Quoting: legluondunetYou still need a root password to install Flatpak applications

Only if you want to install it as a system-wide package.

You can install it in your user with the --user option.

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Quoting: DogsRNiceHow easy would it be to switch to the new one if the old one quits being updated? Especially with steam shortcuts to run ISOs

Dolphin is just adopting the current package in an official capacity. Despite there being issues with the app name preventing verification, Flathub admins will manually verify it and allow them to keep the same app name, meaning no disruption to users.

They're also attempting to publish their own build artifacts directly to Flathub (doesn't matter much to users), but we'll see how that goes.

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Quoting: rustynailIirc I've read that if you update a flatpak app while it's running, there is a guarantee that the running app will not actually see any changes and they're only really applied on restart. So it's safe to update firefox for instance, while updating a native package will cause new firefox tabs to start crashing, at least sometimes.

Yeah, that makes sense. Each Firefox update is an entirely new commit with a new sandbox.

So technically Flatpak guarantees fewer disruptions than native Firefox!

Quoting: rustynailmy recent VM experiments with Ubuntu have been pretty weird. Broken appstore self-updates are still there on fresh install, but maybe 24.04.1 will actually fix that.

I have honestly never had a good experience with Ubuntu. I tried to install 23.10 on hardware and the installer just failed the first time and I needed to start again. And I couldn't install updates in Jammy Jellyfish.

But in principle, Snap and Ubuntu have potential.

Quoting: rustynailFlatpak also adds some intersting features, for instance if you want to play a game with bleeding edge drivers in case they happen to include some fix for a game you're trying to play, you can run stable Steam flatpak with mesa-git flatpak, and it's way safer and easier than actually installing mesa-git on your system.

Yeah, this is great. Codecs too. I assume you could do the same in Snap.

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Proton is amazing.

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Quoting: redneckdrowThe best thing an experienced Linux user can do to save their sanity is to bite the bullet and go Linux-only. Unless you're required to work with Windows-only tools, of which there are very few that won't work in WINE these days, for a job.

99% of the time I'm in Linux. The 1% of the time is every Saturday to play Rainbow Six: Siege, and I doubt that's going to change any time soon.

For my job, I use my Mac for Adobe. Once its time is up, I'll either use Adobe on Windows through my dual-boot (it'll be Windows 11 by then...) or in a VM as the performance is passable and I only need it on occasion. Or maybe by 2027, the web versions of Adobe software will be a real option. Or maybe graphite.rs will be a real option.

There are also visual novels that only work in Windows mainly because of DRM, so my VM gets occasional use for that.

I mean, unpopular opinion and all, but I don't mind Windows; I just like Linux more. Probably because I only need to use Windows occasionally. The more experienced I get with Linux, the more useless I feel on Windows.

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Haven't noticed anything. I think Secure Boot is disabled for me, so that's why.

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Quoting: BeemerCanonical could have made snap universal when it came out. Nope - Initially bound to Ubuntu. I can't seem to find a definitive "Snap was announced/started at <somedate>" but it at least looks to have started about the same time as Flatpak and wasn't updated for use by other distro's until 2016 - A year after Flatpak released. Snap is still going, but if they had released it initially for all/any distro, would Flatpak have been needed?

I'm a little fuzzy on the details here.

My understanding is that Snap requires kernel patches mainly related to AppArmor. Even without those patches, the new Snap confinement (there are two versions IIRC) will work on all distributions but it's not very secure.

Canonical has been trying to upstream those patches for a few years now. That's the issue with cross-distro compatibility, right?

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Quoting: kaiman- Want to update your browser while it's running? Tough luck! (Never noticed that issue with the .debs.)

I'm going to have to beg to differ on this one, at least with regard to Firefox.

Also, as someone who has never really used Snaps, I've never seen this behavior happen with Flatpak.

Quoting: kaiman- Want the snap store to update itself? Again, tough luck! (Can be done from the command line.)

I think they've finally fixed that. That really annoyed me too.

Quoting: kaiman- Want to use extensions with a native component? Finally can do that again! (Took only two years to sort it out.)

I don't understand this one—extensions for what?

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I'm looking forward to an Atomic Ubuntu comprised entirely of Snaps. That might be a reason for me to come back to the distribution one day. The potential for a completely Snappy Ubuntu is beyond a completely Flat Fedora given the current state of Flatpaks and Snaps. Silverblue is a kind of clunky experience where you need to know what you're doing and how parts of the system interact, and I'm sorry for saying this, but I really think Toolbx is a kludge. With a Snapified Ubuntu, CLI tools are first-class citizens and you can even get development toolchains in Snap: https://users.rust-lang.org/t/rust-as-a-snap-package-for-several-linux-distributions/13463

That has the potential to be a really user-friendly and unified experience. You can interact with Snap packages using Apt so you don't even need to learn another tool. The downsides, as we've seen, seem to be compatibility issues like with Steam. As we've seen with the Steam snap, these issues will go away over time.

Many big developers like Jetbrains and Microsoft decide to use Snapcraft to distribute their applications on Linux. I can only imagine this will get bigger over time. This isn't a loss for Flatpak because Snaps can be unraveled and re-packaged as Flatpaks too.

And if they could upstream the kernel patches for Snaps so they're properly compatible/secure on all distributions, that would be great! This is the primary reason I don't use Snaps; I don't use Ubuntu with a patched kernel. If the patch series gets upstreamed, then I could have a real opinion on Snaps.

Just to add some more dissent to this thread

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QuoteAfter the absolute disaster that was the Borderlands movie

A friend told me it wasn't that bad; it was "fine" :P

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Quoting: ElectricPrismRight, FOSS typically has tangible constructive criticism even if albeit sometimes short, krass & kurt, or even the occasional wall of text analysis -- again honest feedback intended for a constructive purpose.

I think entitlement in open source from non-developers is more widespread than you say.

Though that attitude is more normalized in the world of Windows and macOS.

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