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this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
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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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But y tho?
There's a big chunk of the Linux community that will always want to gatekeep it and push out anything that makes it easier for the layman to use
Wastes RAM and disk space (compared to package-manager installed applications) by storing more libraries on disk and loading them into RAM rather than just using the libraries already installed on the distro. It's probably better than Snap and Appimage though.
That is definitely a sacrifice being made here I agree with you. It gives developers more control over exactly how their app runs, but it does mean less storage efficiency.
Is it even a problem for a desktop in 2024? Never had an issue with RAM or diskspace. And even for those that have, they can just not use flatpak until they upgrade, no reason to kill it.
I assume the "kill it" comment was a little tongue-in-cheek. On small SBCs, like a Pi, or old hardware, it could be a problem. I've seen people with flatpaks taking up 30GB of space, which is significant. I'm not sure how much RAM it wastes. I assume running 6 different applications that have loaded 6 different versions of Qt libraries would also use significantly more RAM than just loading the system's shared Qt libraries once.
I don't see a problem with Flatpak in this. It does what it's supposed to do. You find not using it better? That's great, that option is the default in all of the distributives.
Yeah, I agree. I do use Flatpaks, Snaps, and Appimages sometimes if I can't find a suitable deb repo/package. Flatpak is the best out of the three because they do try to avoid too much duplication through runtimes. I also use Docker quite a bit, which has similar issues (and benefits).
What can flatpaks do that others -snap, appimage- can't? At least they don't have weird naming of program (com.sth.sth.fk)...
Different goals and different designs. Why are there so many Linux distro?
Snap is proprietary. Appimage does not include distribution and updates. It also doesn’t attempt sandboxing of any kind.
On the other hand, I find appimage very convenient to use.