321
Flathub Grows Past One Million Active Users
(docs.flathub.org)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
321 points (96.0% liked)
Linux
48335 readers
464 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
By choice or by force? I'll take flatpaks over Appimages and literally rocks over snaps, but what is this metric actually saying?
It is saying that more than one million people are actively using Flathub. What do you mean by force?
Well if there's an application that the developer only releases a flatpak for, do I have a choice in being one of those million if there's no easy way to compile it myself? What if I'm a newbie linuxer and cannot get all the dev tools installed?
There are no cases of this that I know of. There are some developers that don't encourage repackaging their apps, though.
what's your point? if flatpak makes it easier for developers to package their software and easier for users to install it, there's nothing wrong with it being famous
What do you currently do if a developer doesn't package their software for other distros? Maybe they only provide an AUR package or a .deb, so someone else has to package it.
With flatpak the only difference is that a distro independent package exists, that anyone can install. It being possible to do cross-distro apps with a single package doesn't make it any harder for distros to also package it.
I'm not arguing against flatpaks I'm just calling the number suspect to meaningless as a metric.
Thanks, I think I understand now what you mean. I still disagree on the notion that people are forced to use flatpak and that the number is meaningless because of that. People choose to use flatpak because it solves their problem.
I'd say it's similar to many people who use Ubuntu because of its big user base and software support. It's still an achievement to be recognized.
Anyway, I do agree that the number itself isn't really relevant. I'm pretty tired and maybe I'm a bit pedantic, so good night (or have a nice day, depending on your timezone).
You always have a choice. Just yesterday, I had an app's documentation say "install brew so you can download our application and themes". I noped right out of there and found a different application altogether.
I don't think there's any business entity artificially forcing the users to use it (like Firefox on Ubuntu 😉) if that's you're asking.
Otherwise, the only case where the user is "forced" to use flatpak would be when the software they're looking for is not available under their distro's repo, which happens a lot especially in point release distros.