It’s fine. No real crash/stability issues on the flatpaks I’ve installed. The real downsides are that, yeah, some apps don’t integrate well with the rest of the system either in some functions or theming, due to the sandboxing, and if an app has many or large dependencies it can take up a lot of space compared to a native/repo app and you also may then have more than one copy of those dependencies on your system. That doesn’t usually cause conflicts (a positive side of sandboxing), but it may be a problem on smaller storage devices if you use a lot of flatpaks or need other large apps installed.
You’re using software that’s being continuously developed by people for whom stability of the UI is not a priority. Pointless UI churn is normal. Half-assed solutions kept beyond their best-before date are normal. Windows does this crap too. At least with Linux you have a choice of which issues you’re going to tolerate (or you can pick a DE where UI stability is a priority for the development team).
Don’t like them, they are annoying to deal with - CLI naming is odd, files are stored unintuitively and if your whole system is not on flatpak, chances are the sizes are going to be absurd. One of the main reasons I wen’t with Arch is Pacman + AUR, never have to install a flatpak, because the package management is so good.
I don’t think the size thing is much of an issue these days outside of say IoT or very old computers. Absurd for say a single calculator app to be weighing like a gig or however much Gnome runtime is, but even in that situation it’s not much of an actual problem imo. And once you install anything else using that same runtime, you in a way halved the size of that app.
It’s only really an option for GUI applications which I intend to launch from a GUI which is a real turn-off as a long-time CLI user. I often want to run something like gimp file.ext from the CLI but can’t (easily) with a flatpak.
I also find the permission system gets in the way quite frequently as well. Like I was using some graphics program from a flatpak (I forget which - rawtherapee or maybe digikam) and it could only see certain directories. I get the security restrictions but it was a bit of hoop-jumping to try to figure out how to get that to stop, and in the end I just installed the snap…
I really wish I had a proper portal interface that put a cli tools in my path and asked me if I’m sure I want to give the tool permission to that path (you know because of filesystem separation, obviously don’t ask if it’s already given that permission).
Basically I agree, flatpaks shell interactions are sub par.
They work great on linux tablets such as PineTab2 and rooted Samsung Galaxy tablets running PMOS. Often, games work better via Flatpak than from the distro’s package manager.
One of the pages on the site you’ve linked mentions Debian having Plasma Bigscreen in the package repo, so I imagine you can just download it on anything that runs the right instruction set. (armv7, amd64, etc. I am not sure what the package is built for.)
It sounds like you’d be better off with a DE or WM that isn’t gnome. The GNOME Project has been progressively sticking more and more of the customization features of the DE behind either gnome tweaks or the command line, likely to unify the experience for all users and improve the ability to provide support.
Personally, as far as gnome-based DEs are concerned, I prefer cinnamon, but I’m fine running Mint to just have it come pre-installed. I don’t know what dependencies it pulls in now if you install it standalone from Mint.
I’m using KDE, but my point still stands about both… also, would be nice for newbies if KDE had a few presets when it comes to layout to make the users realise how truly powerful it is
I believe you can install it on anything that supports KDE. PostmarketOS has it as an environment option. I’ve not tried it yet either, but I’m interested in a Linux TV Box alternative as well.
Somebody thought the need for a new package manager was great enough to spend time creating one. That person at least must think it is justified.
We, the users, have not chosen just one of the options to be the standard. Does that “justify” that they all exist?
In the short term, the popularity of Linux is certainly hurt by the complexity of the ecosystem and the lack of standardization. As a product, it would see better adoption of it were more standardized. Without writing a book about why, there is no doubt about this. The short version is that, today, Linux is many products, none of which can compete as effectively as one would and all of them are impaired by the confusion this causes.
In the longer run though, it is almost certainly one of the great strengths of Linux. Linux is many products and as a result, it can target and effectively fill almost every niche. That is going to make it very hard for alternatives to compete at some point. Once Linux knowledge and Linux applications ( yes, I know ) become more mainstream, this compatibility between options becomes a strength. I can have my own operating system that is just the way I want it, but it still runs Docker and Stream ( as examples ).
Think of the cereal aisle at the grocery store. If I want to introduce a new cereal ( or pasta sauce or whatever ), coming up with one that has 10 flavours is not going to work ( without immense marketing muscle ). None of them will sell well enough and probably all of them will get pulled from store shelves. I would be better off launching one. However, once I have a mature market position, I can have not just the regular version but the whole wheat version, the honey nut version, the cinnamon version, the holiday version , etc. They will collectively make each other stronger and all potentially sell well ( again, think pasta sauce flavours if that makes more sense to you ).
This is why there was The Tesla Roadster at first and now there are the Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, and maybe the Cyber Truck.
Linux is not a “product” though. It is an Open Source program. While any given Linux distributor ( distribution ) may think like I outline above, collectively the Linux market is fragmented. Linux is a mix of commercial, community, and individual interests all scratching their own itch.
I am super interested in Chimera Linux right now and fairly negative towards Ubuntu. This makes me part of your problem though. Chimera Linux makes “Linux” less predictable, more confusing, and more frustrating for new and potential users. Pushing everybody to Ubuntu would be a better market strategy. That said, I personally want to use Chimera Linux and, while I say that I want Linux to succeed, I also secretly hope that Ubuntu will fail. Chimera Linux uses a package manager used by only one other Linux ( and in fact they use different, incompatible versions of it so really they are unique ). Clearly, my priorities are mid-aligned with the premise of your question.
So, what does “justified” mean in the Linux space.
i like using bottles & steam flatpaks on debian because they use newer mesa in their containers. so the best of both worlds with stable debian but more updated gaming drivers
Similar reason, with flatpaks having codecs with them so no need for outside the distro codec repo. (Talking about openSUSE here but might be the same for Fedora)
I’ve run both Opensuse Leap and Nixos with good luck. As someone else mentioned, it really just boils down to the wifi adapter being shit… But that aside, everyrhing else seemed to work well for me with leap and nix.
Nvidia breaks on me at least twice a year using Tumbleweed. But… That’s my own fault, as I just update almost daily… And too many times I’ve done an update that breaks nvidia. I can’t speak to this issue with leap, as I’ve not run Leap on my machine with an nvidia card.
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