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Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

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Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#61

Post by sandwell »

bibanez wrote: post #19
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…

I've had some success with Nix. Still I would only generally recommend it for development (even though I use NixOs)

Also a Nix/NixOS user/contributer. I feel like Nix+nixpkgs could become the universal packaging solution adapted to build deb, rpm, etc packages.

Through nix-env it even already has the idea (albeit discouraged) of imperative package management like apt.

Having spent a while with NixOS, running containers for user applications seems like using a cannon to kill a fly. The 'simple' alternative is to drop FHS altogether - which containerization is kind of doing in a roundabout way by isolating the app filesystem from system fhs.

As for it being for developers only... I get that perspective. Debian/Ubuntu packaging is also hard, AUR packaging has its quirks. A lot of this is hidden behind the package manager, wheras with NixOS it is more obvious.

The killer idea for NixOS would be to make package management for Joe Q Public as easy to use as apt while. Tools like MyNixOS[1] are emerging which might bridge that gap.

[1] https://mynixos.com

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#62

Post by sdsssss »

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 .

[flagged]

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#63

Post by sdsssss »

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 .

You can

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#65

Post by dTal »

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 .

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 to some third party app store thingy.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#66

Post by lucideer »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #13
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.

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.

I take your point (it's the general point many use to argue for Snap/Flatpak/Nix/AppImage/0install/Homebrew/&c.) but if you want to ensure you're not replacing per-distro-package-manager-fragmentation with completely-arbitrary-chaotic-package-manager-fragmentation there needs to be some unity & consideration for what users want in order to ensure they'll willingly subscribe to your system of choice.

While I wouldn't call Flatpak "popular" with users per se, it's probably one of the least-worst alternatives that have come out. The horse Ubuntu has backed (Snap) may be the most used by virtue of being rammed down user's throats by projects with existing user capture (e.g. LetsEncrypt), but that's not going to make the debate go away: it just strengthen's the argument to return to distro packaging.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#67

Post by qbasic_forever »

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.

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.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#68

Post by timonoko »

londons_explore wrote: post #48
timonoko wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When your break your fancy apt-architecture beyond repair aka You have held broken packages (whatever it means), you will be very thankful for snaps and flatpaks.

Thats a bug of apt... There should be an apt fix-my-system command that just looks at the state of everything, and figures out how to get everything back towards a working system. And make sure it keeps a log of everything it did so it can be rolled back if it doesn't work as promised.

Aptitude does total fix-my-system. I have tried it several times. The suggested fix is always: remove everything and then reinstall the broken package. It does not even try to reinstall those packages it has just destroyed.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#69

Post by drbig »

alkonaut wrote: post #60
creshal wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There are operating systems - like FreeBSD - which have a very strong and clear distinction between the Operating System base and third-party software.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#70

Post by bantunes »

necovek wrote: post #50
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…

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…

I thought flatpak was a response to Ubuntu not open-sourcing the snap store code.
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