LinuxMusicians

I ran across this talk from earlier this year, and I found the points very interesting! I want to share so that people can get a better idea as to where we stood 5 years ago, where we stand now, and what the future likely holds. I've felt this way about the direction of Linux ever since I read Christian F. K. Schaller's blog post back in 2021. ( https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2021/09/ ... x-desktop/ ) I think it will take time, but this is truly the direction I see things going for the major distros of Linux. I like what I read, and wait anxiously for it all to come together. Disclaimer: I'm a Fedora user. This YouTube video gives a good idea as to how the critics are seeing things nowadays:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WuYGcs ... chardBrown

For those who just want a gist, I found a couple of good summaries online as well.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments ... image_and/

He gave a talk 7 years ago about how terrible and bad idea appimage, snap, and flatpak.

His opinion has changed on all 3.

Appimage:

He initially warmed up to Appimage because devs listened to his talk and tried to correct issues he brought up. They started using the OBS (Opensuse build system) and started to rely on that infrastructure for testing and dependency tracking.

But he decided after trying to package appimage that it is a bad way to go. It makes the dependency and build stuff much harder and more difficult then before, not easier then distros. It doesn't live up to it's promise of a Mac OS-like experience.

Snaps

Canonical snaps have actually gotten worse. Only package he dealt with that fails multiple security audits in a row. Relies on Apparmor changes only present in Ubuntu, so if you are not on Ubuntu you get no security.

Relies too much on Canonical's infrastructure, can't audit or recreate packages, etc.

Flatpak

Had arguments with Flatpak devs. They listened to his good points and incorporated he important changes from that and he learned the ways he was wrong.

Since he started working on MicroOS version of the desktop he relied heavily on Flatpak. He has learned that Flatpak is easy for distro packages to package. It moves the responsibility to the developer, which is not great... but it still is easier to deal with then traditional distros because it's focus is much narrower. So never the less it is a improvement.

He relied on flathub for his MicroOS desktop expecting problems, but the problems never happened. CVEs are fixed quickly and easy for distros to update and fix. Their build system has a lot to offer devs and rivals OBS in quality.

He even goes so far to recommend that distributions STOP packaging "everything under the sun" for desktops and encourage users and application devs to depend on Flatpak more and more. It isn't perfect, but it is a improvement.

TLDR on the TLDR:

Apparmor seemed promising, but it makes things worse not better.

Only use Snap if you trust Canonical (and if you are using Ubuntu, probably)

Flatpak is good enough now that people should be encouraged to use it.

Apparmor seemed promising, but it makes things worse not better.

Did you mean AppImage?

I found both snap and flatpak are sorts of crap. AppImage is worth to exist because you don't have to install anything in your system, so it's easy to quickly test/try some apps.

Audiojunkie wrote: ↑Tue Jul 18, 2023 2:14 pm

Flatpak is good enough now that people should be encouraged to use it.

Isn't flatpak and jack audio integration problematic? I don't use flatpaks myself but that is the impression I get from the little I've read about it.

Kott wrote: ↑Wed Jul 19, 2023 5:33 am

Apparmor seemed promising, but it makes things worse not better.

Did you mean AppImage?

I found both snap and flatpak are sorts of crap. AppImage is worth to exist because you don't have to install anything in your system, so it's easy to quickly test/try some apps.

That part you quoted was a copy/paste of a person’s summary of the FOSDEM talk. It was not my comment. It is possible the author meant Appimage. But then again, there were mentions of the failings of Apparmor in the talk. Did you listen to the talk, or just go by the posted summary?

artix_linux_user wrote: ↑Wed Jul 19, 2023 6:34 am

Kott wrote: ↑Wed Jul 19, 2023 5:33 am

Apparmor seemed promising, but it makes things worse not better.

Did you mean AppImage?

I found both snap and flatpak are sorts of crap. AppImage is worth to exist because you don't have to install anything in your system, so it's easy to quickly test/try some apps.

yes...the same with plugins....and? in the end not all plugins are running on every host system and I would guess the same counts for appimage and co.
It is a cruel. cruel word.
happy 420

By design, Flatpak is not meant to do away with a distro’s default package manager. It is meant to work hand in hand with a distro’s default package manager—unlike Snaps. DNF, Apt-get, pacman, etc wouldn’t be going away. I don’t think DAWs and plugins will have to move to flatpak if they don’t want to. As it stands, some programs like wine and yabridge have existing communications problems between their separate sandboxes. I don’t see the wine and yabridge combo moving over to flatpak any time soon. I could be wrong about that though—the developer is actively studying the problem and seeking solutions.

Impostor wrote: ↑Wed Jul 19, 2023 11:36 am

Audiojunkie wrote: ↑Tue Jul 18, 2023 2:14 pm

Flatpak is good enough now that people should be encouraged to use it.

Isn't flatpak and jack audio integration problematic? I don't use flatpaks myself but that is the impression I get from the little I've read about it.

My understanding is that there are active communication points being built into Wayland, Pipewire, and flatpaks to specifically address these issues. There should be no blocking of communication in the sandboxed environment. It is working similarly to the way Apple’s iOS operating system communicates between its sandboxed apps.

I've used flatpak in the past but I don't now because there's really no point. There's nothing available in flatpak I want that I can't get by other means so why do I need this. Flathub has tons of software you can install via your usual distro way. Most of the the packages are done by randoms and for some proprietary software, likely even pirated. At least they have a verified status now but why even keep the other stuff there? If third parties are just packaging FOSS software, this is not really providing anything new.

For snaps, I don't want a load of loopback device clutter and increasing loading times is not a plus point.

Audiojunkie wrote: ↑Wed Jul 19, 2023 11:52 am

Kott wrote: ↑Wed Jul 19, 2023 5:33 am

Apparmor seemed promising, but it makes things worse not better.

Did you mean AppImage?

I found both snap and flatpak are sorts of crap. AppImage is worth to exist because you don't have to install anything in your system, so it's easy to quickly test/try some apps.

That part you quoted was a copy/paste of a person’s summary of the FOSDEM talk. It was not my comment. It is possible the author meant Appimage. But then again, there were mentions of the failings of Apparmor in the talk. Did you listen to the talk, or just go by the posted summary?

It was a comment from reddit, and I'm pretty sure that author meant AppImage, because I've listened the talk. Did you?

I once tried an app as flatpack hoping I can run a recent application on an oldish system.

Didn't work because it did't find a symbol in my glibc.

It cannot solve my real world problems so I don't need it.