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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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anti-snap stance is anti-consumer (lemdro.id)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The title is a quote from Mastodon. I’ve always seen dislike towards snap so I was taken back when I saw this stance. The person who wrote this was referring to Tuxedo Laptops.

What are your thoughts on this?

EDIT:

Here’s the original comment: https://mastodon.social/@popey/112591863166141029

EDIT 2:

Some clarification for those accusing me of not following the thread or being disingenuous.

Didn't bother to follow the thread?

https://mastodon.social/@popey/112593520847827981

I posted my question here before this particular response from the OP. I asked the question on Lemmy out of interest and wanting to get a wider perspective. I also engaged with the OP on the thread so that I can get their perspective on their stance.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Genuinely curious: what don't you like about flatpaks?

I find that flatpaks are quite awesome, because you can have any distro, while all apps continue to work (but I'm also not a dev or anything, so don't know about that side of the story).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Duplication of resources mainly. Bloat upon bloat. Worse, a Flatpak can ignore things that it probably should use on the system, and I'm not sure that's a good thing.

Don't get me wrong, there are supposed "bare metal" installs that duplicate all sorts of things too, and I don't like it when that happens either. Steam, for example, keeps at least one extra copy of itself as well as a bunch of other things.

And there's that Flatpaks an entirely different ecosystem that require their own set of updates.

I get it. I understand there are benefits. Doesn't mean I like it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Probably along the lines of 'its bloated and too many dependencies'.

Though most flatpaks use a common base, any modifications on top of that sometimes need to be stored modified (now having 2 or more copies of one dependency)

To anyone that's not a Linux nerd the app looks about the same size as on all other OS's, but on Linux it makes it a lot larger than just bare bones installing it via package manager

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

But on the other hand, it works on all distros.

I think the pros outweigh the cons here, no?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Not for everyone, no. For me, each supposed pro has a corresponding con or is just a no-op:

Only one package for all distros: Despite what people think, this does not lower the amount of work for the program's creator, who was never required to create any sort of binary package at all. Furthermore, it means that fewer people are checking the package for faults—that's part of what distro maintainers do, y'know.
No external dependencies: Not only does this cause disk bloat, but it means that if the flatpak is no longer updated, the dependencies packaged inside it may not be either . . . which is one of the issues that dynamic linking was supposed to avoid in the first place. Might as well just go old-school and statically link the binary.
Installations at user rather than system level: Only of value if I don't have admin authority, and I don't have to deal with a single system where that's the case, so this is a no-op.
Supposedly more rapid updates: I'm running Gentoo, not Debian ~~fossil~~ :cough: oldstable. If I really want to, I can have my package manager install direct pulls from source control for many packages. New changes every day—beat that, flatpak. Plus, unless there's been a substantial change to a package's build method, I can bump actual releases myself just by copying and renaming a small file, then running a couple of commands.
Sandboxing: As far as I'm concerned, the amount of security added by sandboxing and the amount of security added by the additional scrutiny from the distro maintainers is probably about even (especially since the sandbox, as a non-trivial piece of software, will inevitably contain bugs). And I can can throw firejail on top if I'm worried about something specific (or run it in a VM if I'm really nervous). I can understand why this might be attractive to some people, but for me the weight is very low.

So I'm left with avoiding bloat and bugs in flatpak's system integration vs. a little bit of security gained by additional sandboxing (which I don't think I really need, because I'm only mid-level paranoid). Thus, I'm not interested in complexifying my update process by incorporating flatpak into my system. Others' needs may be different.