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Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

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Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#371

Post by zorr »

phkahler wrote: post #132
zorr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with that model is that it puts the burden on the distro maintainers to package every possible application for their distro. And application developers have to essentially wait for each distro to repackage their app before it becomes available on that distro. Or start messing with alternate repositories for each distro they want to support. The old model works for established software, but breaks down a l…

>> The problem with that model is that it puts the burden on the distro maintainers to package every possible application for their distro. That's kinda what the distros ARE. Also, if you're debian based and debian packages are not compatible with your distribution you're actively fucking something up for "reasons" - stop doing that. If an app can't use a standard .deb or .rpm then the distro is doing something wrong…

> That's kinda what the distros ARE

For the base system and libraries, yes. But why should the distro maintainers be burdened with additional work for every possible enduser application out there? If I write a GTK app and want to make it available for Ubuntu/Debian users through official repositories, I need to make sure it gets added to the official package list, and every time I make a new release, someone else somewhere else has to do additional work just to repackage the application so it is available in the repository.

Maybe a far-fetched analogy, but imagine if browser maintainers have to perform additional work every time a new website launches before it is available to its users.

Also, in this system, the application developer has a lot of extra work for making the application run and build against older versions of its dependencies. If I want to make my app available for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS which has libadwaita 1.1, I cannot use any of the new widgets in libadwaita 1.2 (released 6 months ago) or 1.3 (released earlier this month). I can use those widgets but I'll have to write ifdefs and provide fallback behavior/widgets when building/running against these older versions. I will also have to manually track the various distro versions to detect when I can remove the fallbacks from my codebase.

This is what Flatpak is for. Using Flatpak I can target a specific GNOME SDK version and make use of all the new code immediately, without having to write fallbacks. The downside is that when a user downloads my application through Flathub or another Flatpak repository, it might have to download the additional libraries as well, but they will be the correct versions and they won't be downloaded if that SDK is already available due to other Flatpak applications already installed.

Essentially, something like Flatpak is a middle-ground solution that trades of some disk space for the benefit of less work for distro maintainers (so they can focus on core packages) and less work for application developers (that can use more recent dependency versions and don't have to worry about the versions in other distro's)

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#372

Post by jrsj »

alias_neo wrote: post #321
sockaddr wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This also happened to me. So I decided to uninstall the snap and “apt install firefox” Guess what I got? A freaking snap. Yes, try it. I’m done with Ubuntu

It is possible to get an apt package, you have to jump through a few hoops but it can be done; I do it every time I install Ubuntu (frequently) because I won't touch that snap shite again. I can't move work off of Ubuntu; it's too embedded now, but I'm looking for something else for home. Switching distro-base isn't so easy when you've been using it for decades though; I tried NixOS but it wasn't comfortable (Nix is…

I've mostly used Ubuntu in the past & decided to try EndeavourOS and I don't think I'll go back. I've had a great experience with it.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#373

Post by kibwen »

Filligree wrote: post #313
sockaddr wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This also happened to me. So I decided to uninstall the snap and “apt install firefox” Guess what I got? A freaking snap. Yes, try it. I’m done with Ubuntu

Fedora's really nice. Try it~ Alternately, I could shill for NixOS. It's also really nice. Eventually.

Note that Fedora has an immutable version of the OS that's similar in intent to NixOS. It's called Fedora Silverblue.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#374

Post by npteljes »

brobinson wrote: post #59
quaintdev wrote: post #11

Moved to Fedora for the mess around snaps and I'm not going to look back.

Fedora + flatpak + everything transparently running in bubblewrap automatically has been a very nice experience. Snaps drove me off Ubuntu, and I'm glad I landed on Fedora.

Fedora drove me off twice now, because I had bad luck both times with release updates. I haven't even configured the system too much, but there were several things broken after the release upgrate, the most notable being the file manager crashing while opening. Since Fedora bumps its version twice a year, with my experience, you don't get much time to run a smooth system.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#375

Post by beardbound »

Saris wrote: post #238
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.

My snap version of Firefox on Ubuntu kept bugging out my plasma taskbar too. Consistently reproducible, and annoying until I figured it out. I uninstalled the snap and manually added it through apt.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#376

Post by ranger207 »

ninkendo wrote: post #346
veeti wrote: 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.

> Unless you're statically linking against distro policy they have dependencies on the particular version of the distribution they are built for. The irony here is that we’re discussing flatpak/snap, which take the idea of static linking to the absolute extreme by doing something closer to a container where every dependency is part of the package. Maybe static linking being “against distro policy” is tossing the baby…

Static vs dynamic linking is the core of the packaging debate isn't it? Like, distro maintainers say that dynamic linking is better because it lets them swap out libraries underneath the app in case of like security vulnerabilities and stuff. Devs don't like that because inevitably minor version changes break stuff unexpectedly, plus devs prefer to use shiny and new libraries that distros often don't have. Containers were IMO primarily a packaging and deployment solution, and container-style package formats like flatpak and snap are efforts to force distros to use static linking and stop breaking the app's libraries. IMO distro maintainers should realize that their advantages in security aren't as useful as claimed, and their claimed advantages in distro coherence are only relevant to maintainers, not devs and rarely users.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#377

Post by vetinari »

nightfly wrote: post #339
andrewshadura wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true.

Please read https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/feature-freeze-exception-seed...

That sounds more like Canonical marketing-speak, than Mozilla. My guess would be that it is Canonical who approached Mozilla for snap support, and Mozilla said yes.

Meanwhile, Mozilla still maintains ppa (mozillateam) with apt version. There's also Flatpak version, which delivers what snap promised.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#378

Post by beardbound »

Iolaum wrote: post #365
alias_neo wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is possible to get an apt package, you have to jump through a few hoops but it can be done; I do it every time I install Ubuntu (frequently) because I won't touch that snap shite again. I can't move work off of Ubuntu; it's too embedded now, but I'm looking for something else for home. Switching distro-base isn't so easy when you've been using it for decades though; I tried NixOS but it wasn't comfortable (Nix is…

I moved from Ubuntu to Fedora when Canonical started pushing snaps 4 years after the auto update debacle that's also mentioned elsewhere here. Couldn't be happier. Key differences I noticed: - apt vs dnf - Intalling on a new computer. Would totally recommend.

I’ve been considering switching and haven’t used fedora in years. I’ll have to give it another chance. Snap has seriously annoyed me.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#379

Post by zorr »

tremon wrote: post #352
PlutoIsAPlanet wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Find a deb packaged for an older version of Debian and see if it runs, there's no guarantee, if the software was closed-source you're basically out of luck, unless people statically link all of glibc, ssl etc into their application which is a big no no. This is the problem that Flapak, Snap etc try and solve. I won't put AppImage onto that list because it actually doesn't solve the problem it just makes it worse.

So, Flatpak and Snap solve the problem of wanting to run stale software? That ought to be a very niche requirement, I would think. I was under the impression that Debian already solved that problem by allowing you to deploy an older Debian version in a chroot with debootstrap? As long as the Linux kernel is binary compatible, that should work fine. Although I have to admit I don't use stale software that often, so I…

They solve the problem of being able to run software against a known set of dependencies instead of depending on the versions that come with the distro. Older packages can still run even when the dependency version the distro provides has changed in a breaking way (as parent suggests), but also the other way, new packages can ship features using newer dependency versions that the distro might not have yet.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#380

Post by ThePowerOfFuet »

julianlam wrote: post #197
londons_explore wrote: post #3

Can we go back to just shipping apt packages? They worked fine, and I don't feel like having multiple types of containers and update methods and mounted image file systems really made anyone's life better.

When Let's Encrypt changed the installation instructions to heavily recommend Snaps, I was quite disappointed. I'd been using their apt package for years already, across my fleet, and to have them suddenly change tack and all but disavow their apt repo made me question my choice in them for the first time. Would their apt repo suddenly disappear? Probably not, but who knows.

Thankfully you can use any ACME client you want. You don't need to use certbot!
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