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

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241–250 of 427 posts

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

#241
post #27

Opinions on Flatpaks/snaps notwithstanding, it's encouraging to see KDE and GNOME collaborating on projects like this. IMO desktop GNU/Linux has benefited greatly from moving away from offering LXDE/LXQT/Mate/Enlightenment/Cinammon flavors and towards a more digestible subset (GNOME only, GNOME/KDE/XFCE, etc) of polished desktop environments. Pipe dream, but it would be incredible to see all of the passionate, talent…

I'd prefer to see more easily-communicated DE standards and published levels of adherence, rather than moving to the uni-desktop. Like if you want to select a desktop and are kind of new to desktop environments, maybe aim for the (imaginary example here) DE-5 level of standards-adherence. DE-4 and lower might suck in various ways even though they could have cool new features. There are way too many benefits from the…

> I'd prefer to see more easily-communicated DE standards and published levels of adherence, rather than moving to the uni-desktop.

I used to be on this hill. All this leads to is inoperable software where each integration point is liable to break. I want to get away from the spyware that is Windows, the walled garden that is MacOS. If a uni-desktop is the price we pay, so be it.

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

#242
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike google play, apple's appstore and canonical's Snap, flatpak isn't limited to a single repo, apps from other repos will show up in the store ui just like any other app.

Yes, I understand that. That is orthogonal to my opinion of app stores, though.

Are the margins on this website too small to note down your objections? :)

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

#243

I haven't been the biggest fan of flatpak and generally wish software would either be packaged as an rpm or an AppImage, but the OP makes a pretty strong case for why it's a good idea (because existing options are too niche, and have no ability to incentivize developers who need to get paid for their work. This leads to Linux desktop having far fewer applications available to them compared to windows and mac.) I do h…

AppImage has issues. The guy from Suse who does MicroOS, Richard Brown, a few years ago was literally walking around giving talk about how bad Flatpak was and how everybody should use AppImage.

In his most recent talk he basically said, he was wrong, the Flatpak people did address most of the issue he had and AppImage was no viable.

https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/containerised_apps/

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

#244
I feel like one thing that is still holding Linux Desktop and any initiative like this back is that we don't have really high quality linux laptops on the market.

We have some people like System76 doing great things, but not in Europe and for all their great work its not the highest quality stuff from China with some serious limitations.

For all the things the European Union funds, from chip manufacture, HPC and many other project from large to medium to small. Why have we not seen a made in Europe Laptop/Desktop/Phone for the bureaucrats and engineers who do things like running states and building weapons and so on.

A fair amount of EU money goes into a lot of these distributed system and internet projects. And I'm not complaining, but we are spending a lot of time trying to make our system secure from everything other then direct attack. The fireware in the new notebook doesn't seem better then in the one before, in fact worse in some way.

We have most of the software, we have most of the things needed to do these things. An Open-Source computer for Europe (and anybody) would be a real counter-point to most of the other models out there.

In such an environment a real AppStore for Open Linux desktop could actually be a really good thing.

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

#245

Richard Brown, who's been working on this problem for 10 years at Suse, says he was wrong in 2017. Flatpak is now the clear way to go, if you care about security, app updates, licensing, and multi-distro support (runtime dependencies). https://ftp.fau.de/fosdem/2023/UA2.114%20(Baudoux)/container...

Flatpak offers convenience but it could never offer the security that the distros it is circumventing offer. Application bundling is just inherently insecure.

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

#246
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How many different versions of OpenSSL are running on my laptop right now? Who can say? but that's a problem, too. i'd rather all things on a system be bottleneck-forced into using the latest version of security libraries that my system is actively updating; yes, this causes issues, but not issues like "There was a huge vulnerability found in X version Y, does it affect me?". in other words, i'd rather have system b…

Why don't you just turny our computer off then? It can't be exploited if it isn't actually running. Which is to say most people use a computer to run software, so if the software doesn't run the security is pointless anyway. Sure, if only some software breaks and you can wait for fixes that's a tradeoff, but given that in package maintainer land those fixes could be months or years away...

[deleted]

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

#247
post #72
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By design, yes. Debian prioritizes stability over being on the cutting edge. If you always want the latest and greatest, Debian isn't the right distro for you.

Debian Sid makes a pretty good "rolling release" distro for home/hobby use at least, although I prefer OpenSUSE Tumbleweed for this.

I recently put Tumbleweed on my laptop and am pleasantly surprised. You get new packages very fast thanks to automated testing, built-in btrfs snapshots allow you to undo a problematic update. Will be moving my main Ubuntu desktop to it soon.

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

#248

I feel like one thing that is still holding Linux Desktop and any initiative like this back is that we don't have really high quality linux laptops on the market. We have some people like System76 doing great things, but not in Europe and for all their great work its not the highest quality stuff from China with some serious limitations. For all the things the European Union funds, from chip manufacture, HPC and many…

Many things are holding Linux on the Desktop, but its more so that the competition is doing better and the Desktop market shifted

First, Windows caught up, Linux used to have things that windows didnt in the late 90s and early 2000s, not most linux only app have windows ports, you can run any linux app on windows WSL , and now windows also have powershell

Second, apple made a comeback, now many people who dont want windows use apple and get a unix experience if they wanted one

Third, end users shifted to tablets and mobile phone

The combination of all 3, leave little room for linux, no matter how good linux does , linux on the desktop only make sense for people who develop for linux on the server and want a similar environment on their laptop

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

#249
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One reason is 3rd party software. Frequently there is a deb compatible with the last couple of ubu LTS releases. Seems like more frequently than Debian stable releases? There's always things you don't like, are not distro packaged, but have to install for reasons to get work done to get paid. Xilinx vivado being the first example for me that springs to mind but I'm sure there are others and I'm sure I don't know what…

Additionally if I recall correctly, Ubuntu is one of the few distros that's set up to handle secure boot correctly out of the box (with the other I know to do this being Fedora). This is nice if you're dual booting Windows 11. It's also probably going to increase the Ubuntu's representation in desktop Linux by virtue of booting without any EFI setup tinkering, because a lot of people's patience ends exactly where thi…

I dual boot with Windows 11 and Debian on a couple of systems and don't even notice secure boot.

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

#250
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubuntu is an African word which means "Afraid of Debian" Seriously though, just install Debian. It's not hard, the netinstaller may be text-mode but it walks you through the simple steps one by one just like Ubuntu's GUI installer. Anybody who's comfortable using Ubuntu in the first place should be able to get through the Debian installer just fine.

Even better, install Devuan, which is Debian without systemd (the attempt to turn Linux into Windows). Many former Debian developers are now working on Devuan.

> systemd (the attempt to turn Linux into Windows)

systemd was actually inspired by launchd, not Windows. But I guess systemd, Windows and launchd do share one thing in common which is not having a bunch of bandaid shell scripts hanging the system together.

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