Flathub now has over one million active users

It's great to see that probably the best packaging format is getting more and more popular, while AppImage isn't going that far. I mean, it's good too, but lacks a way to easily manage them and, ironically, has some problems with the dependencies built inside the package.

I hope Flatpak grows even stronger, because it is one of the main reasons Linux is being able to thrive too.

Quick and extremly dirty math:

There are 8 billion ppl out there, lets say 4 billion of them have access to internet on a PC, and Linux has a 2% user base, that means 80 million ppl useing Linux. If that is true, then comparatively the 1 million users of Flathub is suprisingly low.

Quick and extremly dirty math:

There are 8 billion ppl out there, lets say 4 billion of them have access to internet on a PC, and Linux has a 2% user base, that means 80 million ppl useing Linux. If that is true, then comparatively the 1 million users of Flathub is suprisingly low.

Even more surprisingly low given that recent figures I've seen here at GoL suggest Linux usage at significantly higher than 2% (general use, not gaming). On the other hand, it may well be that some distros grab some Flatpaks from Flathub and put them in their own repositories, so that when you download the Flatpak from your distro's own get-software-thingie you aren't a "user of Flathub" but you are indirectly depending on Flathub. So, Flathub's influence could be quite a bit broader than the 1 million figure suggests.

On the other, other hand, Ubuntu uses Snaps (although some of its derivatives don't), and it's pretty popular.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 26 Jan 2024 at 5:14 pm UTC

I'm glad Flathub is successful, it's great and I wish them all kinds of good fortune. That number of active users does seem terribly low, but it can only go up!

I always try to use the packages in my distro's repo but Flatpak has become my go to when that's not a viable option. AppImage isn't bad either.

I always try to use the packages in my distro's repo but Flatpak has become my go to when that's not a viable option. AppImage isn't bad either.

This, repo first, flatpack next :)

I always try to use the packages in my distro's repo but Flatpak has become my go to when that's not a viable option. AppImage isn't bad either.

I'm the opposite. With the exception of tools like my file manager, archiver, partition manager, etc., I grab all my programs as Flatpaks from Flathub.

Flathub has served just about 1.6 billion downloads, has over 2,400 apps

Very impressive, congratulations to @all. The quality of FOSS on the store is great, and while predicting the future is hard -- I am modestly optimistic about their efforts to make a commercial area of the store someday.

Similar to the debate when Proton was first announced, I think that such a development would have a net-positive effect and we could start getting commercial developers income so we can improve Linux' image to commercial developers and get ourselves some great pro-tools.

I happened to be on FlatHub searching the chatapps the other day and it's really great to have such a resource to discover new leads. Long gone is the day of browsing text entries on synapsis on ubuntu and wondering what each package was or even if it was actively developed.

Flathub has served just about 1.6 billion downloads, has over 2,400 apps

Very impressive, congratulations to @all. The quality of FOSS on the store is great, and while predicting the future is hard -- I am modestly optimistic about their efforts to make a commercial area of the store someday.

I've long thought that one of the most potentially important things about Flatpaks is about closed, mostly non-game software. That stuff can't be packaged by your distro, so the ability for vendors to build their stuff in a fairly easy, pretty solid, distro-agnostic way could go a long way towards reducing complaints about Linux fragmentation.

I have to say, flatpak is painless compared to snaps. Snaps tend to have a noticeable impact on performance. I finally had to switch my aging laptop (RAM and storage are at a premium on that thing) to something not Ubuntu-based for a sane out-of-the-box Firefox (and yes, I do like Green Eggs and Ham) install.

[...] to something not Ubuntu-based for a sane out-of-the-box Firefox

Just a reminder that Ubuntu-based does not automatically mean Snaps. Mint's native Firefox package is sane and up to date.

Mint's native Firefox package is sane and up to date

Ubuntu proper is very easy to de-snap too.
But to be honest most users don't care, or simply don't know, if they're using snaps/flatpacks or not.

Flathub has served just about 1.6 billion downloads, has over 2,400 apps

Very impressive, congratulations to @all. The quality of FOSS on the store is great, and while predicting the future is hard -- I am modestly optimistic about their efforts to make a commercial area of the store someday.

I've long thought that one of the most potentially important things about Flatpaks is about closed, mostly non-game software. That stuff can't be packaged by your distro, so the ability for vendors to build their stuff in a fairly easy, pretty solid, distro-agnostic way could go a long way towards reducing complaints about Linux fragmentation.

It is this! Flatpak shouldn't be used to replace the distributuion software. The reason why is that it is tightly integrated and you will have security updates and bug reports you can send to your distro. The vast majority if Flatpaks are not officially packaged by the upstream project, and cannot be easily verified they haven't been messed with.

[...] to something not Ubuntu-based for a sane out-of-the-box Firefox

Just a reminder that Ubuntu-based does not automatically mean Snaps. Mint's native Firefox package is sane and up to date.

Yes, but Mint deliberately ignoring security updates and shipping packages years out of date irks me. It's why I switched to Arch on my desktop in '14.

Ubuntu proper is very easy to de-snap too.
But to be honest most users don't care, or simply don't know, if they're using snaps/flatpacks or not.

Well, the last time I tried using the PPA and forcing the .deb for Firefox (disabling the snap entirely by pinning the package first) it still managed to reinstall itself and auto-update. That was the last straw!

Especially since it broke my profile when I copied it and edited profiles.ini as usual. Fortunately, that's why I keep backups.

An OS should not make assumptions about the competency of the user; that's one of the main reasons I ditched Windows! Anything that updates itself in the background, without asking for input, is tantamount to a benign rootkit.

The recent Tales & Tactics malicious update in Steam, thanks to their discord being compromised, is a good reason why updates should be checked before install. Admittedly, the devs fixed that pretty quickly, before the Winter update. Thank God I checked the forum when I couldn't find release notes at the time.

Flathub has served just about 1.6 billion downloads, has over 2,400 apps

Very impressive, congratulations to @all. The quality of FOSS on the store is great, and while predicting the future is hard -- I am modestly optimistic about their efforts to make a commercial area of the store someday.

I've long thought that one of the most potentially important things about Flatpaks is about closed, mostly non-game software. That stuff can't be packaged by your distro, so the ability for vendors to build their stuff in a fairly easy, pretty solid, distro-agnostic way could go a long way towards reducing complaints about Linux fragmentation.

It is this! Flatpak shouldn't be used to replace the distributuion software. The reason why is that it is tightly integrated and you will have security updates and bug reports you can send to your distro. The vast majority if Flatpaks are not officially packaged by the upstream project, and cannot be easily verified they haven't been messed with.

Why can't they be verified? And how can you verify a distro package?

Flathub has served just about 1.6 billion downloads, has over 2,400 apps

Very impressive, congratulations to @all. The quality of FOSS on the store is great, and while predicting the future is hard -- I am modestly optimistic about their efforts to make a commercial area of the store someday.

I've long thought that one of the most potentially important things about Flatpaks is about closed, mostly non-game software. That stuff can't be packaged by your distro, so the ability for vendors to build their stuff in a fairly easy, pretty solid, distro-agnostic way could go a long way towards reducing complaints about Linux fragmentation.

It is this! Flatpak shouldn't be used to replace the distributuion software. The reason why is that it is tightly integrated and you will have security updates and bug reports you can send to your distro. The vast majority if Flatpaks are not officially packaged by the upstream project, and cannot be easily verified they haven't been messed with.

Why can't they be verified? And how can you verify a distro package?

The answer is(ofcourse) multiple ways.
The GNU, Linux, bsd, FOSS, etc. security model is build heavily on source code availability and subsequent peer review.
One way to verify is with reproducible builds. Build a package the advised way and hash it and compare it to the hash of the binary package.

A second way is with signature checks. This could work given that you've a party that you trust to produce a trustworthy indication of which developers produce trustworthy proprietary code. This is uncommon under developers of FOSS associated projects(self selecting), so there aren't a lot of tools for it. Also it is hard to generalize, because that trust is a lot more variable in a world of a thousand distros than one Microsoft/Sony/Apple.
This is how basic distro security works. The distro maintainer signs their package and you check if the signature matches theirs. This doesn't work, because distro maintainers have no way to distinguish modified proprietary packages from non-modified ones and because they simply never trust proprietary packages.

A third way is with self compiling and source code checks(this is how the distro maintainers do it themselves).


Last edited by LoudTechie on 27 Jan 2024 at 9:02 pm UTC

Quick and extremly dirty math:

There are 8 billion ppl out there, lets say 4 billion of them have access to internet on a PC, and Linux has a 2% user base, that means 80 million ppl useing Linux. If that is true, then comparatively the 1 million users of Flathub is suprisingly low.

not everyone has an computer, we have a bunch of people who are slaves, un employeed, have an low income/live in a country where everything is freaking expensive, hell some people barely have even water of food.
i saw the number of people who had windows computer some time ago and it was about 1.5 billions , agains 2.3 of android devices.
a few time later i saw the number 1.8billion of windows computers against 3 billions android devices, iOS is arround 700 million or 1 bi.
(the reason why i quoted the number of windows and android devices twice is because the first number was from the same date, the cecound 1.8 bi, 3bi is from different dates so its hard to compare)


if we count the linux marketshare as 1~2% then, microsoft is suppose to have betwen 45 and 90 more people than that.
in other words, linux may have something arround 20 or 40 millions of users.

lets make another guess:
according to statcounter, windows has 72.79%, linux 3.82%, chromeOS 2.42% and there is 4.61% of unknow devices, lets assume they are linux devices for the sake of being optimistic, lets also count chromeOS, if those 72.79% are windows devices, ahd those 10,85% count as linux...
assuming we have 1.8 billions of windows computers out there, this means: 268 millions.
i doubt that is the real number.
an more likely scenario, those 4.61% are windows devices that for some reason didnt got count.
that means: 77,4% of marketshare for windows (1.8 bi devices) 6.24% of marketshare for linux (145 millions of devices)
now, looking at it, that is an impressive number, if we ignore chromebook, about 88 million people are tech savy enough to swap the OS that came with their computer.

Btw im completely ignoring dualbooters, and im considering that the number of windows device is fixed, wich probably inst the case , linux growing in share generally means either an dual booter or someone who stoped using windows wich we should substract from the 1.8 bi.

being more realistic now, i think the most likely scenario is 1.8 billions of computers (not windows computers), 74,4% of marketshare for windows (or more likely stat counter is broken) so we have... ok im tired of math...
1.3 billions of windows devices against 112 millions of linux devices (68 million install by thenselves the rest are chromebooks)


Last edited by elmapul on 27 Jan 2024 at 10:41 pm UTC

Quick and extremly dirty math:

There are 8 billion ppl out there, lets say 4 billion of them have access to internet on a PC, and Linux has a 2% user base, that means 80 million ppl useing Linux. If that is true, then comparatively the 1 million users of Flathub is suprisingly low.

not everyone has an computer, we have a bunch of people who are slaves, un employeed, have an low income/live in a country where everything is freaking expensive, hell some people barely have even water of food.
i saw the number of people who had windows computer some time ago and it was about 1.5 billions , agains 2.3 of android devices.
a few time later i saw the number 1.8billion of windows computers against 3 billions android devices, iOS is arround 700 million or 1 bi.
(the reason why i quoted the number of windows and android devices twice is because the first number was from the same date, the cecound 1.8 bi, 3bi is from different dates so its hard to compare)


if we count the linux marketshare as 1~2% then, microsoft is suppose to have betwen 45 and 90 more people than that.
in other words, linux may have something arround 20 or 40 millions of users.

lets make another guess:
according to statcounter, windows has 72.79%, linux 3.82%, chromeOS 2.42% and there is 4.61% of unknow devices, lets assume they are linux devices for the sake of being optimistic, lets also count chromeOS, if those 72.79% are windows devices, ahd those 10,85% count as linux...
assuming we have 1.8 billions of windows computers out there, this means: 268 millions.
i doubt that is the real number.
an more likely scenario, those 4.61% are windows devices that for some reason didnt got count.
that means: 77,4% of marketshare for windows (1.8 bi devices) 6.24% of marketshare for linux (145 millions of devices)
now, looking at it, that is an impressive number, if we ignore chromebook, about 88 million people are tech savy enough to swap the OS that came with their computer.

Btw im completely ignoring dualbooters, and im considering that the number of windows device is fixed, wich probably inst the case , linux growing in share generally means either an dual booter or someone who stoped using windows wich we should substract from the 1.8 bi.

being more realistic now, i think the most likely scenario is 1.8 billions of computers (not windows computers), 74,4% of marketshare for windows (or more likely stat counter is broken) so we have... ok im tired of math...
1.3 billions of windows devices against 112 millions of linux devices (68 million install by thenselves the rest are chromebooks)

Also not everyone who uses faltpack, uses flathub.
In the end flathub is just one repo.
The biggest one yes, but not the only one.

I went from a flatpak vocal sceptic to a regular user and supporter. I like having that much non-free modern software at hand. Can't find where I can support flathub monetarily though. The repo maintainers deserve our full support.

Btw don't get me wrong, I would probably still rather have all this software available as a centralized Debian repository :P Since that is not possible, flatpak and flathub works nicely.