this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023

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Anyone else starting to favor Flatpak over native packages? (lemmy.one)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I am currently using Linux Mint (after a long stint of using MX Linux) after learning it handles Nvidia graphics cards flawlessly, which I am grateful for. Whatever grief I have given Ubuntu in the past, I take it back because when they make something work, it is solid.

Anyways, like most distros these days, Flatpaks show up alongside native packages in the package manager / app store. I used to have a bias towards getting the natively packed version, but these days, I am choosing Flatpaks, precisely because I know they will be the latest version.

This includes Blender, Cura, Prusaslicer, and just now QBittorrent. I know this is probably dumb, but I choose the version based on which has the nicer icon.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

i avoided flatpacks before.
but now that i tried out silverblue and had to rely heavily on them,
i have to admit that flatpacks are not nearly as bad as i thought.

the only issues i encountered are with steam (might not start propperly on first launch)
and with ides(terminal starts inside the sandbox)

other than that it works great.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I use system packages for everything unless I need a newer version of a specific package for some reason.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I was using Flatpak and Toolbx exclusively until I discovered Nix. It's much better than using those two.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I use flatpaks mostly. Flatpak dependencies (runtimes) are stored separately from the host system so and don't bloat my system with unwanted libraries and binaries. App data and configs are stored separately and better organized. Everything runs in sanboxes. I use overrides extensively. All these are very convenient for me.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I didn’t like them before I used flatseal. Now I love them.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

I prefered AppImages, but now that I'm on Nix, I've gone back to native. Native packages work well in the NixOS ecosystem.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (4 children)

For sure certain package managers are better than others, and NIX seems to be in a class of its own.

I don't know how much time I am willing to invest in NIX, or Guix for that scheme power, but I can do myself a favor experiment with a few VMs.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

In place of snap OF COURSE.

I can state without any doubt that i had problems with 80% of the programs coming from snap..

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Definitely not me. I am on LiveUSB right now which makes my disk volume limited. And native packaging satisfies my needs (even when packages are old)

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

For me the perfect example is GNOME Builder (I use KDE Plasma) but this package has it all. No, you dont need to download any dependencies, the sandbox handles it all!

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I haven't used any flatpacks, mostly because they don't seem to have a good solution for running terminal programs. (Also I don't like that the application developer chooses the permissions to expose rather than the user.

However, I have been using bubblewrap which is what flatpack uses under the hood to sandbox. This allows me to run both gui and non-gui programs, and I have the control of exposing the minimum required permissions that I'm comfortable giving an untrusted piece of software.

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