I accept that I'm in the minority on these things, but I value simplicity really highly, and I mean "simple" as a very specific concept that's different from "easy". It can be harder to resolve library dependencies on a system where everything is installed using the native package manager and common file systems, but nothing is as "simple" as ELF binaries linking to .so files. Nested directories branching off of / is "simpler" than containers.

Do I have any practical reason for preferring things this way? Not really. There are some ancillary benefits that come from the fact that I'm old and I already know how to do more or less anything I need to do on a Unix system, and if you tell me I need to use flatseal or whatever, I'd rather just use users and groups and tools that have been fine for me for 25 years. But that's not really why I like things this way. I have no issue with embracing change when it otherwise appeals to me --I happily try new languages and tools and technology stacks all the time. What it really is is that it appeals to the part of my brain that just wants to have a nice orderly universe that fits into a smaller set of conceptual boxes. I have a conceptual box for how my OS runs software, and filling that box with lots of other smaller little different boxes for flatpack and pyenv and whatever feels worse to me.

If they solved practical problems that I needed help solving, that would be fine. I have no problem adopting something new that improves my life and then complaining about all the ways I wish they'd done it better. But this just isn't really a problem I have ever really needed much help with. I've used many Unix systems and Linux distributions as my full-time daily use systems since about 1998, and I've never really had to spend much effort on dependency resolution. I've never been hacked because I gave some software permissions it wouldn't have had in a sandbox. I don't think those problems aren't real, and if solving them for other people is a positive, then go nuts. I'm just saying that for me, they're not upsides I really want to pay anything for, and the complexity costs are higher than whatever that threshold is for me.

9/10 desktop applications I use are flatpaks. Am on Arch and even when there's an AUR for a package I'd prefer to use Flatpak. Just so I can use Flatseal to control permissions access on my applications.

I'm glad to see you've gotten a ton of feedback here, and I just wanted to add another comment in support of flatpaks and image-based computing. I've been using Linux extensively for about 15 years now, mostly Arch and Debian Sid. I've been a distro packager, and I've compiled plenty of my own apps over the years.

This past year I took Fedora Silverblue for a spin after following the project for quite some time, and I am convinced that the image-based system approach, coupled with containerized and sandboxed userspace applications, is the future of Linux for most users. It makes so much sense from nearly all perspectives; whether security, reliability, or flexibility.

Integral parts of the system are mounted read-only by default. Simple commands can rollback unwanted changes, upgrade to a new distro release, or even sideload an entirely different OS. System updates are automated, as are flatpak updates, and there is little-to-no risk to stability due to the very nature of the essentials-only system images. And if something catastrophic did happen, you're just a reboot away from rolling it back.

Consider for a moment the collective energy and time that distro package maintainers must undertake on a weekly basis. Much of it simply repeated by each distro, building the same applications over and over again. Flatpaks are built once and deployed everywhere. Think of the collective potential that could be directed elsewhere.

Couple this with containers and the choice of distro matters even less. Arch, Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora are just a keystroke away. Yes, you can run containers on any distro of course, but you don't gain any of the other ostree benefits mentioned above.

I have since moved all of my workstations to Silverblue and I don't see myself ever going back to a traditional system again. If anything, I may start automating my own image deployments, similar to Universal Blue.

Yes, flatpak as a platform still needs some work, and so does ostree, but both are evolving quickly and will only get better with time.

To others who complain about needing Flatseal...in my opinion, this is a feature to be embraced, not loathed. Sane defaults are rarely sane for everyone, and Flatseal exists to give you complete control over what an app can or cannot see and do.

Yes, but only for apps that which I want to be on the very latest versions. One might ask why I don't use a rolling release distro, that's because I prefer a solid LTS base.

Probably never. They're my third option after native packages and built-from-source packages/installs either manually or using the AUR. They're convenient and the only option I tolerate of those newer package styles (Flatpak/Snap/AppImage), but seemingly having to download a new 800+MB runtime for small 32MB applications is ridiculously wasteful and I wouldn't touch them if I didn't have at least a TB of storage.

For convenience, it's great. The sandboxing is good as well. Flatseal is a must have for me, though.

I use Flatpaks for everything I can. I like how Flatpak keeps apps in a container isolated from my system. Also, Flatpaks contains every lib in every version I need for my installed apps, which means It does not rely on my system libs, and I like It, cause my system libs is to make my system works only.

Flatpaks are just the future of packaging

For a long time now, if a flatpack is available and maintained, I use it.

I don't like flatpak or snap or any of them. System libraries exist for good reason, just because your computer is stupid fast and you have enough disk for the library of Congress a couple times over doesn't mean you should run a veritable copy of your whole operating system for each program. IMO it's lazy.

Sandboxing is a different thing though, if that's the purpose then it's doing it right.

Yeah, having apps updated in the last year is enjoyable

Quite the opposite, after fiddling with it for six months I fully uninstalled flatpak and deleted the directory to get away from the fact it kept downloading copies of nvidia drivers when I had moved to an AMD a year ago, and the drivers were locked from being manually removed even after I uninstalled all flatpak packages.

I'm an Arch user, trust me when I say I read the documentation.

After wasting hours on it I nuked it.

It depends. Kind of prefer Flatpaks as they are always working as expected on any distro, but some of them are giving me just too much struggle.

For example, dealing with sandboxing, or especially VSS code app. Yes, there are instructions, but then I install Golang SDK via Flatpaks the hard way (using CLI) for Go development, then having a nightmare trying to setup everything in vss code. Then how tf should I access go binary within my host terminal?

On Arch Linux I just tend to install from official repos, while the rest of apps - from Flatpaks.

Personally I don't like the way they are sandboxed, bit as long as it works I am fine.

I want a stable OS, but I want the latest versions of applications (programs) without messing up anything. For me flatpak and snap meet that need, but I prefer flatpak.

i avoided flatpacks before.
but now that i tried out silverblue and had to rely heavily on them,
i have to admit that flatpacks are not nearly as bad as i thought.

the only issues i encountered are with steam (might not start propperly on first launch)
and with ides(terminal starts inside the sandbox)

other than that it works great.

I use system packages for everything unless I need a newer version of a specific package for some reason.

This is exactly what flatpaks were meant to do. Simplify the program deployment across all distros

100%. I just wrote a long post surmising this somewhere, but I'm switching my 5 year old Arch install to something like Debian Stable/Testing because I use almost entirely Flatpaks for my user applications (I would do 100% of them if every app I used had a Flatpak), and it's really just a much better idea to run bleeding edge on only the stuff you care about instead of an entire system.

ag to be honest I'm so frustrated by having to remember what package manager was used for installing which binary. I don't have time for this horse shit

I didn’t like them before I used flatseal. Now I love them.

For me the perfect example is GNOME Builder (I use KDE Plasma) but this package has it all. No, you dont need to download any dependencies, the sandbox handles it all!