucks. What I mean is that I can't get Ubuntu to work at all. On my luckiest tries, I've managed to get the desktop to show, but everything is still highly unstable and I've never pushed on to trying to install software. I used to think it was driver issues, except I've had similar symptoms on three different machines. And before…

That’s interesting, do you have unusual hardware?

As a fairly begrudging Ubuntu user (I put it on a laptop because I didn’t want to screw around with finding drivers, memories of trying to get wifi working on Arch with some dongles haunt me), I have to say I don’t really like it much overall but they’ve got the “getting to the desktop” experience down pretty well.

Re: KDE and GNOME seeks $100k to turn Flathub into a Store for the Linux desktop

#159

Post by NayamAmarshe »

mastazi wrote: post #65
mesebrec wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question; why do you still use Ubuntu then? By now, Snap is such a fundamental part of Ubuntu that it begs the question whether Ubuntu is right for you if you want to avoid it. Why not use a derivative or upstream that makes different choices?

Honestly just inertia. Those are not servers (where you could easily migrate to another distro taking advantage of infra-as-code tools), they are a desktop and a HTPC. I have accumulated a lot of custom dotfiles, Ubuntu-specific utilities and scripts over time, not all of them would work in another distro unchanged. Removing Snap is not that hard, the "hardest" part is making sure that Firefox is installed from the M…

ZorinOS is Ubuntu but better.

Re: KDE and GNOME seeks $100k to turn Flathub into a Store for the Linux desktop

#160

Post by sprash »

zozbot234 wrote: post #151
sprash wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are several full time paid developers working on it which is plenty of resources (AFAIK more than KDE). They are not only actively user-hostile but also community-hostile. Every library or project they have under their umbrella receives updates all the time that only serve GNOME and potentially break all software dependent on it that are not part of GNOME (e.g [1]). 1.: https://github.com/thestinger/termite

What you're saying is simply that GNOME developers don't want to pick up development and maintenance burden that isn't going to directly benefit their project. If you think there's opportunities to share projects or libraries across DE's, the proper venue for that would be freedesktop.org not really GNOME itself. Then the maintenance load can be shared as well.

This has been tried. All you will get is rejected pull requests. What makes it even worse is that GNOME has usurped many projects that were original not part of GNOME but that the community relies on (one example is the "GIMP Tool Kit"). This led to the death of many long tail niche projects which are the actual strength of Linux/FOSS.
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