The redesign of the Flathub app store for Linux is now live, bringing with it a refreshed look along with showing verified developers and their apps. A much needed change that really does look a whole lot better.
With the new launch everything just looks a lot cleaner, and having a proper verification system in place means you will know if you're downloading something maintained by the creators and not a third-party. There's even a category just for verified apps.
Pictured above is an example of the Games category which features not just games but launchers, emulators and more, everything related to gaming. You can see the blue ticks to clearly show verified apps.
While the front-page isn't massively different, the biggest visual change is to individual app pages. There's quite a bit more detail included on them like install size, download size, how many people have installed it, direct links to the website and documentation for help, a graph of installs over time, a collapsible changelog of the most recent update and more.
On Mastodon, the Flathub maintainer Bartłomiej Piotrowski mentioned "A redesign of #Flathub is live! Drop by https://flathub.org to see all the shiny new things, such as developer verification and download graphs. There's more under the hood, including the long awaited subsets to enable only verified or FLOSS apps. Stay tuned for more updates!".
Flathub has quickly become my go-to place first to find downloads for any apps on Linux now. Especially with it being the main way to install extra apps on the Steam Deck too (through Discover), it's nice to have things the same across different systems.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
The comments on this article are closed.
All posts need to follow our rules. For users logged in: please hit the Report Flag icon on any post that breaks the rules or contains illegal / harmful content. Guest readers can email us for any issues.
20 comments
To be honest, Flatpak is awesome, but in the same time I hate it :P It updates almost every day, especially "org.Freedesktop.Platform", and files for nvidia driver etc. And it is aroud 400-800Mb every time. Daaamn. It's so frustrating, because I have to use the internet which has limited data usage. I know, I don't have to update this, but...
Last edited by Avikarr on 22 April 2023 at 10:36 am UTC
Last edited by Avikarr on 22 April 2023 at 10:36 am UTC
3 Likes, Who?
Schattenspiegel Apr 22, 2023
Wow... that is a study in how not to design a webpage.
5 Likes, Who?
Wow... that is a study in how not to design a webpage.
This is why we can't have nice things. Imagine if you're the developer who put hours of work in to that site and then somebody just turns up and says it blows. If you don't like something at least have the good manners to be constructive in your criticism.
Last edited by Duckeenie on 22 April 2023 at 12:33 pm UTC
12 Likes, Who?
Schattenspiegel Apr 22, 2023
Wow... that is a study in how not to design a webpage.
This is why we can't have nice things. Be constructive man.
Sorry, just a bit of frustration over the state of the world in general venting and indeed a bit unhelpful I'll admit. ;-)
What I meant was priority of information on the app pages - what is really important to identify and install the app should be immediately accessible without having to scroll through neat, but low priority data.
Screen-space could also be used more efficiently so scrolling in general is kept to a minimum.
Look at the size of the screenshot area compared to the size of actual screenshots for example or the wastefulness of the enormous 'more'-button in the change-log-section - the hidden information could have already been displayed in the empty wasteland on the upper parts of the page while still looking more tidy and neat.
Advertisers tend to waste space like that a lot these days in order to show off their products, but from a user perspective, these sites are always quite annoying and fatiguing to use. And an App-store with free to use software should probably prioritize user-experience(fast delivery of relevant information and low user workload) first and then worry about making it look appealing as the cherry on top.
4 Likes, Who?
I ended up enabling developer mode so I can install apps through Pac-Man directly
2 Likes, Who?
Wow... that is a study in how not to design a webpage.
This is why we can't have nice things. Be constructive man.
Sorry, just a bit of frustration over the state of the world in general venting and indeed a bit unhelpful I'll admit. ;-)
What I meant was priority of information on the app pages - what is really important to identify and install the app should be immediately accessible without having to scroll through neat, but low priority data.
Screen-space could also be used more efficiently so scrolling in general is kept to a minimum.
Look at the size of the screenshot area compared to the size of actual screenshots for example or the wastefulness of the enormous 'more'-button in the change-log-section - the hidden information could have already been displayed in the empty wasteland on the upper parts of the page while still looking more tidy and neat.
Advertisers tend to waste space like that a lot these days in order to show off their products, but from a user perspective, these sites are always quite annoying and fatiguing to use. And an App-store with free to use software should probably prioritize user-experience(fast delivery of relevant information and low user workload) first and then worry about making it look appealing as the cherry on top.
As the one that implemented those changes, please post your design docs somewhere where I can evaluate them.
Keep in mind, descriptions can be multiple pages long or not.
Screenshots can exist or not. They will also be big or small, sometimes on the same apps.
Please also make sure it works on widescreens and phones.
2 Likes, Who?
CyborgZeta Apr 22, 2023
Cool. I love Flatpak. My preferred way to install programs on desktop Linux these days, no doubt.
2 Likes, Who?
To be honest, Flatpak is awesome, but in the same time I hate it :P It updates almost every day, especially "org.Freedesktop.Platform", and files for nvidia driver etc. And it is aroud 400-800Mb every time. Daaamn. It's so frustrating, because I have to use the internet which has limited data usage. I know, I don't have to update this, but...So, uh, change your notification settings? Make it only check weekly or bi-weekly.
Of course, I'm the guy that has 0 email notifications enabled at work. Why? I'll check it when I have a good moment to switch cognitive context, which is often enough. I also have all system update notifications disabled at home because I'm so addicted to routine, you can guarantee I'll keep it updated on a regular cadence.
You do you... just a tip.
2 Likes, Who?
pentarctagon Apr 22, 2023
What does it mean to be verified?
0 Likes
Maybe they tried that and saw that nvidia drivers binary file change too much between updates, I dont know.
Flathub doesn't host the nvidia driver so it downloads from nvidia.com every time.
This should change in the future: https://github.com/flathub/org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia/pull/167
1 Likes, Who?
What does it mean to be verified?
It's explained on the about page for now https://flathub.org/about
That's at least the non technical description, if you want the technical one, let me know.
0 Likes
pentarctagon Apr 23, 2023
What does it mean to be verified?
It's explained on the about page for now https://flathub.org/about
That's at least the non technical description, if you want the technical one, let me know.
I think I want the technical description then? What measures are used to determine that "the app is published on Flathub by its original developer or a third party approved by the developer"?
0 Likes
fenglengshun Apr 23, 2023
Nice. Still waiting for Native Host Messaging to progress, and I'm really hoping for that portal for usb-control and communicating with other flatpak apps progresses soon. But Flatpak is pretty nice when it works -- and Nix, Distrobox, and Conty covers up the rest.
Legitimately, I've gotten annoyed whenever I need to install packages to my host system nowadays.
Legitimately, I've gotten annoyed whenever I need to install packages to my host system nowadays.
1 Likes, Who?
fenglengshun Apr 23, 2023
I think I want the technical description then? What measures are used to determine that "the app is published on Flathub by its original developer or a third party approved by the developer"?I think it's domain ownership? Similar to how they base the top level domain in their tld.packager.package format name for flatpak apps.
0 Likes
What does it mean to be verified?
It's explained on the about page for now https://flathub.org/about
That's at least the non technical description, if you want the technical one, let me know.
I think I want the technical description then? What measures are used to determine that "the app is published on Flathub by its original developer or a third party approved by the developer"?
There are three ways right now:
1. Manual
The flathub team verifies the ownership of the app and that will be shown on the website
2. Website
Your flathub has an id for example "tv.kodi.Kodi" we take that and make kodi.tv out of it. Then we ask you to store a specific string we generate at https://kodi.tv/.well-known/org.flathub.VerifiedApps.txt
And we then check that that file exists and contains the generated string
It's similar to verifying a website with google for e.g.
3. Gitlab/Github accounts
Some apps are hosted on gitlab/github, you can login with those as login providers. Which allows us to check, if your account has rights to maintain those repos defined by your app id. For e.g. your app id being "com.github.jmlich.geotagging" would mean, that you need to have access to the repo at https://github.com/jmlich/geotagging
That's what we check via the corresponding apis
2 Likes, Who?
pentarctagon Apr 24, 2023
What does it mean to be verified?
It's explained on the about page for now https://flathub.org/about
That's at least the non technical description, if you want the technical one, let me know.
I think I want the technical description then? What measures are used to determine that "the app is published on Flathub by its original developer or a third party approved by the developer"?
There are three ways right now:
1. Manual
The flathub team verifies the ownership of the app and that will be shown on the website
2. Website
Your flathub has an id for example "tv.kodi.Kodi" we take that and make kodi.tv out of it. Then we ask you to store a specific string we generate at https://kodi.tv/.well-known/org.flathub.VerifiedApps.txt
And we then check that that file exists and contains the generated string
It's similar to verifying a website with google for e.g.
3. Gitlab/Github accounts
Some apps are hosted on gitlab/github, you can login with those as login providers. Which allows us to check, if your account has rights to maintain those repos defined by your app id. For e.g. your app id being "com.github.jmlich.geotagging" would mean, that you need to have access to the repo at https://github.com/jmlich/geotagging
That's what we check via the corresponding apis
Alright, thanks.
For apps hosted on Flathub's github and built from there, is there a way to get verified? In this case https://github.com/flathub/org.wesnoth.Wesnoth - I assume manual verification is only done rarely when specifically needed for some reason so wouldn't be applicable here; we could have the generated string stored on our website, but I don't know where that string can be found; and when I log into Flathub with my github account (which is a repository owner of https://github.com/wesnoth), it shows me as having no authored apps and there's no other options I see either in my Flathub account or on the app page at https://flathub.org/apps/org.wesnoth.Wesnoth.
0 Likes
This new design has automatic dark mode support, unlike the previous design. This makes it a big upgrade alone in my book :)
1 Likes, Who?
What does it mean to be verified?
It's explained on the about page for now https://flathub.org/about
That's at least the non technical description, if you want the technical one, let me know.
I think I want the technical description then? What measures are used to determine that "the app is published on Flathub by its original developer or a third party approved by the developer"?
There are three ways right now:
1. Manual
The flathub team verifies the ownership of the app and that will be shown on the website
2. Website
Your flathub has an id for example "tv.kodi.Kodi" we take that and make kodi.tv out of it. Then we ask you to store a specific string we generate at https://kodi.tv/.well-known/org.flathub.VerifiedApps.txt
And we then check that that file exists and contains the generated string
It's similar to verifying a website with google for e.g.
3. Gitlab/Github accounts
Some apps are hosted on gitlab/github, you can login with those as login providers. Which allows us to check, if your account has rights to maintain those repos defined by your app id. For e.g. your app id being "com.github.jmlich.geotagging" would mean, that you need to have access to the repo at https://github.com/jmlich/geotagging
That's what we check via the corresponding apis
What does it mean to be verified?
It's explained on the about page for now https://flathub.org/about
That's at least the non technical description, if you want the technical one, let me know.
I think I want the technical description then? What measures are used to determine that "the app is published on Flathub by its original developer or a third party approved by the developer"?
There are three ways right now:
1. Manual
The flathub team verifies the ownership of the app and that will be shown on the website
2. Website
Your flathub has an id for example "tv.kodi.Kodi" we take that and make kodi.tv out of it. Then we ask you to store a specific string we generate at https://kodi.tv/.well-known/org.flathub.VerifiedApps.txt
And we then check that that file exists and contains the generated string
It's similar to verifying a website with google for e.g.
3. Gitlab/Github accounts
Some apps are hosted on gitlab/github, you can login with those as login providers. Which allows us to check, if your account has rights to maintain those repos defined by your app id. For e.g. your app id being "com.github.jmlich.geotagging" would mean, that you need to have access to the repo at https://github.com/jmlich/geotagging
That's what we check via the corresponding apis
Alright, thanks.
For apps hosted on Flathub's github and built from there, is there a way to get verified? In this case https://github.com/flathub/org.wesnoth.Wesnoth - I assume manual verification is only done rarely when specifically needed for some reason so wouldn't be applicable here; we could have the generated string stored on our website, but I don't know where that string can be found; and when I log into Flathub with my github account (which is a repository owner of https://github.com/wesnoth), it shows me as having no authored apps and there's no other options I see either in my Flathub account or on the app page at https://flathub.org/apps/org.wesnoth.Wesnoth.
Do you have commit access to https://github.com/flathub/org.wesnoth.Wesnoth if you have, it should show up, when your logged in.
Feel free to open an issue on the websites repo https://github.com/flathub/website/
0 Likes
pleasereadthemanual Apr 25, 2023
Oh, this is much nicer. It's also mostly accessible without Javascript, aside from search, which is an improvement over the original. The descriptions for some programs are very sparse, though, to the point of being completely uninformative, like BetterBird. I wonder if there should be some minimum standard descriptions need to meet.
0 Likes
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me