this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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Anyone else starting to favor Flatpak over native packages? (lemmy.one)
submitted 1 year ago by DidacticDumbass@lemmy.one to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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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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[–] KindaABigDyl@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 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.

[–] DidacticDumbass@lemmy.one 3 points 1 year ago (1 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.

[–] KindaABigDyl@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The way it feels is like getting the benefits of a source-based distro like Gentoo without the tradeoffs of things like compile times.

[–] DidacticDumbass@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I like this take. I am reading up on how flatpak works, and what seems to be most important is including the dependencies needed to run an application, regardless of what the system has, which is great.

I still need to try out Gentoo one day.... but it seems like Nixos is the new Gentoo?

[–] KindaABigDyl@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Idk about "new Gentoo," as they're going for different things, for sure, but a lot of the reasons people like Gentoo seem to be true for Nix. Definitely still give Gentoo a try some day.

I used it for a few months and only moved on bc compiling was taking too long and was annoying me :)

[–] DidacticDumbass@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

The glory and the strife.

[–] HoukaiAmplifier99@lemmy.fmhy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What's good about AppImages? Imo they're the worst packaging format; you can't install and upgrade them from the command line like with native packages or Flatpaks, there's not a repository-like centralized place for them, they get messy quickly since there's not really an "official" default installation path so it's up to you to keep them organized, they don't integrate with system themes very well and you need a separate program (AppImage Launcher) to even get them to show up as an installed program or even pin them to your taskbar.

[–] KindaABigDyl@programming.dev 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You have outdated information. There are no longer any tradeoffs to AppImages:

  1. Yes there is no "official" default installation path, but like how XDG_DATA_PATH isn't technically a standard but practically it is, the de-facto standard is ~/Applications now, and most AppImage-based tools respect that.
  2. They integrate fine with the system. Better than Flatpack and Snap, actually. I've had lots of issues with flatpaks not respecting themes, but never AppImages. Not sure where you got that from.
  3. I solved the other problem with AppImages with a package manager I wrote. Centralized location pointing to AppImage urls, and it downloads and keeps them updated. And no, you don't need to write your own, there are multiple AppImage package managers out there.

On the flip side, there's no weird extra locations like how flatpak installs apps, you know exactly where the program is in case you want to launch it manually, you can mix apps available in your package manager with ones you download directly seamlessly, no dependency hell or version problems as AppImages are self contained (even multiple versions at the same time), etc, etc, etc all the benefits people spout about AppImages.

AppImages imo are the superior cross-platform package format as there are no tradeoffs and no downsides, meanwhile:

  • Snaps are slow and proprietary
  • Flatpaks suck to create and maintainers select-all on sanboxing, defeating the purpose, so it's a complicated mess for no reason, and they also have bad theming that never works half the time.