A community for everything relating to the GNU/Linux operating system (except the memes!)
Also, check out:
Original icon base courtesy of lewing@isc.tamu.edu and The GIMP
Flatpak makes more sense for how Valve will be using it for all their new devices. Simple as that.
They "shit" money into ALL kinds of development that pushed lots of projects forward a decade in maybe a years time, and are doing it again with FEX. Are you taking issue with allmof that, or just this because they have a business use-case?
A: It's not my blog
B: The author's point was that Flatpak solves a lot of pain points for developers on Linux with distribution that Appimage doesn't, and package managers certainly don't, and that if there's going to be companies like Valve and Redhat that are going all-in on that method, it would benefit the Linux ecosystem that's currently driving away developers in droves with fragmentation to consider that.
Personally I like Appimage for just being able to grab a file and run it, and I integrate Gear Lever updates by building my own repackaging infra to keep projects that use it updating via Gear Lever's Update All button. But I can completely commiserate with the idea that it isn't very useful for most users to have to come up with things like that themselves when Flatpak is easily integrated with Discover and other packagekit software updaters.
it would benefit the Linux ecosystem that's currently driving away developers in droves with fragmentation to consider that.
As an old GenX who grew up with BBSs, Fidonet and dialup shell accounts so I'm probably missing something...
Where are the Linux developers being driven in droves to exactly?
We've always had nix fragmentation, that's the nature of FOSS.
Teach this old gramps what he doesn't understand.
You would figure that most developers would just work on the platform that gives them the tools to do what they do most easily. Yet the amount that won't use Linux and instead seemingly cripple themselves by developing on Mac or Windows frankly astounds me. But I'm also very used to Linux' pain points, having used it since the 90s. If I only every got my software with an .exe or .dmg download, I'd probably shy away as well.
I couldn't imagine working with Docker Desktop or WSL, or depending on Brew to have everything I need, but that's the reality for many, because it's familiar and simple. The underlying operating system is abstracted away so they don't have to deal with it, and sticking their nose in Linux is scary and confusing, especially if you're expected to deal with the panoply of installation methods available to your software. When I dealt with Windows in the long-long ago, you built a MSinstaller package and went on your merry way.
And if you look at new developers today, do you think they'd put up with RBBS for a minute if that's how they got their software out?
In my experience fragmentation of Linux is not at all why people
cripple themselves by developing on Mac or Windows
I don't really get the point of the blog, honestly, because in the first part they are railing against one angle, then reverse and argue FOR it in a sense by saying Flatpak just works. Of course it does. That's it's job.
AppImage also just works, but there is a fundamental difference in the delta of what you get as a payload. AppImage has EVERYTHING the image needs to run. Flatpaks only contain the running code and custom dependencies, then it's manager solves for shared libraries and generics from commonly available layers to download and run to solve for those deps.
Both make sense depending on how you feel you need to tackle the problem.
Where the author kid of goes off the rails is complaining that somehow either camp is somehow responsible for their product being popular enough to survive and be taken up by Valve. In this specific case, Valve is intending to include simple packaging for games and libraries they intend to ship to millions of cross platform devices. Flatpak makes sense from a bandwidth and storage standpoint for end-users.
AppImage does not. No idea why this person is taking issue with that.
I think their point, in the first part at least before going off on ideology, is that appimage makes things a lot harder for developers. At least I think that's their point, the rantiness makes it hard to distinguish technical points from the idealogical...
Flatpak makes sense from a bandwidth and storage standpoint for end-users.
While flatpaks "share" dependencies, different flatpaks depend on different flatpak runtimes and even different versions of the same runtime, so it is actually the least efficient way to ship software.
https://pkgforge-dev.github.io/Anylinux-AppImages/disk-usage-vs-flatpak.html
An example:
Application Payload = 100MB AppImage all inclusive image with deps = 175MB Flatpak App Layer = 101MB Flatpak Deps = 75MB
Now say you're shipping 1000's of similar applications with the same general dependency chains in bulk operations to things like end-user devices.
Flatpak wins. That's the point.
This isn't a discussion about an average Desktop user saving some disk space.
If you talking about the infrastructure cost, then yeah it flatpak would be 'better'. since all your users would use the same runtime and you only have to ship the binary.
But this only makes sense for the first time the user downloads the application, because it turns out appimage can do delta updates just like flatpak lol
In practice not even the first point is true btw, a lot of flatpaks often ship bundled in dependencies (due to having compat issues with the flaptak runtime), so the donwload size of the .flatpak alone is similar or bigger than the one of the appimage.
🤣
My gawd. The hoops you jump through. Just take the L and walk on, slugger.
Didn't know that measuring and comparing means I'm jumping thru hoops.
the Linux ecosystem that’s currently driving away developers in droves with fragmentation to consider that.
I am very skeptical of this. Exactly which developers are being driven away "in droves" because of packaging system differences? If you want to make a case for that assertion, you're going to have to identify them, so they can be counted.
If it turns out that there are many developers who think like this, someone ought to let them know that they don't have to package open-source software for every distro out there in order to reach all the major distros. Just package it for one, or even none, and let package maintainers do their thing.
Or, are you talking about proprietary software? That would be a different discussion.
Even if maintainers wouldn't just package stuff themselves. How many formats do you need to cover 95% of the eco system? More than 3?
What's the TL;DR version of this?
I read it twice and it still doesn't make sense
tldr:
flatpak - good
linux people arguing over other ways to package and distribute - bad
I see. I'm generally a fan of Flatpak even though I still think it has some drawbacks. I think it's good to have alternatives though, because I don't want to be stuck in its ecosystem if the people behind it decide to take it in a stupid direction.
TL;DR: Tribalism bad. I'm sure you've heard it before but it really needs repeating.
Most saddening of all is that the legitimate and valid communal focused ideology that the old guard purports to hold up - is actually being lived and expressed by the corporations those same people would argue are capturing the ecosystem. The guys out there with big Che Guevara energy are the real ones building and perpetuating a misery machine fueled by your ideology and nothing else. [...]
This is incontrovertible fact you can only fail to see if, to you, Linux is not the democratization of technology but instead the intimate satisfaction of init scripts sliding up your butthole in just the right way.
You cannot ever lose sight of who we as technologists are here to serve. Moms who don't know or care what the hell an init system is. Normal gamers who just want to chill and play Overwatch with their friends. Young children inspired by the genuinely good ideas of our forefathers that this ideological nonsense eventually will scare out of the community. That's the real loss behind all this. Every time you succumb to the fragmentation of the Linux ecosystem and tell some poor clueless kid that can't run a bash script yet that he should run Mint on his gaming desktop because it's "stable" - that's one more person that inevitably decides we're all fucking crazy and never comes back and spends the rest of their lives telling everyone they know that Linux is hard and confusing when it hasn't been either of those things for years. [...]
This not only drives users away, but inevitably it discredits the positions of every single Linux enthusiast on Earth in the eyes of normal people. In many cases it's simply impossible to argue that Linux actually IS easy to use and learn and why that's the case, because the Linux community traumatized them and damaged their worldview so significantly that they think Linux enthusiasts and software engineers are all a bunch of crackpots that place absolutely no value on anyone's time or ease of use.
It's pretty hard to disagree with this guy after seeing the massive shitstorm over Age verification and Systemd's purported """willingness to participate""" these past few days.
I feel like we are days always from someone asking what distro to get and some huge comment section fight breaking out over OpenRC and Antix versus Systemd and Cachy or something along these lines.
Now imagine you as a newcomer with no Linux knowledge being on the receiving end of this mess. Yeah I get the point he's making.
And then you flip this to the "experts" view and:
"I just don't really see any reason to invest in AppImage considering the existence of Flatpak and the good work being done to improve generics." It seemed simple. Straightforward. Easy conclusion to arrive at. And before I've managed to wipe the sand off my phone screen and get back to enjoying myself, I'm suddenly getting all caps DMs from someone who hasn't participated in the community in months. I'm called arrogant. Closed minded. That I'm shutting down AppImage because I don't like how the sausage is made.
Like holy shit. Why the hell are people out there yelling at software maintainers about packaging decisions???
And I've seen people do this for Flatpak too.
"Why is this only available via Flatpak weh weh Red Hat is the devil!"
I understand not wanting to "cater to the normies". I understand wanting to have your own corner where you do things your way and don't give a shit about the needs of the regular Joe. I totally get it.
But people at large really need to stop yelling at other people not catering to them.
Want software packaged in X way? Do it yourself!
Lately DankPods (Aussie YouTuber) has been taking about his escape to Linux.
He talks about how he moved most of his needs (bar video editing and other minutiae) to Linux as it's the only platform he feels he "owns" / sees a future in.
Yet even him, said he'd almost rather not talk about it publicly because of the mountains of people in his comments yelling at him for choosing Bazzite over something else. Or accusing him of making Linux "Look bad" because of Nvidia issues despite him using the right Bazzite Edition for Nvidia. Or the people yelling "Why you still edit on Mac? Just Davinci on Linux bro" despite there being a billion quirks to it.
How on Earth has the community at large not moved on from Distro wars? Holy shit.
This is basically what the blog author is grasping at here. How many people have been driven away from Linux because of all this infighting? How many more will be?
Finally, someone that actually RTFA.
The systemd fiasco really tore the heart out of my respect for the Linux community, especially the one right here. One asshole out there pretty much doxxing an opensource developer for putting a field in the same PII area as address and phone number, and the rest of the assholes were looking to crucify the guy instead of shaming the doxxer for it. And nobody (well, few people) saw what was wrong with that.
And then, yes, the init wars, and shitting on devs for their choices about packaging, and shitting on them for not liking how they run their project, for using AI, and and and.
The downvotes on this comment garnered tells me it hit a nerve, and that's why I posted it. I don't expect anyone to actually take it to heart and change, but when I was pushing back here against the pitchfork mob over the age verification thing, I hoped for a better response. Typical, as the linux community likes to shoot the messenger.
In the end, driving people away from desktop Linux works in our favor, because it puts off the day that Linux enshittifies. So I can't be too upset.
I’m still new here and to Linux and the whole age verification thing read to me as over-reactionary internet behavior you find all over reddit. No real underlying reason to make such a fuss other than to virtue signal to other linux users how security minded you are. Just makes the whole community look ridiculous.
Yah, you'll want a thick skin around this group and don't get herded into groupthink, but you seem to have that covered already.
There are places to look for help if you need it (I'm happy to take DMs) but unfortunately I'd have to recommend reddit/r/linuxquestions as probably the most welcoming. While the ArchWiki is a great source of information, stay far away from the Arch forums unless you're wearing blast armor. Format a question the wrong way and you'll get fragged. I'd say the Debian forums are probably the easiest to get along with, it seems populated with adults.
I don't think I've ever read an opinion I agree with expressed this disagreeably before. The title is also weird given Valve doesn't officially support the Steam flatpak and AFAIK hasn't given any money to the flatpak devs.
I thought it was quite eloquent. The downvotes tell me it hit a nerve, and as another commenter says, the recent "field added in systemd so let's hang someone" fiasco lines up.
Most people downvoting almost certainly only read the title. I do agree with what's being said, I just don't like the style, but that's just a taste thing. The title is bad though, it's not relevant to the article and is factually wrong, unless I've missed an announcement of Valve have given Flatpak/Flathub guys money.
How much money exactly? Last time I checked it was just salary for a couple of devs. That’s least they can do while taking 30% cut of nearly all PC game sales. That’s the kind of money that goes into significantly subsidising console hardware for comparison. They benefit so much from the work of others that went into Linux, Wine and the ecosystem already that they should be giving way more in return.
least they can do
no, no, no
least would be 0. Capitalists can always do 0.
Confusing read. Also using "moms" as a shortcut to imply "non tech savvy people" is not a great choice. Way to antagonize and diminish women for the sake of a punchline.