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Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

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Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#231

Post by manuelabeledo »

pizza234 wrote: post #137
bayesian_horse wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are really saying is you want all software developers to publish Debian packages (no such thing as "apt" packages) compatible with your particular Debian distribution, even though they might be using a different Debian based distribution, a completely different altogether, maybe even a different architecture, even though that compatibility isn't their primary concern.

The last app image I've installed took 800 MB. It was approximately 720 MB of libraries, and just 80 MB of core program. Using self-contained images is simply not scalable. I have some experience with packaging, and if we talk about standalone applications, dependencies aren't a big deal; producing deb packages for different targets is not difficult. The last (only) breaking change across different targets I can reme…

> The last app image I've installed took 800 MB. It was approximately 720 MB of libraries, and just 80 MB of core program. Using self-contained images is simply not scalable.

This is one of the points they are missing with snaps and flatpaks.

These formats might be OK for desktops, but are absolutely awful for servers, containers, etc., which, incidentally, are where Linux dominates.

Do I want to spend my time worrying about setting up a package cache, because a handful of updates are costing me a small fortune in transfers? Why would I need to think about what snap is doing in my small instance with a 16GB volume, when I use it to run a certainly small application?

Snaps are an absolute nightmare in these scenarios.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#232

Post by dTal »

attractivechaos wrote: post #153
dTal wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting aside that those developers are not good team players / open source citizens, they always have the option to ship a regular tarball with everything inside, a la Blender / Firefox / VSCode / Arduino etc... I resent having to install and maintain another package manager, and another set of base runtime libraries. I won't do it. Give me standalone binaries, give me source that compiles, but don't give me a link…

I wish all software could provide portable binaries. However, compiling portable binaries is hard. Not many developers have the skill.

Indeed. This seems like a tooling issue, and one that strikes me as more worthy of community attention than reinventing the package manager for the nth time.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#233

Post by geokon »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #73
alkonaut wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a distribution (or whatever one would call it - a Linux) where the aim is to not be managing the whole end-user system of OS+Apps, but just the OS. E.g. similar to Windows, or Android?

Arch Linux is pretty faithful to shipping software exactly or as close as possible to as the upstream authors intended. It's on a rolling release which means you kind of get a firehose of nonstop major version updates though, whether you want them or not.

how does that work in practice？

upstream didn't build with all the dependencies at the same version as the latest in the arch repo. Nor are most upstream developers bumping all their dependency versions constantly

if you're a big player like ubuntu/debian you can go to the authors/upstream and ask them to fix the program to work with their dependency versions (in say.. an LTS release). most would be glad to bc it's just something upstream needs to do once every couple years and doesn't need maintenance. If even thats too much and yyou want esomething even more handsoff/timeless then you make an Appimage. It'll work for ever

With Arch youd need to constantly monitor the thing doesn't break？Are they just #yolo'ing dependency versions most of the time ？ (itd prolly work 99% of the time..)

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#235

Post by nunodonato »

Like many, I have had my fair share of frustrations with snaps. Already considering moving away from Ubuntu, but not sure where to go next. Is Debian a good option? I use Linux both personally and professionally, so while I do like to tinker with new stuff, I also need some stability. I've used rolling-release distros in the past and its something I'd like to try again. Maybe Manjaro?

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#236

Post by _odey »

Another snap failure story:

    You install chromium-browser through apt

    Chromium gets installed through snap

    You go to a PWA to install locally (like M$ Teams)

    The desktop entry is saved with a path hardcoded to /snap/chromium/1234/... (1234 is the id)

    You update chromium, either intentionally or automatically, the ID changes

    Now you can't access your PWA anymore unless you edit the desktop entry and change the id or replace it with `current`.
Such horrible user experience for no positive gain. And this is not a Linux problem, but an Ubuntu problem. Yet there is no difference in the eyes of people because "it's their Linux that broke...".

Bad user experience, bad implementation, bad decisions, and bad reputation to the wrong target, just because Canonical's Ubuntu is the "default" Linux.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#237

Post by vetinari »

cardanome wrote: post #158
qbasic_forever wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hot take: package distributors are 'fake jobs' that don't need to exist, or exist only for the make-work of packaging. Tools like flatpak, snap, appimage, containerization, etc. have made the need for adapting software to different distributions unnecessary.

Yeah, if you don't mind hugely increased start-up times, RAM usage and less curation and more crap, sure no need for package distribution. I personally do mind very much. Just the differences in startup times between apt and snap applications are huge and I would absolutely despise working with such a sluggish system. I would rather build everything myself from source if forced to.

That snap slowness is snap's problem, not general non-apt problem. Flatpak doesn't suffer from it.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#238

Post by Saris »

wilonth wrote: post #161

Wow they're still pushing snaps, the project with some the worst engineering I've ever seen. - Extremely slow at doing anything, even the most basic commands. - Ridiculous auto-update mechanism (you can't even disable it wtf). - Random, nonsense limitations (why can't I open dot files and dot directories???). So terrible that for most apps that I installed with snaps I end up installing the deb version later on. What…

My favorite experience with snaps is Firefox just closing in the middle of doing something because it wanted to update, and it didn't even bother to check if I was using it first.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#239

Post by lumb63 »

CalRobert wrote: post #165
wilonth wrote: post #161

Wow they're still pushing snaps, the project with some the worst engineering I've ever seen. - Extremely slow at doing anything, even the most basic commands. - Ridiculous auto-update mechanism (you can't even disable it wtf). - Random, nonsense limitations (why can't I open dot files and dot directories???). So terrible that for most apps that I installed with snaps I end up installing the deb version later on. What…

Snaps are getting me off Desktop Ubuntu after 12 years of happily using it.

Canonical seems to be trying to push users off of Ubuntu. I switched to Arch from Ubuntu about 6 years ago after seeing how aggressively Ubuntu would auto-update, and because of Zeitgeist. I would never look back.

Arch is customizable, simple (in the sense that there are no surprises; things work as expected), and has a great community. Folks here can argue about snaps or flatpaks, and I can happily use AUR to install nearly anything. If it’s not there, I can publish it.

I’m not forced to adopt whatever GUI Canonical thinks is best for me in a given year or whatever their trendy new craze is. I can enjoy i3, tmux, vim, and ignore the rest.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#240

Post by tkuraku »

I like flatpaks much better than snaps. I wish they would implement an equivalent to snap's classic confinement so that apps like vscode could interact easily with the default system shell, libraries, executables etc. That feels like a big hole in flatpaks.
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