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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

#111

Post by fdr »

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…

I also use it like this. I got into it for the sandboxing, although I know there are a "few" lurking issues on this point. But, some of the sandboxing definitely works, and were I a flatpak engineer I'd want to see some indication of traction to justify working towards goals of completion, and no other project with any packaging base I can think of is anywhere close, so, I use it.

In fact...I think I have all the software packages you have, except Obsidian, but also, Signal, Anki, and Element.

I did consider using it to deploy and update a CLI on (multiple) Linux(es), but found that the design of common shells make that kind of thing uncomfortable, as you need to teach them about autocompletion and the user also has to muck with getting the utility into $PATH. Normal-style packages simply have the privileges to muck with /etc and /usr/bin and that's the end of that, but it is somewhat unsatisfying that this is almost necessarily the case.

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

#112

Post by zozbot234 »

Octabrain wrote: post #67

I like Flatpak. I've even flatpaked some apps and made them available on Flathub. The only thing that dissapoints me is the fact that it integrates poorly with CLI apps. Off topic: An idea that came to my mind a few days ago is that would have been great to add support for desktop apps to Podman by adding some extension or plugin capabilities to it instead of creating a new whole technology. Probably a silly idea tho…

You can run generic sandboxes using Bubblewrap (bwrap) which is the underlying infrastructure for Flatpak. It's much lower level than Podman or Docker though, and closer to the basic reality of containerization as a usage pattern for Linux namespaces. You don't get compatibility with OCI specifications, so it's not the kind of containers that most people might be used to.

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

#113

Post by Gigachad »

PlutoIsAPlanet wrote: post #58
cld8483 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AppImage is great, definitely the best of the bunch.

Said no one relevant AppImage solves the packaging problem in a bad way (ugh, loopback mounts), but does not solve the dependency problem, try run AppImages compiled for Ubuntu on Fedora..

The main use case for appimage imo is things you just want to run once quickly and easily. Trying beta builds from github releases for example. It's quite poor for anything you frequently use or want to keep updated. It's also completely lacking security iirc which Flatpak does well.

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

#114

Post by LambdaComplex »

24t wrote: post #84
Liquix wrote: 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…

>...working together on one definitive GNU/Linux DE No thanks. GNOME dev hubris is the reason I use KDE

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 or may not be the official term) defines its own position on the panel. So, to move something, you need to either find an extension that does it (Frippery Move Clock[0] in this case) or edit the widget code yourself.

Maybe someone can chime in with a technical explanation, but my cynical take is that the GNOME devs don't even trust users to be smart enough to customize their own panel without breaking things.

0. https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/2/move-clock/

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

#115

Post by JohnFen »

harry8 wrote: post #78
cld8483 wrote: 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.

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…

My problem with Ubuntu is that I can never get it to work right. Debian works right out of the box for me. (By "work right", I mean operate correctly -- I don't mean "work the way I want")

Since there are so many people that don't have this problem, I understand that it's something I'm doing wrong -- but I have never been able to figure out what that is.

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

#116

Post by Gigachad »

znpy wrote: post #73

love to see flatpak flourishing, it's really great. i like it because it actually solves problem (getting proprietary software like slack) instead of creating ones and/or getting in the way (i'm looking at you snap).

Sad to see so many people treat package management like a gatekeeper. "Oh, you don't have an employee dedicated to maintaining 20 versions of packages for every single distro and release of distro? Well we don't want you on linux"

Flatpak enables people to publish a single package that just works on all distos and doesn't break every 6 months. It's removing the maintenance gatekeeping.

I think it will be interesting to see if tech like WASM results in packages which work across CPU architectures as well as Linux on ARM is very painful currently, let alone more obscure ones like RISC-V.

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

#117

Post by yamtaddle »

Volundr wrote: post #105
bandrami wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many different versions of OpenSSL are running on my laptop right now? Who can say? That's the beauty of flatpak: if you sweep the problems of software management under a big enough rug, they go away and never bother you again.

Until openssl has another vulnerability.

It's a problem of the many-distros model for Linux—or, if you prefer, it's a problem of Linux just being a kernel. You can't just target "Desktop Linux 15" and expect to have all the stuff that Desktop Linux 15 has, including a robust set of basic libraries and a unified GUI stack and standard same-on-every-copy-of-Linux-15 multimedia libraries and services and all that good stuff, and let the OS worry about keeping that secure without breaking your program. Programs end up having to be a lot more fiddly about their dependencies, and it causes problems.

Now, maybe the Linux approach is so good and useful in other ways that it's worth putting up with that, but it is a big problem and people are going to solve it, one way or another. If the model can't be changed, then the only solutions available may be bad, but they'll be used, and widely.

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

#118

Post by IncRnd »

bandrami wrote: post #100
yamtaddle wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I tried all three of the semi-popular formats like this, AppImage was the only one that didn't feel fundamentally wrong (though what I gather was the closest thing to an official repository for them looked sketchy as hell—somehow they copied the exact CSS vibe as a content-scraped StackOverflow spam site). But that was a couple years ago. I know Snaps still suck, but haven't messed with Flatpacks since then, so…

How many different versions of OpenSSL are running on my laptop right now? Who can say? That's the beauty of flatpak: if you sweep the problems of software management under a big enough rug, they go away and never bother you again.

Multiple copies of openssl is an problem that updates will hopefully solve.

Multiple versions of openssl is a security problem that merely updating cannot solve.

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

#119

Post by klooney »

bandrami wrote: post #100
yamtaddle wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I tried all three of the semi-popular formats like this, AppImage was the only one that didn't feel fundamentally wrong (though what I gather was the closest thing to an official repository for them looked sketchy as hell—somehow they copied the exact CSS vibe as a content-scraped StackOverflow spam site). But that was a couple years ago. I know Snaps still suck, but haven't messed with Flatpacks since then, so…

How many different versions of OpenSSL are running on my laptop right now? Who can say? That's the beauty of flatpak: if you sweep the problems of software management under a big enough rug, they go away and never bother you again.

Flatpak has a concept of shared base layers, so if you update frequently you might notice 'org.gnome.Sdk' or whatever getting updated. This is a way to handle lots of the most popular shared dependencies.

Besides, sufficiently quality minded projects always wind up vendoring all of their dependencies anyway. There's a reason Chrome has their own fork of everything down to the compiler.

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

#120

Post by twblalock »

synergy20 wrote: post #77

maybe it's indeed time to let the system package management(apt,rpm,etc) just manage a solid BASE system, and let Flatpak etc to manage their own application sandboxes on top, kind of like dockers. Appimage is macos flavor, it never needs your sudo to install the package, which is nice. Flatpak is a redhat flavor(kind of), it needs sudo sometimes, but OK. Snap is a ubuntu flavor(kind of), it is like systemd that can…

It's been time for that for a while now.

Sandboxing and distro-agnostic packaging are definitely the way to go. They have some pain points but it's better to fix those than to go back to the older way of doing things.

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