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submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by Pantherina@feddit.de to c/linux@lemmy.ml

Disclaimer

Flatpak uses OSTree, like Fedora Atomic Desktops (Silverblue, Kinoite etc) and similar to BTRFS snapshots.

So many files are deduplicated and linked, not actually there

https://gitlab.com/TheEvilSkeleton/flatpak-dedup-checker

50GB without
31GB with deduplication
21,4GB with BTRFS compression
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[-] Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

That's why I think AppImage is the best. Despite needing to pack everything it needs it's always far more lightweight than flatpak. I'd rather download a 50mb appimage than several gigabytes of an entire OS libraries and then the updates requiring roughly the same size. That and I have a shitty internet

[-] CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml 13 points 11 months ago

TBH I dislike Appimage purely because I can't be bothered to go and check them all individually for new versions all the time, it feels like being on Windows again. I don't mind a little bloat for the sake of convenience. But that's just personal preference of course.

[-] Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 11 months ago

There was an app that dealt with this but it's since been abandoned.

[-] Pantherina@feddit.de 8 points 11 months ago

I dont think that is true at all. Appimages are slowest and have many disadvantages like

  • no repo (= virus danger)
  • no app desktop entry
  • no updates
  • no deduplication of libraries
[-] Unmapped@lemmy.ml 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I always use the app image if they are available. As for being slow I never noticed.

No app desktop entry is one on the reasons I like them. If its one I use a lot I make a hotkey to open it. But there are ways to add them. There is even a tool that makes its easy to do.

No updates. I'm not sure how exactly, but everyone I use auto updates when I open them. I originally had a issue of it breaking my hotkey cause the file name would change because of the version number going up. Which I fixed by using a *.

[-] Pantherina@feddit.de 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

The appimages I used dont autoupdate. But even if, you are in some weird "windows is bad" state from years ago, before the MS Store, and even without desktop entries.

There simply is no reason for appimages other than on systems like Tails that are not made to install apps. But I also think Tails is pretty annoying and should allow flatpak installs in the permanent storage partition.

[-] callyral@pawb.social 2 points 11 months ago

no app desktop entry

they can be added manually but yeah i get how that's inconvenient.

just run ./appimage.appimage --appimage-extract and you have the .desktop file there, then just edit the path to the executable

[-] Pantherina@feddit.de 3 points 11 months ago

Yes but that is unimportant. This is not user friendly at all. I do that all the time for random stuff, but especially on GNOME the system hides stuff like that away from users and thats okay.

[-] Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 11 months ago

There was an app that dealt with desktop entry and auto-update but it hasn't bee updated since a few years already.

no repo (= virus danger)

Can be remedied with an official store/ being distrubuted by the devs themselves instead of random people. Appimage isn't getting a tenth of the support flatpak is getting.

no deduplication of libraries

Might worth it if you have dozens of very heavy apps but it's totally not the case if you only need a few simple programs.

[-] Pantherina@feddit.de 2 points 11 months ago

Yes, Appimages lost the race. The apps are old afaik, and often dont work. It sucks when distributors use Appimages as they are simply a bad app format.

  • SimpleX
  • Balena Etcher

There is a way to convert Appimages to Flatpaks, but I havent got that complete.

https://github.com/trytomakeyouprivate/Appimage-To-Flatpak

[-] janAkali@lemmy.one 7 points 11 months ago

I have all apps I use daily in the appimage format. Yesterday I decided to try btrfs for my root partition and did my annual Linux reinstall. All my apps were already there and ready for work from the start.
I also have a usb flashdrive always on me with the same appimages. Just in case I'd wipe a hard drive by accident and wouldn't have an internet connection or something like that (in case of emergencies). You can't do this with flatpaks or snaps.

[-] Chewy7324@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 11 months ago

In my experience updates aren't that big. The flatpak cli ux is just confusing to read how much data actually has to be downloaded because of deduplication.

[-] Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I have like 4 gigs of flatpak updates I keep unchecking because at my horrible internet speed it would take the entire day if not more to download. Honestly, if you're right then this is a horrendous design flaw.

this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
94 points (92.7% liked)

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