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Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

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Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#281
post #242
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, and once we have the tooling to build portable .tar.gz application packages someone should come up with a tool to automatically upgrade them.

Perhaps. Extrapolating the idea that .tar.gz application packages should be standalone, a better system than an external updater might be that the aforementioned build tooling includes an "update" script inside the .tar.gz. Then the user can run them at their own convenience. This is similar to how Firefox's updater works, except Firefox itself does double duty as the update script.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#282
post #173
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever actually worked on distribution packaging? There is no such thing as a "standard" .deb or .rpm. Unless you're statically linking against distro policy they have dependencies on the particular version of the distribution they are built for. You can't take a "standard" .rpm from the Fedora repositories and install it on CentOS. You can't take a .deb from Debian 11 and install it on Debian 10.

> You can't take a .deb from Debian 11 and install it on Debian 10. I mean, you can, if you also install its dependencies. And you may end up with a weird franken-system, but you can. You can even automate it and set preferred distros with pinning, it's how people run things like hybrid testing-unstable distros.

> I mean, you can, if you also install its dependencies.

You will very likely bump into conflicts. Or you you need to upgrade a lot of fundational libraries (like libc), at which point why stay on Debian 10?

Backports exist for a reason.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#283
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original model is that software developers don't package their software for distributions at all, at best they provide helper scripts that the distribution maintainers can use to do that. That's why distributions are typically either giant volunteer-run organizations like Debian or companies like RedHat or Canonical.

For me, the "stop the world" distribution model is pretty broken, compared to FreeBSD Ports or similar. I don't ever want a maybe-years-old version of software, even with random security patches applied to it.

There are rolling release and hybrid (stable base + rolling apps) Linux distros as well.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#284

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?

Don’t take this as a recommendation, but after using Ubuntu for 15 years I ended up switching to NixOS. Obviously it’s a different beast, but with all I’ve learned over the years it’s now a decent fit. The reduction in mutable state has been a breath of fresh air.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#285

So, for a developer, what's currently the best hassle-free desktop Linux Distribution?

Any of them that isn't some opinionated special feature distro besides Ubuntu.

Just pick one. Arch, Debian, CentOS, Fedora, any niche little distro, and if you're opinionated about something theres devuan, alpine, void, NixOS.

About the only ones I don't recommend anymore are Ubuntu and Manjaro.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then community-solve this: $ sudo aptitude install wine-stable --- 5 pages of useless garbage removed and then: 62) wine32:i386 [Not Installed] Leave the following dependencies unresolved: 65) wine64 recommends wine32 (= 3.0-1ubuntu1) Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] In other word the suggested solution is: Do not install wine

sergio@sergio-laptop:~ > sudo apt-get install wine Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree... Done Reading state information... Done The following additional packages will be installed: fonts-liberation fonts-wine libcapi20-3 libodbc2 libosmesa6 libwine libz-mingw-w64 wine64 Suggested packages: odbc-postgresql tdsodbc ttf-mscorefonts-installer q4wine winbind winetricks playonlinux wine-binfmt dosbox ex…

But do you then get Wine that is capable of running 32-bit Windows binaries? Or can Wine do it nowadays without?

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#287
post #44
post #9

Mir, Unity, now Snap. Ubuntu has a track record of wanting to go it alone. But, I'm all for competition, long may it continue. The only real negative here is that some apps will only release Snaps, others will only release Flatpaks and people will end up having to just revert to copr/AUR like before. Choosing a distro is basically choosing a DE and package manager these days anyway - a single unified packaging format…

> Mir, Unity, now Snap. Ubuntu has a track record of wanting to go it alone. This. Also bzr. They seem to want to control their projects completely and so even when they have good tech they lose out to more open, community developed, equivalents that build wide engagement and momentum. I honestly don't understand it, you would have thought they would have learned by now that they don't have the engineering resources…

> I honestly don't understand it, you would have thought they would have learned by now

The simple answer is that the company culture really, really wants to be "the Apple of Linux", with all that it entails. Whereas RedHat wants to be the Linux of Linux, they've learnt how the opensource game really works and they play it every day.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#288
post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 instal…

> Canonical seems to be trying to push users off of Ubuntu.

I'm on Ubuntu for now because Snaps can be disabled but it does make me wonder since they also dumped Unity Desktop a few years back. It almost seems like they don't care about Linux Desktop users any more.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#289
post #50
post #9

Mir, Unity, now Snap. Ubuntu has a track record of wanting to go it alone. But, I'm all for competition, long may it continue. The only real negative here is that some apps will only release Snaps, others will only release Flatpaks and people will end up having to just revert to copr/AUR like before. Choosing a distro is basically choosing a DE and package manager these days anyway - a single unified packaging format…

To put things into context, snaps were created before flatpak: in a sense, RedHat wanted to go at it "alone" (or at least separately from Canonical) with xdg-app/Flatpak. These ideas were already present even before those times and outside of both RH/Canonical, so it was more of a who's committed first. Basically, Ubuntu phones were using click packages (predecessor to snaps) back in 2011 and 2012, with snapcraft shi…

Flatpak development actually started much earlier than that. The first version happened in 2007 when it was known as "Glick".

https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/wiki/Flatpak's-History

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then community-solve this: $ sudo aptitude install wine-stable --- 5 pages of useless garbage removed and then: 62) wine32:i386 [Not Installed] Leave the following dependencies unresolved: 65) wine64 recommends wine32 (= 3.0-1ubuntu1) Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] In other word the suggested solution is: Do not install wine

sergio@sergio-laptop:~ > sudo apt-get install wine Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree... Done Reading state information... Done The following additional packages will be installed: fonts-liberation fonts-wine libcapi20-3 libodbc2 libosmesa6 libwine libz-mingw-w64 wine64 Suggested packages: odbc-postgresql tdsodbc ttf-mscorefonts-installer q4wine winbind winetricks playonlinux wine-binfmt dosbox ex…

I found a better example. Only solution aptitude ever gives is not to install paprefs. Please solve that.

    $ sudo aptitude install paprefs
    Keep the following packages at their current version:
    ...
    11)     paprefs [Not Installed]                            
    ...
    Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?]
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