Flathub and Flatpak packages are the future of Linux apps, according to more people, and GNOME are continuing to invest in it. They have some big plans to improve it too.
Writing in a new blog post on the GNOME Foundation website, they went over a number of things and not just Flathub related but that's what we're going to focus on for this article. The plans actually sounds pretty good!
Firstly, Flathub is going to gain a way to process and verify apps from first-party teams. As in, developers who directly publish their app and manage the Flatpak package process for Flathub. A way to actually properly distinguish official apps from community builds will be quite important for so many reasons (security, privacy and so on). Not only that but GNOME want to give developers a way to collect donations and subscriptions too, which is also important to help make it more sustainable. Sounds like it's possible a way will be added for developers to share some of the revenue with Flathub too, ensuring it too is sustainable.
To improve the experience further another part of the plan is to support multiple repositories, to enable a split between these first-party apps and community contributions, and have one where only free and open source apps live. That way, users get more of a choice on what they see and it just gives a little more control over all. Part of the hope is that they can get GNOME Software and KDE Discover to support all this, and note it all like verify apps and such. Think of it like see a nice big blue tick in whatever software store you use to see clearly it's official.
You can see the plans in a bit more detail on their original Discourse post.
Also be sure to check out a pretty good video overview on Flatpak from Nick at The Linux Experiment:
Direct Link
(This is why I prefer Snaps, btw...)
Last edited by Boldos on 21 January 2022 at 6:36 pm UTC
JSVRamirez Jan 21, 2022
Quoting: Purple Library GuyThat video says "Flatpak is the future". Well, I'm willing to believe Flatpak is (the future of proprietary software on Linux). I don't think it would be such a good idea for every damn application and utility, the open source ones, the main Linux software ecosystem, to be using Flatpak instead of normal package management.
While I understand the push for this in response to 'RPM Hell' but the packaging system of GNU/Linux is one of its core strengths. I welcome options, but 'the future' fills me with dread.
CyborgZeta Jan 21, 2022
Quoting: Purple Library GuyThat video says "Flatpak is the future". Well, I'm willing to believe Flatpak is (the future of proprietary software on Linux). I don't think it would be such a good idea for every damn application and utility, the open source ones, the main Linux software ecosystem, to be using Flatpak instead of normal package management.I agree. I like Flatpak, but I don't think every program needs to be one. Things like the file manager, image viewer, etc. are better off installed through the package manager IMO.
Music players, such as Elisa and Strawberry (they're what I use), actually lose features in the Flatpak version. So those are best suited to being installed from the package manager; at least for now.
But that's my opinion, I'd love a spotify AppImage...
liberodark Jan 21, 2022
QuoteWhile I understand the push for this in response to 'RPM Hell' but the packaging system of GNU/Linux is one of its core strengths. I welcome options, but 'the future' fills me with dread.
Totally agree I'm not a fan of snap which replaces deb or flatpak which replaces rpm.
I find this rather stupid and of little interest.
But hey, we say it's progress.
Last edited by liberodark on 21 January 2022 at 10:43 pm UTC
pleasereadthemanual Jan 22, 2022
On a rolling-release distribution like Arch? No way. All of the packages are up-to-date, and if they're not, they are up-to-date in the AUR. Flatpak is way too much complexity for me. I tried it when I was new to GNU/Linux and it confused the hell out of me. I'm sure I could manage it now, but I don't want to. I don't mind AppImages because they tend to manage themselves and aren't particularly ambitious. However, even they tend to have less features than the non-sandboxed version (see the Cinelerra-GG handbook for the differences).
I'd rather games come with a
.sh install script like GoG games do than be required to deal with Flaptak. I see no place for it on distributions like Arch Linux.
ShinyaOsen Jan 22, 2022
Quoting: pleasereadthemanualOn a rolling-release distribution like Arch? No way. All of the packages are up-to-date, and if they're not, they are up-to-date in the AUR.Use flatpaks on my arch install for handbrake, fre:ac, ungoogled chromium, and Jellyfin Media Player.
Reasons being handbrake has a bug in the arch repo that made HEVC/265 encode take 10 times longer(10fps on flatpak to 0.4fps on arch repo) aur versions dont fix this and the flatpak version is official the only thing I'm missing is fdk-aac which i only use when using 264. Fre:ac only available in AUR crashes constantly and the GUI doesn't show some times so pretty unusable and flatpak version is official. Ungoogled Chromium don't want to compile and flatpak is offical. Jellyfin media player don't want to compile and flatpak is official.
I'll be using the OBS flatpak in the next release as it will be official and have all features available with out needing to compile the missing features from the AUR.
On my laptop that is running opensuse tumbleweed I use the flatpak for asunder as on opensuse asunder isnt up to date and is deprecated since it uses gtk2 still and the creator endorsed the flatpak version.
Not that flatpak stuff is perfect switched off the Firefox flatpak after it bugged my profile and 264 videos playback can be bugged some days probrobly switch back to it sometime in the future again tho.
AussieEevee Jan 22, 2022
CyborgZeta Jan 22, 2022
Quoting: pleasereadthemanualOn a rolling-release distribution like Arch? No way. All of the packages are up-to-date, and if they're not, they are up-to-date in the AUR. Flatpak is way too much complexity for me.I'm on an Arch-based system and use several Flatpaks. Firefox and Thunderbird for better Plasma integration and the sandbox, with everything else for being more convenient and not bloating my system with dependencies.
Also, I never touch the AUR, and Flatpak helps with that.
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