Linux only package manager that works across distros. It supports sandboxing via bubblewrap, but be cautious because by default most programs in Flathub are not as sandboxed as they should. You can host your own repository but it is heavily centralized towards Flathub, controlled by Red Hat, IBM.
Flatpak uses OSTree to distribute and deploy data. The repositories it uses are OSTree repositories and can be manipulated with the ostree utility. Installed runtimes and applications are OSTree checkouts.
AppImage
You’re basically packaging your program and every single dependency up to the C library. Linux only.
An AppImage is basically a self-mounting disk image that contains an application and everything the application needs to run on the target systems
Canonical’s take at flatpaks. They are quite similar, but snaps use AppArmor instead of bubblewrap and the server is proprietary, so an inferior option and should be avoided. The only “advantage” is that it’s used by default in Ubuntu.
Nix/Guix
multi distro package manager with reproducible builds support, more akin to a traditional package manager (eg apt)
Snappy and Flatpak talk about how they make library versions work better together and blabla and how they solve a lot of issues but that’s just a praetext, the real elephant in the room is that they are a big wink to proprietary software, they were designed for that, they just can’t say it so they focus on other things in their PR statements.
How Nix and Guix work is that they are traditional “package managers” as such the user or the distributor must have access to the source code to compile it into a package, the interesting difference is that it is capable of keeping library versions apart and will automatically share libraries if they are exactly the same. But packaging still occurs downstream, not upstream.
Snappy and Flatpak allow packaging to occur completely upstream at the developers side, which means they no longer have to cough up source code to whomever who will package. Which leads to an inferior solution to the user with far higher memory and storage consumption.
this one is something in between Nix and traditional package managers. It’s main advantage is that it works in other UNIX-like OSs, like FreeBSD, NetBSD, IllumOS as well as in Linux. The only not Linux specific option in this list (other than docker, which is not a package manager but a container)
Docker
I wouldn’t recommend this one, since it requires packaging a whole OS that creates a lot of overhead. And it can be tricky to use with GUI programs.
Overall, I think that Nix/Guix present the most advantages, with Pkgsrc being a less known close second and Flatpak being in the third position due to it’s relative popularity and overall advantages over snaps and docker. Docker might be decent option if it’s a program designed for servers, tho.
I’d also recommend that you add your program to the AUR, because even if it only works on Arch and Arch based distros, it’s incredibly easy to do and maintain as long as the building of your program doesn’t change drastically between versions.
I believe Pkgsrc compiles the program at install, so it’s native. But it’s been a long time since I used it, you might need to look into it.
And you’ll have a hard time finding a “native” package format, because distros have different libraries versions: arch libraries will be much more updated than Debian’s, so things might break trying to execute programs depending on those libraries. That’s why Flatpak, AppImages, Nix, etc bring their own libraries, because if they don’t, things will break.
They are native in the sense that they are Linux executables, but it’s true that they bring their own dependencies, but as I said, that’s necessary for cross distro support.
Nix allows you to download a binary of a proprietary package because every input is hashed. You may need to patch it to work with the correct paths, but these tools already exist.
Begin small, end big. That works for everything when learning something new. So, with that said, go for Linux Mint Cinnamon.
I begun my Linux journey with elementary OS which is more for macOS users. I was a Windows user so I switched to Linux Mint Cinnamon. After a few years of exploring and learning, I am now using EndeavourOS.
Doesn’t the Linux version of Resolve only read/import (or export? I can’t remember) .mov or something that makes it more or less unusable? Has that changed?
Yeah. On Win and Mac, it imports anything. But on Linux, the paid Studio version will import x264/x265 with mp3 or PCM (wav) audio. Not AAC. People don’t like that. Lol
But you’d be insane to edit with these interframe formats. And most commercial editors would auto-convert ingested x264/265 to an intraframe format like Apple ProRes or Avid DNxHR anyway. They’re essentially containers for jpeg or png frames instead of compressing collections of frames. Much easier to scrub the timeline that way, though the files are huge.
On Linux, Resolve (both free and Studio) imports DNxHR with PCM audio and edits that like butter. ffmpeg easily converts prosumer camera x265/aac output to DNxHR. Or Shuttle encoder, if you want a GUI. And most pro cameras output ProRes, ProRes RAW, or DNxHR directly.
Also, Resolve on Linux will ingest all Blackmagic RAW file formats, if you have a Blackmagic camera. And the little BMPCC 4k is still a steal at $1200 or so. As long as you light your subject properly, that little camera shoots gorgeous photography.
Resolve is a pro tool. But a project takes time to set up. For little things, I’d go with Blender’s VSE, which is full featured but has a terrible interface, or kdenlive, which is a Windows Movemaker like toy, but has a normal interface you’d expect from an NLE.
Sadly even Resolve Studio doesn’t support h264 all-intra as used in Sony’s XAVC-I and XAVC-S-I on Linux, which sucks.
With XAVC-I CineEI Slog footage the metadata is enough that Resolve treats it as Raw (in fact, it’s more flexible than braw). So losing this functionality really hurts.
You could use gpu passthrough with iommu and qemu to a virtual system and run Win. A real PITA. I know.
I’d bitch about that on the blackmagic Resolve forum. That’s a serious hit to your workflow. Call out Dwaine, he works there and does Linux support. Nice guy.
I mean, I dunno about you but for me this is money. I make money with these tools. I prefer Linux for privacy reasons, but I’m not religious about it when it comes to money. We all gotta eat.
The Blackmagic folks might help. Especially if you paid for Studio. I don’t work there and can’t make promises, but I’d definitely make a stink about that. At least get a formal statement from them on Sony support in Linux.
My in-house is an old GH5s w/ a Shogun. But if the client pays, I prefer to rent an URSA mini. So I haven’t hit this.
Thanks for the writeup, that’s far more advanced than what I need to do in my work sometimes ^__^ But cool that it looks like there are options on Linux.
I do this for a living. Most people shooting family vids or youtube vlogs/video essays would find Kdenlive perfectly well suited to their needs. It does simple transforms, titling, adjustments, etc. And it looks like a normal NLE. When you hit a wall with it, the move to a commercial program will be easy.
Fusion is what I hate most! Lol I come from Ae and the Adobe suite before I switched. And while I’m comfortable with node based systems, Fusion just isn’t all that compared to all the plug-ins for Ae. Or Blender, which is also fantastic for motion graphics. Fusion does a great job animating titles though.
Resolve requires a whole production pipeline to use it properly. From ingest, organization, cutting, and post for audii, color, and graphics. It’s best suited to broadcast or features. Or, advertising.
There is a pre built distribution, you need to configure binary cache to get it. Refer to the “Substitute for nonguix” section: gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix
Guile and Guix is way better documented than Nix. The language have more features, so you don’t have to use a hack to load packages, can actually know what is accepted in a function instead of blindly copying what others do, and it comes with a formatter.
I think the language is harder but more powerful than Nix’s.
Imo a better manual and examples would help a lot.
I’d say one of the biggest issues is the one with proprietary drivers - you can’t really find examples and guides on how to get drivers working because it’s kept hush-hush, and to install them yourself requires knowledge on how to set things up, knowledge which beginner users don’t have ofc.
I’m a big fan of Guix and Guile but atm I couldn’t switch over due to this.
Are u trying to install on x86 or ARM? ARM has images u can use. As for x86 I didn’t find distro with out of the box bigscreen configured, however there are AUR recipes - makes it easy to use it on Manjaro.
I have an a770. The only issue that I’ve had with what little gaming I do, is that CS2 ran pretty terribly, although I tried again last night and it seemed much better.
Appreciate it. It sounds like with the new announcement they’re putting quite a bit of support behind it so I’m optimistic improvements are made quickly
Intel have just released a driver update to combat this. Its somethimg to do with a transition layer implemetation that has been massively improved giving 500%+ performance boost.
Once x86 macOS became stable around snow leopard I switched from Linux to macOS full time on my mobile machines. For years home brew was a shining light to get a decent tool chain installed to be able to do development. But somewhere around the time they changed to naming macOS releases after places in California, both home brew and macOS started changing in ways that made it harder to maintain a stable development environment. Why and when did it start deciding to upgrade every package I have installed when I try to install a new package? It regularly broke both mine and our developers’ machines and I finally had enough of both. Stay away from home brew if you want your working development environment to continue working 6 months later. It WILL break when you need it most and cost you hours if not days of work to fix. I’ve never ran home brew on Linux but it’s honestly not anything I would ever consider even when it worked well.
Thanks for the insights! Do you know if these issues continue to persist?
Why and when did it start deciding to upgrade every package I have installed when I try to install a new package?
Is this perhaps related to how for most non-LTS distros (but especially on something like Arch) one is recommended to update all packages before installing a new package in hopes of preventing issues related to dependency hell? I don’t know if Homebrew’s model of packaging is similar enough to Linux’ to make sensible comparisons between the two, but this was just something that came up to me as a thought.
Glad I’m not the only one with this question. Feels like it’s difficult to find up-to-date information on the performance of these Arc cards on Linux; I’d like to support Intel’s move into this space but it’s hard without knowing how drastically it’s going to affect my gaming performance. 😅
I’m glad to hear the situation seems to be rapidly improving. I may pick up an A770 yet.
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