Linux

Just another tool in the toolbox. Use it or not, up to the user. I've even seen Slackware users who say they use Flatpak to ward off dependency rabbit holes.

I use Aurora DX so most of my apps are flatpaks. Its fine.

I "grew up" with Slackware, so I definitely understand the dependency issue.

I like flatpaks (and similar) for certain "atomic" pieces of software, like makemkv. For more "basic" software, like, say, KDE, I want it installed natively.

Honestly? I'm a fan of Flatpaks where they make sense. I'm also okay with Appimages. Native is pretty cool. Whatever gets the thing to run really.

I like to use the terminal to update my applications, it's just faster. I have an alias to run an update for native packages and flatpaks. You can use your GUI of choice. Or not, it's up to you. It's that sort of freedom that I love about using Linux.

In some cases, Flatpak actually helps, as in my case, with Prism Launcher. Some of my system libraries cause issues with a handful of mods, but the libraries distributed with the Flatpak get that working. Hopefully that's not foreshadowing more future library-related issues.

Enter the calm and quiet room

Pass out torches and pitchforks, guns and knives

“Snaps exist”

War erupts.

I'm a big fan of the idea of sandboxed apps. Flatpak is not great as it compromises sandboxing for compatibility (both with distros and apps) and also it's quite stagnant now. But there are no other options anyway, so I use it.

Not a fan for a few reasons. Flathub (as far as I know) works on the app store model where developers offer their own builds to users, which is probably appealing to people coming from the Windows world who view distros as unnecessary middlemen, but in the GNU/Linux world the distro serves an important role as a sort of union of users; they make sure the software works in the distro environment, resolve breakages, and remove any anti-features placed in there by the upstream developers.

The sandboxing is annoying too, but understandable.

Despite this I will resort to a flatpak if I'm too lazy to figure out how to package something myself.

I need OBS on this new computer!

Let's install the flatpack!

V4l problems

Plugins Problems

Wayland Problems

I'm just going back to the .deb, thanks.

Size and gnome/GTK dependencies are main reasons why I don't use Flatpaks (I have nothing against gnome though, it just pulls in too much and KDE is worse in this regards, which is why I use Sway and River)

Not.

Perhaps ironically, this is mocking a strawman. Flatpacks can be installed and managed using the terminal! Not only that but Linux-Distros have had graphical package managers for decades.

The primary reason that distros have embraced flatpack / snap / appimage is that they promise to lower the burden of managing software repositories. The primary reason that some users are mad is that these often don't provide a good experience:

• they are often slower to install/start/run
• they have trouble integrating with the rest of the system (ignoring gtk/qt themes for example)
• they take a lot more space and bandwidth

Theoretically they are also more secure... But reality of that has also been questioned. Fine grained permissions are nice, but bundling libraries makes it hard to know what outdated libraries are running on the systems.

While I wouldn't want flakpak going deep into the OS I think the advantage of using them on the desktop is obvious. Developers can release to multiple dists from a single build and end users get updates and versions immediately rather than waiting for the dist to update its packages. Plus the ability to lock the software down with sandboxes.

The tradeoff is disk consumption but it's not really that big of a deal. Flatpaks are layered so apps can share dependencies. e.g. if the app is GNOME it can share the GNOME runtime with other apps and doesn't need to ship with its own.

As long as software is available in the Software Manager to be installed that way... I don't care what format it's in.

But don't make normies go to the terminal. It's inhumane, and really does not help the masses get away from big tech - which is a worthier goal than keeping your software terminal-only.

I'm happy to use Flatpaks but the annoyances I've had are like when one application says to use you'll need to point to the binary of another application that it depends on but very understandably doesn't package together, figuring that out to me can be annoying so I'll switch to a regular installation and it all just works together no fuss, no flatseal, no thinking about it really. Also some applications where it's really nice to launch from the terminal especially with arguments or just like the current working directory and with Flatpaks instead of just right off the bat it's application name and hit enter, Flatpak hope you remember the whole package name

org.wilson.spalding.runner.knife.ApplicationName ...

Ya alias but got to remember to do that. So far anything I'd ever want to run from terminal, no Flatpak

I like flatpak, but I can't download Flathub flatpak applications and (specially) Flathub flatpak runtimes from my phone. I hope Flathub learns from F-Droid