this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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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] 2 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Flatpaks are my second choice when there isn't a recent enough version in the repos. They're fine but take 1. too much storage space, and 2. are usually slower

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

Theoretically I like the idea but in practice too many bugs, too much disk space, not really clear how to change font size for example... and after all that, some apps are not in flatpak. It is not ready for me yet.

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

Flatpaks are okay but they take too much space

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Yeah, I mean, for me it is only a few choice GUI applications that I use flatpaks for.

Still, it is clearly not an optimal solution.

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

I prefer my binary over every other universal packages.

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

I'd rather have 5GB of binaries than deal with unmet dependencies one more time (despite many people claims, it is still easy to fall into), my only criticism for flatpak though, is that any kind of modification for a file requires you to navigate through at least ten directories.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (11 children)

I have been for awhile. It also all exists in my home directory, so when I format my root and throw a different OS on, all my flatpaks are ready to go without installing any native packages. It's just a more consistent experience using flatpaks.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

On my main PC I use for gaming I run Arch and prefer native packages whenever I can use them. I'm quite happy to have this one computer by a hobby project, and native applications just make more sense on something as up to date as Arch when they're available. I have started to prefer Flatpak over AUR packages though. The AUR is pretty overrated, in my opinion.

On my laptop and anything else I install Linux on I usually just use LMDE, and I'll often prefer the Flatpak, just because it's way more up to date. There are some apps that Mint keeps up to date native versions of, and there are some apps that come preinstalled that I just don't care about having the latest version of, but for everything else I usually just download the Flatpak.

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