Basically title.

I’m wondering if a package manager like flatpak comes with any drawback or negatives. Since it just works on basically any distro. Why isn’t this just the default? It seems very convenient.

  • kugmo@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    292·
    5 months ago
    • overly verbose way to launch them in terminal
    • can sometimess not even respect your gtk/qt theming
    • sandboxing/permission system can lead to you trying to figure out which directory you need to give access to when you want to save file if it wasn’t preconfigured
    • uses its own libraries and not system libraries, want to play the hit new AAA game with steam flatpak? get fucked it requires a mesa commit that was merged 8 hours a go and you’re stuck on 23.0.4 and can’t use the git release.

    Flatpak probably has it’s specific uses like trying to use one piece of proprietary software that you don’t trust and don’t want to give it too much access to your system, or most GUI software clients having an easy way to install Discord on your Steam Deck (no terminal usage, Linux is easy yay), but native packages 99% of the time work better.

    • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nlEnglish
      51·
      5 months ago

      The verbosity problem can actually be fixed relatively easily, Flatpak maintains a directory with “exports” you can add to your $PATH to launch binaries directly. A bunch of them export their binaries as com.example.Application (which still beats flatpak run com.example.Application) but others simply export themselves like normal Linux applications.

    • jbk@discuss.tchncs.de
      22·
      5 months ago

      uses its own libraries and not system libraries, want to play the hit new AAA game with steam flatpak? get fucked it requires a mesa commit that was merged 8 hours a go and you’re stuck on 23.0.4 and can’t use the git release.

      Can’t you just install a git snapshot of mesa in a flatpak and use that? Then it’d be an upside