81–90 of 166 posts
The other part is library developers need to aim for backward compatibility so apps don't need to care so much about what specific version they're using.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Technically speaking appimages are compressed files so maybe someone clever can come up with an idea on how to dedupe them. With mass adoption this issue i think may be solved by someone concerned about disk space. Personally, and probably many casual users, are not as worried about space as they are about convenience. But I think your point is valid, and I think this would make an interesting side project for someon…
Something like docker's layers?
Neither are snaps. The future, for regular daily use, are appimages. Much like MacOS dmgs, these are a "single" file (from an end user perspective) that you download, double click, and run. That's it. Ideally we'd see more work in this area. I am slowly trying to figure out how to automate builds for GUI apps and I am considering somehow settings up an inexpensive server to pull, package, and submit appimages to appi…
I've encountered appimages a few time and wasn't really convinced. Maybe I'm missing something but here's what I found annoying: - need to move the x.appimage somewhere in your $PATH - need to create an alias like nvim.appimage -> nvim - no way to automatically update - the application isn't listed in your application list on ubuntu On the other hand `sudo snap install nvim --classic` brings me all of the above witho…
But it's the present. And a godsend. I'm using it for current Firefox, Zotero, Joplin and two or three more programs, none of which are packaged in Debian (except Firefox, but only the LTS version that doesn't work with all my extensions). Unless you can offer something better, I'll keep using it.
Neither are snaps. The future, for regular daily use, are appimages. Much like MacOS dmgs, these are a "single" file (from an end user perspective) that you download, double click, and run. That's it. Ideally we'd see more work in this area. I am slowly trying to figure out how to automate builds for GUI apps and I am considering somehow settings up an inexpensive server to pull, package, and submit appimages to appi…
AppImages waste even more disk space. At least with Flatpak I only need to install libraries once, with AppImages I'm getting a second copy of everything with every application I download. If AppImages were actually directories, like they are in macOS, I could at least run duperemove to fix the disk space issue on BTRFS, but with full images that become a lot harder.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
AppImages waste even more disk space. At least with Flatpak I only need to install libraries once, with AppImages I'm getting a second copy of everything with every application I download. If AppImages were actually directories, like they are in macOS, I could at least run duperemove to fix the disk space issue on BTRFS, but with full images that become a lot harder.
Optimizing for disk space in 2023 seems misguided at best, all computers come with hundreds of GB at least, often one TB or more. Most people never fill these unless they download media, and people who download media have additional hard drives anyway. Ease of use, RAM usage, startup time and security should all rank higher than disk space.
There is a new tool or workflow trying to replace or complement an old one. This new tool tries to solve many different complex problems that the old tool, usually designed decades ago, doesn't solve well in this the current world. To do so, obviously, some sort of compromise is required, the new tool won't do certain things that the old tool used to do, but in exchange of that it will do a lot of new things that many users really want. However this small crowd is really pissed by this, without understanding that there is no holly grail solution and some sort of compromise is always required. Additionally, as it's natural with any new technology, the very first incarnations of the new technology are not very mature and there is a lot to polish, a lot of tooling missing, and a chicken and egg problem of not enough users to drive its take off. And the small crowd will use all this as much as they can to try to prevent the world from moving on.
However, as time passes, the new tool starts becoming more mature, the obvious shortcomings get fixed, and all the new possibilities that the tool enables start to really shine. And while the initial compromise will always remain, the majority of users realize that the tradeoff was worth it.
This has happened with Systemd, it's starting to happen with Wayland, and I believe it will happen with Flatpak was well. We'll see.
> This is the most complicated and brittle way to implement this. It’s also not at all how other sandboxed platforms work. If I want file access permissions on Android, I don’t just try to open a file with the Java File API and expect it to magically prompt the user. I have to call Android-specific APIs to request permissions first. iOS is the same. So why shouldn’t I be able to just call flatpak_request_permission(PERMISSION) and get a callback when the user approves or declines?
On macOS you try to open a file and it’s handled transparently. “iOS is the same” also could use a citation (I don't recall off hand if it is, and kinda doubt it based on the macOS behavior, so I feel a citation is appropriate). I’m slightly confused why the author is comparing Linux desktop with mobile rather than existing desktop implementations of sandboxing… feels a tad disingenuous.
Doesn't matter, Flatpak won over Appimages and Snaps in adoption numbers. And the example given here for GIMP having r/w permission to your home doesn't hold water. The distro-packaged app probably has the same permissions in comparison. At least with Flatpak, to deny it this permission is a simple toggle with Flatseal.
Number of distros? Number of applications?
Ubuntu seems to dwarf other Linux distrobutions in terms of numbers of users. Are you saying more users have Flatpak installed than have Snap installed?
Neither are snaps. The future, for regular daily use, are appimages. Much like MacOS dmgs, these are a "single" file (from an end user perspective) that you download, double click, and run. That's it. Ideally we'd see more work in this area. I am slowly trying to figure out how to automate builds for GUI apps and I am considering somehow settings up an inexpensive server to pull, package, and submit appimages to appi…
AppImages waste even more disk space. At least with Flatpak I only need to install libraries once, with AppImages I'm getting a second copy of everything with every application I download. If AppImages were actually directories, like they are in macOS, I could at least run duperemove to fix the disk space issue on BTRFS, but with full images that become a lot harder.