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this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2025
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Linux
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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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Flatpak is infinitely easier for people who don't know what they're doing, because it's sandboxed and separate from the native system. If you know what you're doing it's different though, I don't use them personally.
My opinion on flatpak is that it only allows developers to be loosy with dependencies. I'm convinced it will fall appart in a decade or two because it's too messy and bloated as a technical solution.
It's just a weird linux distro that you install atop your distro, honestly, I have no idea why you think that.
Piling abstraction layers is bad design imo. For performances, complexity and maintenance.
Flatpak is great for two groups of users: the ones who only use default settings in standalone apps and the privacy-oriented experts who know how to tweak things to their liking. In the middle is a large group of users who don't know or care how things work, but they want that one feature an app is supposed to do but mysteriously doesn't work with flatpak.
Even one of these occurrences is enough to make most users give up on that app or the OS entirely. I like the idea of sandboxing apps, and I use flatpak daily, but we have to acknowledge and hopefully improve some of its limitations or many users (yourself included, it seems) will consider it unusable.