Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

lwn.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 624 posts

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#51

Post by Klonoar »

wongarsu wrote: post #31
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 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.

This model doesn't necessarily work for software that developers don't want others shipping for them.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#52

Post by dagw »

noobermin wrote: post #28
snovv_crash wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

apt install firefox still works?

I think it does, why wouldn't it work? That's installing it via aptitude, not flatpak.

It hasn't 'worked' since Ubuntu 21.10. Ubuntu overrides your apt install and installs the snap version instead for programs that have snaps.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#53

Post by koolba »

Klonoar wrote: post #51
wongarsu wrote: post #31

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.

This model doesn't necessarily work for software that developers don't want others shipping for them .

Or you end up with useless packages like ancient versions of nodejs sticking around for half a decade.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#54

Post by necovek »

chr15p wrote: post #44
petepete wrote: 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…

Bzr is a great counter example.

Bzr "lost" because git had GitHub, whereas Launchpad was one too many things and slow to optimize for modern sensibilities.

(And Linux used a different VCS before git, so that didn't matter in adoption)

Imagine a world without GitHub, and I don't think git would be our go-to VCS. Though maybe not even Baazaar, but there are things like Mercurial too.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#55

Post by dTal »

YawningAngel wrote: post #32
colonwqbang wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building apt packages isn't the issue, libraries is. Debian ships very old libraries, forcing applications to run in docker. Or bring their own copies of system libraries. Look at Arch Linux, we just write a short AUR script and the package is integrated. Once the script is written, everyone can use it. This is possible because Arch always ships recent libraries.

Conversely, `pacman -Syyuu` doesn't complete reliably without user intervention, which is far from ideal. I say this as an Arch user - the expectation that I'm going to manually attend to package upgrades in practice leads to me using outdated packages

You might enjoy Void Linux - its package management story is similar to Arch, except that updates invariably work.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#56

Post by zorr »

wongarsu wrote: post #31
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 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.

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 little now that it becomes easier to write software applications.

Personally I use my distro packages for foundational stuff (DE, systemd, tools and utilities) but I use an alternative package manager (flatpak) for most other applications.

What Flatpak, Snap and AppImage try to achieve is to limit the packaging burden for both distro maintainers and application developers, so that end-user applications can become immediately available on a wide variety of distros.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#57

Post by mike_hearn »

moss2 wrote: post #30
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.

Yes (I'm not the guy who wrote that comment but I would very much like this)

It's not actually that hard for cross platform apps, at least. We do this in Conveyor and can build debs and apt repos, with inferred dependencies, even from Windows and macOS:

https://conveyor.hydraulic.dev/7.2/outputs/#linux

It works by downloading the Ubuntu package index and using it to look up ELF dependencies, devs can also extend the inferred list with other package names if they like. The deb installs an apt sources file and public key so users can stay entirely in the GUI. The control scripts are auto-generated but can have extra code appended to them via the config file if the developer so wishes.

It works pretty well. Conveyor is used primarily for cross-platform apps that use {Electron, JVM, Flutter, C++/Rust} and those don't normally have very complex Linux specific dependencies. Also, in practice Ubuntu and Debian and its various forks are close enough that package metadata is compatible in basically all cases.

People do ask us for Flatpak sometimes. Probably RPM is a higher priority though. Those two get most Linux users, they're stable, there are portable libraries that can make them and they can package anything without code changes. Flatpak requires mastering a new file format and the mandatory sandboxing is guaranteed to cause problems that will end up in the support queue of the deployment tool.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#59

Post by brobinson »

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.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#60

Post by alkonaut »

creshal wrote: post #29
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 whole point of a distribution is that this job is done by the distributors, not the authors.

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?
Post reply on HN