For context: I habe a PC with an 8gb SSD and I somehow need to get an app on there that only has a flatpak release
Flatpak seems to be the best choice for consistency and to have it working straight out of the box. I think Linux currently needs this because we’re getting a lot less tech-savvy Linux users nowadays. Don’t get me wrong; package managers should still be used, but how are we going to get people to change if they run into package conflicts or accidentally uninstall a wrong package?
And universal compatability. One repo, for all distros. That’s a big plus too!
Until it doesn’t work. There’s a lot of subtlety, and at some point you’ll have to match what the OS provide. Even containers are not “run absolutely anywhere” but “run mostly anywhere”.
That doesn’t change the point, of course; software that are dependent on the actual kernel/low level library to provide something will be hard to get working in unexpected situations anyway, but the “silver bullet” argument irks me.
Everything is flawed, there is no silver bullet. But again, it’s still a massive improvement over what we had previously.
That’s called having just one distro.
Great… Now, you just need to convince the big distros to do that… Easy!!!111
Well, that’s the neat part. We don’t need to do that because what Flatpak does, doesn’t matter for them. People can just install Flatpak in their system and they have access to everything. I realise for system components it’s a different story, but that’s not the use case, it’s for applications.
Edit: typo.
Thats… the point of flatpak.
It is also nice to have independent packages. Consistent user experience means a lot.
I just what to install an app. I don’t want to spend an evening figgering out how to get a PWA to install. I don’t want to consult a form or your git repository to install some package I will use once and will be patched out in the next version.
It’s useful, but it isn’t the best option for everyone, so other options should be available.
Why would you want the app devs to make that? The whole problem with distro-specific packages is having to package for multiple formats and it’s a painstaking process that really isn’t worth any amount of time investment at all. If you’re an app developer, you’d much rather just make a universal package and hope that some distro package maintainer packages your app for their distro. That’s just basic common sense…
Because Flatpaks can’t share libraries or anything. It creates a lot of bloat that doesn’t need to be there. It’s great for users that want to make sure the app will always work, but it isn’t great for being efficient.
This is just a straight up lie. Flatpaks do share libraries, both as runtimes (as seen even in the screenshot here) and through deduplication between different runtimes and runtime versions. There’s usually very little bloat, if any, especially if you use Flatpaks a lot, which you probably should, given the huge number of advantages especially with proprietary apps.
and through deduplication between different runtimes and runtime versions. There’s usually very little bloat, if any, especially if you use Flatpaks a lot,
~20 different GUI applications, flatpak ended up using 14 GiB of storage while the appimage equivalent used 3.2 GIB.
And note I was not able to find flatpaks for ghostty, goverlay, kdeconnect and a few other apps, meaning the actual bloat of flatpak is even higher.
Edit: And this is even worse if you are an nvidia user, flatpak will download the entire nvidia driver as well.
Flatpaks implement deduping, so they actually don’t take that much space when installed.
I habe a PC with an 8gb SSD
I think I found your real problem.
Didn’t know about that, how exactly is that implemented?
“maybe a software being excessively bloated isn’t a good thing”
“just buy more storage bro”
B*tch. i live in a third world country, with limited internet and data plan, and also is still a student. If i can just buy more storage and better hardware i will.
This excuse is so dumb for many reasons. Provide me the source and I will make my own package if needed.
The same excuse is used to make terribly performing video games… Just buy a better graphics card if you want to run
<any modern game>at over 60fps!Get a tape player jeeez
People bitching about Flatpaks don’t understand that they have dedupe built in. You’re literally not using any more space and it’s easier for app developers to deploy.
Try using Snaps sometime, if you want something to actually bitch about.
There’s very good reasons that app developers focus on flatpaks, which mostly revolves around how incredibly terrible the experience is creating native packages for each distro and each release version of those various distros.
Flatpak used to be problematic, but even a loud hater of Flatpak, Richard Brown of openSUSE, now lauds Flatpak as an excellent solution after his criticisms were addressed.
Yes, I personally use flatpak because I want a reliable way to update packages that are not in the native repositories. Still, I would love if it would be like snaps in the sense that I can use the native libraries and only install the app as flatpak.
Its just really frustrating to have to install the whole fricking gnome desktop again just so some flatpak can use it
You… prefer snaps?
I guess we found the one person with that hot take.
No problem, just makr sure your system has the exact version of libraries the application needs. And oh, you will only update those dependencies when the application update updates the requirements.
Oh what’s that? Another application you want to install uses the same lib but different version? Tough luck, chump!
Seriously it’s either flatpaks or the multi-version dependency management that openSUSE has, and you’re not saving much more space here either.
Alternatively though, if an app has KDE library dependencies for example, it’s kinda nice to not have to install a whole other desktop system wide.
So maybe use Debian and compile the app yourself instead? The Dev made something free with their time, use your time to make it work for you.
Personally I do like the ideas behind Snap/Flatpak. I think the sandboxing is a huge deal and will improve security going forward.
In a world where space is usually the cheapest and most available hardware on a PC, I tend to agree. That being said, it’s the kind of solution that comes from engineers who put the onus on the hardware to make up for their shitty software. Engineers like me.
In a world where space is usually the cheapest and most available hardware on a PC
I read this in the movie trailer guy’s voice
Yeah. Someone has to put in the work for packaging an application if you want it as a .deb/.rpm etc. package and deal with any bugs that might come up, and it’s not going to be me (speaking as a user, not a developer).
That said, I also painted myself into a corner when it comes to harddrive space. LUKS can be complicated, man …
Another missed occasion to have taken a screenshot. There’s gnome-screenshot, scrot, your DE’s integrated tool and so many others to choose from, you can do it!
That sort of shit makes me hate the modern internet. (Also screenshots are cleaner and therefore compress better since you seem to care (rightfully) about storage space.)
Yeah but if youre using a lemmy app on your phone its significantly faster to just use your phone camera rather than having to share/transfer the file over somehow, or sign into lemmy on your pc. Im not saying you’re wrong, but i get why someone wouldn’t care for a quick throwaway post. Also storage then isnt an issue on the PC at all because the image is only on the phone.
Phones also have limited storage?
Regardless, posting on the desktop is exactly as hard as typing in the name of your instance and your credentials…
If you’re gonna be editing a meme, typing comments and such, it’s worth it very fast imo.
And crucially, it’s a really basic form of respect for your audience. Oh and also framing the shot correctly, we’re missing part of the text…
Yeah but their computer is what had limited storage. Most phones these days have a lot more than 8gb. Idk like i said youre not wrong but i still got what they were trying to communicate.
Why the hell do you only have 8GB? Are you trying to install flatpaks on a smart fridge?
Sort of, actually
I was trying to build a PC just to play internet radio on using Shortwave, and a 30€ thin client with 4 1,5Ghz cores and no active cooling, 4 gigs of ram and an 8gb ssd were more than enough for that
I didn’t even know ssd’s(nuts) that small existed
I just want you to know, I appreciated your deez nuts joke.
It was subtle. It was well-done. Roasted, even.
Maybe it’s an eMMC chip on an embedded device?
For your use case, building from source might be more practical.
look into NixOS! there might already be a package for it. and NixOS can be very good about not duplicating dependencies.
I had a 200 gb ssd on my laptop and kept running out of space because all the old generations from nixos,
nix collect-garbage, comrade! there’s also another command to clean up older generations. if you’re using git to version your nix config, you only really need to keep two generations: the current, and your last successful boot, since you can recover by git checkout.
You hate people who spend hundreds of ours of their free time developing software, who then release that software for free, under no obligation to you or anyone else, and your reasoning is because they provide it in a packaging solution you don’t find ideal?
Maybe fuck off and write your own software.
No, they hate flatpak, one of the many option to distribute software, which is not the only one even if you consider the “must run on many distro” restriction (which isn’t 100% true, kinda like the Java write once run anywhere). There are other options, some more involved, some simpler, to do so.
They didn’t say they hate devs, that’s on you, grabbing a febble occasion to tell someone that voiced his opinion to “fuck off”.
I hate people who only release on flatpak
You could just read what OP said
You could improve your reading comprehension.
Take your own advice
Then they should say they hate flatpak, or they are frustrated/disappointed when something they are interested in is only on flatpak.
Instead of doing that, they said they hate people who only use flatpak. Words matter, and that kind of entitlement needs to be shut down. The devs don’t owe them anything and they certainly don’t deserve hatred for their packaging solution. There are many constructive ways OP could resolve the issue. Open a feature request issue on the bug tracker, build it locally, send an email, offer to maintain another packaging method, etc.
8GB SSD
There’s your problem. The last time 8GB was plenty was in 1998.
No need to hate on someone for their hardware.
Reading through the comments here, the Linux community slowly seems move away from “runs on about every piece of hardware you can think of” to “if you don’t have at least the Nimbus 2000 that’s on you, sucker!”
Gotta run FFMMLXIV at 94fps and 173hz @3890x2669 resolution otherwise you’re betraying the “Linux is the best gaming OS” movement we’ve all sworn fealty to.
Yup. Those 64 GB SSDs many retailers put into cheap laptops already come dangerously close to violating the Geneva Convention. 8GB is just stupid, even for a Linux system.
If I ever have to use a laptop with 64GB of space, I’m following the Geneva Checklist :3
Even cheap SD cards are larger these days. The smallest SSD you can buy in the UK right now is 250GB.
Amazon sells 24 GB ones…
Oh really? Wow! Still 3x more than 8GB though :)
Yeah, TinyCore Linux needs 16GB I think. 8GB you might run BusyBox or something
Are they booting of an SD card? Mabey is a Pi or WiFi router?
and 8gb ssd? at that size it’s surely a removable 2242 ngff drive, it’s like 10$ for a 64gb one. you’re quite literally throttling your systems read/write speed, cause ssds want at least 20% free to manipulate files.
Compile it yourself?
Compile it yourself.
Instructions unclear. Cmake ninja tool chain uses another 8gb and still get compile errors
