• ayaya@lemdro.idEnglish
      01·
      5 months ago

      For me on Arch, Flatpaks are kinda useless. I can maybe see the appeal for other distros but Arch already has up-to-date versions of everything and anything that’s missing from the main repos is in the AUR.

      I also don’t like how it’s a separate package manager, they take up more space, and to run things from the CLI it’s flatpak run com.website.Something instead of just something. It’s super cumbersome compared to using normal packages.

  • biribiri11@lemmy.ml
    1·
    5 months ago

    To everyone saying you can’t mirror a flatpak repo… you’re absolutely right. There should be a far easier way to set up your own mirror without needing to build everything from scratch. That being said, if you wanted to try to make your own repo with every one of flathub’s apps, here you go:

    https://github.com/flathub

    https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/hosting-a-repository.html

    Edit: Some did get a flathub mirror working. The issue is that a. Fastly works good enough and b. There is no concept of “packages” on the server side. It’s just one big addressed content store because of ostree, and syncing is apparently difficult? Idk, not being able to sync the state of content is like the entire point of ostree…

    https://github.com/flathub/flathub/issues/813

  • theshatterstone54@feddit.uk
    0·
    5 months ago

    North Korea: 316 downloads

    Interesting…

    In all seriousness, in both my home country and the country I live in, the number of downloads surpasses the population numbers which is kinda insane.

    • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
      1·
      5 months ago

      I think they count every download of every package, every version, every time. It’s not the number of unique users or even packages.

      If you install 3 apps you might need to download 3 versions of graphics driver, 3 versions of desktop environment libraries and so on, It won’t count as one user installing 3 apps, it will show up as 10 -20 downloads. And that’s just the initial install, every time you update them it counts another 10-20.

  • JRaccoon@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    Sorry to ask, I’m not really familiar with Linux desktop nowadays: I’ve seen Flatpak and Flathub talked about a lot lately and it seems to be kinda a controversial topic. Anyone wanna fill me in what’s all the noice about? It’s some kind of cross-distro “app store” thingy?

    • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml
      1·
      5 months ago

      Flatpak is a universal application packaging standard for Linux. It allows devs to create a single application that gets bundled with all necessary dependencies including versioning.

      These apps run in their own semi-isolated “container” which makes immutable distros possible. (Distros like Fedora Silverblue that are effectively impossible to break by installing or removing critical system files.)

      This means that a Linux app doesn’t have to have a .deb version, an .rpm version, or be pre-compiled for any other distros. A user can simply go to Flathub, (the main repository for Flatpak apps), download the flatpak, and install it on their distro of choice.

      It’s quickly becoming the most popular way for users to install apps on Linux because it’s so easy and quick. But there are a few downsides like size on disk, first party verification, per-distro optimizations, and the centralization of application sources. That’s why some users aren’t fully endorsing or embracing how popular they are becoming.

      • JRaccoon@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        0·
        5 months ago

        Cool, thanks for the explanation.

        a single application that gets bundled with all necessary dependencies including versioning

        Does that mean that if I were to install Application A and Application B that both have dependency to package C version 1.2.3 I then would have package C (and all of its possible sub dependencies) twice on my disk? I don’t know how much external dependencies applications on Linux usually have but doesn’t that have the potential to waste huge amounts of disk space?

        • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml
          0·
          5 months ago

          Essentially yes, if you start using lots if older applications or mixing applications that use many different dependency versions, you will start to use lots of extra disk space because the different apps have to use their own separate dependency trees and so forth.

          This doesn’t mean it will be like 2x-3x the size as traditional packages, but from what I’ve seen, it could definitely be 10-20% larger on disk. Not a huge deal for most people, but if you have limited disk space for one reason or another, it could be a problem.

          • brachypelmasmithi@lemm.ee
            0·
            5 months ago

            It CAN get pretty wild sometimes, though. For example, Flameshot (screenshotting utility) is only ~560KB as a system package, while its flatpak version is ~1.4GB (almost 2.5k times as big)

            • j0rge@lemmy.ml
              1·
              5 months ago

              Flameshot is 3.6MB on disk according to flatpak info org.flameshot.Flameshot

              • brachypelmasmithi@lemm.ee
                1·
                5 months ago

                Weird, the software manager (using LM 21.3) reports 1.1GB dl, 2.4GB installed (which is different from when i checked yesterday for some reason?). flatpak install reports around 2.1GB of dependencies and the package itself at just 1.3MB

                EDIT: nvm im stupid, the other reply explains the discrepancy

  • ssm@lemmy.sdf.org
    0·
    5 months ago

    Flatpak’s usecase for me is Alpine Linux and other distributions that use musl or other libc implementations. I don’t love it, I think its cli interface and the way you add flatpak servers to be obtuse and annoying, but it is useful for getting glibc dependent software.

        • TCB13@lemmy.worldEnglish
          01·
          5 months ago

          Unmirrorable

          Yes, unlike apt repositories, it wasn’t designed to be mirrored around, run isolated servers etc.

          • Zyratoxx@lemm.ee
            1·
            5 months ago

            Flatpak was designed to be decentralised, Flathub is just the main repository offering flatpaks and yes, probably 99% of all Flatpak applications are downloaded via the main repo but it is technically possible to just launch your own if you are unhappy with the main repo. The Flatpak team literally has this info page for hosting a repository

            I for example, am taking AAGL from their own flatpak repo because they are not offering their launcher via the main one (even tho they also tell you to link the main repo - I guess for dependency reasons - but theoretically you could open your own repo and throw all dependency related packages in there or am I getting something wrong here)

  • mlg@lemmy.worldEnglish
    01·
    5 months ago

    I’m gonna be honest I’ve never had a flatpak version of something ever work properly.

    There was even one popular media player that only came in flatpak form or otherwise build from source.

    So obviously, for no reason at all, it barely functioned compared to other applications I had already tried.

    Congrats to you people put there somehow running things like Steam with no problems lmao.

  • fireshell@lemmy.mlEnglish
    01·
    5 months ago

    It is noteworthy that builds of Chrome, VLC, Dolphin, Steam and Spotify are created by third-party enthusiasts not associated with the main projects.

    What great news, that’s why there is no trust in Flathub.