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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

#391

Post by tmtvl »

pxc wrote: post #387
tmtvl wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but as an early adopter of Plasma 5 (granted, maybe a bit too early), it was terribly broken for a couple of months. I took refuge in Awesome until things stabilized.

Huh. I started using Plasma 5 on a bleeding edge rolling distro and it was just fine. Everything was a mix of KDE4 and KDE5 apps for a while, but they all worked with minor quirks at worst. What were your issues? What was the distro?

I believe I was switching between Arch and OpenSUSE at the time, and I didn't note down specific issues, I seem to recall problems with kwin dying... maybe something to do with multihead? If I'm not mistaken I was still using a PC with a Radeon HD 7770 GPU at the time (for all the Catalyst issues I've had, still one of my favourite pieces of computer hardware I've ever owned), so it could have been iffy interactions between moving parts. I do seem to recall a period when I got many, many panics (or oopses, I dunno, screen went black and nothing reacted to anything), I think that was around the same time.

Forgive the vagueness, but I don't believe in memories and haven't kept a journal. Still, as completely unreliable and untrustworthy human memory is I am inclined to believe I had issues with Plasma 5 during the transition period.

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

#392

Post by yencabulator »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #389
yencabulator wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some flatpaks have $HOME wide-open, but Flatpak itself has no mechanism to completely bypass the sandboxing The first one is the second one.

We're obviously using extremely different definitions of the word "completely". Flatpak sandboxes more than just file system access.

And write access to $HOME lets a process climb out of the sandbox.

Trying to make sense of Flatpak's threat model is just near-impossible. It might protect you from something, if the specific app's configuration told it to do so. Starting a random Flatpak app, you have no guarantees, and the UX doesn't communicate anything about this.

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

#393

Post by winrid »

mouse_ wrote: post #176
gp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like there has been some progress on this front - https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/commit/b0f65ead84c1ecd5...

free desktop "making progress" on something Windows XP had no problems with from the get go is frankly embarrassing and probably a sign of, at best, destructively entitled maintainers, and at worst, controlled opposition.

I think it's just bad design and tech debt, and maybe leadership having trouble getting someone to take the risk to make the change.

Looks like it's getting fixed, though.

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

#394

Post by pxc »

tmtvl wrote: post #391
pxc wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. I started using Plasma 5 on a bleeding edge rolling distro and it was just fine. Everything was a mix of KDE4 and KDE5 apps for a while, but they all worked with minor quirks at worst. What were your issues? What was the distro?

I believe I was switching between Arch and OpenSUSE at the time, and I didn't note down specific issues, I seem to recall problems with kwin dying... maybe something to do with multihead? If I'm not mistaken I was still using a PC with a Radeon HD 7770 GPU at the time (for all the Catalyst issues I've had, still one of my favourite pieces of computer hardware I've ever owned), so it could have been iffy interactions…

Yeah, I'm sure you did run into real issues. I was trying to figure out if they were distro issues, or if issues that also affected me were more of a problem for your workflow than mine, etc.

Either way I think that still sounds better than the old 3->4 migration, and hopefully 5->6 can be better still!

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

#395

Post by aaomidi »

yamtaddle wrote: post #63
aaomidi wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re using desktop, then honestly look into fedora or arch (EndeavourOS). I really am not sure why Ubuntu is still being used. I know it’s the main thing people recommend but it is awful for day to day desktop use due to its release cadence and holding packages back.

95% of "here's how to fix that braindead default that's giving you troule" or "here's what that misleading error message means and how to fix it" how-tos or whatever, for servers, are written either for Ubuntu or Red Hat (and friends) and sometimes the exact same steps won't work even on Debian. 3rd party commercial software often supports only Ubuntu or Red Hat, and you're on your own if you use it on something else…

Yeah definitely, I think that the availability of information for Ubuntu makes it very attractive.

I meant more so for people who are somewhat active on these discussions but still go with Ubuntu.

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

#396

Post by bladderlover23 »

andreareina wrote: post #186
Rotareti wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile we have distros lagging behind for years to provide a new package because they can't break all the things depending on the old version. I'm glad I left this category of problems behind me 5 years ago when I switched both, my personal and my work laptop to arch-linux/i3wm. These two machines have been running for 5 years, almost daily, with almost no issues, with the latest software packages. If the hardwa…

My only complaint about arch/i3 so far is that updating Firefox forces a restart of Firefox, and I've got FF windows scattered over a few workspaces so I need to sift them back to their places. Come to think of it I can probably prune one of the windows... ETA: and maybe one of the workspaces...

Keep in mind that you can downgrade firefox back after the update with pacman -U /var/lib/something, then just refresh/keep using the open windows with no issue.

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

#397

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

yencabulator wrote: post #392
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're obviously using extremely different definitions of the word "completely". Flatpak sandboxes more than just file system access.

And write access to $HOME lets a process climb out of the sandbox. Trying to make sense of Flatpak's threat model is just near-impossible. It might protect you from something, if the specific app's configuration told it to do so. Starting a random Flatpak app, you have no guarantees, and the UX doesn't communicate anything about this.

I totally agree about letting applications determine their own defaults being a bad idea.

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

#398

Post by Nasreddin_Hodja »

freedomben wrote: post #382
panick21_ wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The talk I linked suggest this isn't the case.

I haven't watched the talk (yet), but I use a number of app images and they have always "just worked" and in remarkable fashion. My only complaint is that you sometimes have to write the .desktop yourself if you want it launchable through the UI, but that's a fairly trivial objection.

> ometimes have to write the .desktop yourself if you want it launchable through the UI

I even don't have to manually write them, KDE has kmenuedit.

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

#399

Post by the_why_of_y »

sprash wrote: post #125
Darmody wrote: post #38

Meanwhile Ubuntu is making sure that none of its flavours has flatpak installed by default. Smells like that old MS attitude to me.

Flatpak is essentially RedHat/IBM tech. Why should Canonical even think about supporting their competitors. Just because multi billion corps like RedHat/IBM have the audacity to ask for donations to develop their products doesn't mean Flatpaks are in any way neutral territory.

Flatpak is supported by Endless [1], SUSE [2], Codethink [3], Collabora [4], Igalia [5] ... none of these businesses have an issue with "supporting their competitors" because that's an inherent part of doing open source as a business.

[1] https://support.endlessos.org/en/apps/flatpak [2] https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/containerised_apps/ [3] https://www.codethink.co.uk/articles/2022/flathub-codethink-... [4] https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2017/08/17/debc... [5] https://github.com/Igalia/webkit-flatpak-sdk

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

#400

Post by alerighi »

Gigachad wrote: post #86
alerighi wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having two ways to update the system doesn't either seem great to me. Having the same software that can be installed from two sources neither. Also as far as I remember flatpack is something more complex than a simple package format, it has a runtime where each application runs in an isolated container where it can access only some of the resources (e.g. the filesystem). This adds to me useless complications to a sys…

The requirements for something that updates the OS and updates/manages applications/games is extremely different. Traditional package managers work but they are far from ideal. They are completely inadequate for closed source software like games. Flatpak provides a stable platform you can target and it just keeps working across distros and in to the future while rpm/deb packages require constant maintenance. Flatpak…

> They are completely inadequate for closed source software like games

Why? What difference does make the license of the software? The only trouble is that the developer of the proprietary software has to package it in a number of formats and have repositories to download updates (that are HTTP servers with some special files in it). In reality to this day you just have to package a .deb, and if you want .rpm. For other distros these packages can be converted practically automatically (this is what is done with ArchLinux AUR for proprietary packages like Spotify or Chrome that are installed from the deb version).

> working across distros

This doesn't have a lot to do from the packaging format but on how you write the software. If you dynamically link 2000 system libraries you can as well use flatpack but the software will not work since typically on Linux the ABI is not that stable. If you have a single statically linked binary with MUSL libc you can as well package it as a deb and run it on Debian 4 that it will probably work.

> Flatpak also provides a long list of essential features like permissions, sandboxing, portals, etc which most other OSs do

They are not essentials. And they cause more problems to the user than what they solve. And don't talk me about using containers for security, since they don't provide any useful and proven safe isolation. On the other end you have SELinux/AppArmor that you can apply easily on any executable regardless of the packaging format.

> The future of linux is likely immutable OS images with something like OSTree, and then flatpak for end user apps.

This is wanting to go in the direction of what Apple does on macOS/iOS where the / is immutable. I think that people use Linux because it's different, if not they would just buy a MAC. These are complications that gets you in the way.

Linux users wants to be able to build the system by picking the components they want, not the components that Canonical or Red Hat decided that they must be present in their distribution.

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