Flatpak is not the future (2021)

I only use linux for daily use but deploying software on it is the worst out of any OS that I know of with windows being the best. Every update can potentially break things because who knows what changed in that library you depend on, and its not like you can avoid that by shipping static libraries to prevent this since for whatever reasons everyone has conspired against static libraries, I'm guessing because they take up more space?.

Instead of having some minimal set of conventions of where things are supposed to be stored, instead of allowing static libraries to actually work it seems that the solution is to now include the whole system instead. After all storage is cheap right?.

Do appimages have a proper well maintained store now with a good cli for maintaining them? When I last year moved to portable Apps, I check out flatpak, appimages and snap, and move to flatpak, and some appimages. But while flatpaks are easy to maintain, the appimages are basically dead weight. Some can be updated, some not. There were a number of different tools for maintaining them, not one-for-all. Similar there were multiple stores/sites for finding new appimages, not seem particular trustable. It was not very impressive at the time.

Apple bundles compared to Flatpaks:

• Both use reverse DNS to globally identify themselves, neither actually verifies DNS ownership.

• Almost everything is a bundle, except for CLI apps. FlatPaks on the other hand are being auto-converted from previous packaging systems.

• Bundles don't have dependencies. In theory they can, but in practice they never do. You depend on macOS/iOS as a unitary platform and bundles expose what the min version they require is.

• There is no update mechanism except the app store. If you want that you need to use something like Sparkle. A tool like Hydraulic Conveyor [1] can create a bundle with integrated Sparkle for your cross platform application without needing a Mac. Likewise no attempt to deduplicate redundant files. Interestingly, if you use the latest MSIX tech on Windows then the OS will deduplicate shared files (including libs) that are bundled with apps, in a transparent manner.

• Sandboxing is optional on macOS. If you don't opt in, you are put inside a relatively weak sandbox that just blocks access to a few folders in your home directory and stops you tampering with other apps/the OS. If you do opt in, you get a PowerBox design that's like what FlatPak is trying with portals. There's no way in the UI to see if an app is sandboxed because it's intended as a vulnerability mitigation and not a way to run untrusted code.

• Both bundles and the binaries within those bundles advertise which version of macOS/iOS they're expecting, and the OS frameworks can change behaviors depending on that for backwards compatibility reasons. It's a bit easier to maintain compatibility with Objective-C APIs than with C++, but still, Apple does it for all their APIs including the C++ ones.

[1] https://hydraulic.dev/ (disclosure: my company)

Random tangent. When I see articles linked from this time frame, my brain automatically thinks

"Ah, but that was during Covid when a disproportionate amount of people were working from home and a lot of the normal feedback loops weren't running normally. Those were lonely/different times. I'll consider this article accordingly."

It's not really rationale/logical/founded, but that's where my brain kind of initially goes. Do others experience this?

I install only debs because I don't want too much redundant code around and having to update all of it, if it ever updates. I prefer Debian to care about updating shared libraries.

I make few exceptions, none for snaps and flatpacks so far.

I installed Firefox from the tar.bz2 on their site, as I did with Windows before my switch to Linux in 2009. It auto updates and so far it's OK. I'm on Debian 11, I'll upgrade to 12 to stay more current.

Other exceptions: docker containers for redis and the PostgreSQL versions I have to run for compatibility with the production servers of my customers. I use asdf for that sometimes and also for languages, of course. We can't rely on the versions coming with distros.

If I'd really have to use Overte I would do an exception for that too.