Basically title.

I’m wondering if a package manager like flatpak comes with any drawback or negatives. Since it just works on basically any distro. Why isn’t this just the default? It seems very convenient.

  • @sugartits
    5•10 months ago

    That’s not how Flatpak works.

    That’s exactly how flatpaks work if the library you need is not in the runtime. Which is very often the case.

    I know because I made one for my personal use and the package was not available elsewhere.

    Additionally, at least for Flathub, they have shared modules for commonly used libraries that aren’t in runtimes. (Many are related to games or legacy support like GTK2.)

    So we’re just reinventing the wheel with more bloat? Brilliant.

    • @[email protected]
      1•10 months ago

      Yeah, that’s a big, weird if though. Most modern apps can rely on the runtimes for their dependencies and not have to ship their own custom dependencies.

      It’s different from something like AppImage, where everything is bundled (or Snap, where a lot more needs to be bundled than a typical Flatpak, but not as much as with an AppImage).

      Additionally, there’s always some level of sandboxing in Flatpaks (and Snap packages) and none at all for RPMs, Debs, or AppImages.

      Also, Flatpak dedupicates common files shared across flatpak apps and runtimes, so there isn’t “bloat” like what you’re talking about.

      https://blogs.gnome.org/wjjt/2021/11/24/on-flatpak-disk-usage-and-deduplication/

      • @sugartits
        1•10 months ago

        I think bringing in an entire operating system, which may well include libraries and other files that I already have installed, to run something small can be considered bloat.

        I currently have multiple versions of Nvidia’s libraries installed for some reason on my system through flatpak. I have no idea why that’s necessary but if I don’t allow this to happen I get dropped down to software rendering.