this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

Disclaimer

Flatpak uses OSTree, like Fedora Atomic Desktops (Silverblue, Kinoite etc) and similar to BTRFS snapshots.

So many files are deduplicated and linked, not actually there

https://gitlab.com/TheEvilSkeleton/flatpak-dedup-checker

50GB without
31GB with deduplication
21,4GB with BTRFS compression
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I dont think that is true at all. Appimages are slowest and have many disadvantages like

  • no repo (= virus danger)
  • no app desktop entry
  • no updates
  • no deduplication of libraries
[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I always use the app image if they are available. As for being slow I never noticed.

No app desktop entry is one on the reasons I like them. If its one I use a lot I make a hotkey to open it. But there are ways to add them. There is even a tool that makes its easy to do.

No updates. I'm not sure how exactly, but everyone I use auto updates when I open them. I originally had a issue of it breaking my hotkey cause the file name would change because of the version number going up. Which I fixed by using a *.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

The appimages I used dont autoupdate. But even if, you are in some weird "windows is bad" state from years ago, before the MS Store, and even without desktop entries.

There simply is no reason for appimages other than on systems like Tails that are not made to install apps. But I also think Tails is pretty annoying and should allow flatpak installs in the permanent storage partition.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

There was an app that dealt with desktop entry and auto-update but it hasn't bee updated since a few years already.

no repo (= virus danger)

Can be remedied with an official store/ being distrubuted by the devs themselves instead of random people. Appimage isn't getting a tenth of the support flatpak is getting.

no deduplication of libraries

Might worth it if you have dozens of very heavy apps but it's totally not the case if you only need a few simple programs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Yes, Appimages lost the race. The apps are old afaik, and often dont work. It sucks when distributors use Appimages as they are simply a bad app format.

  • SimpleX
  • Balena Etcher

There is a way to convert Appimages to Flatpaks, but I havent got that complete.

https://github.com/trytomakeyouprivate/Appimage-To-Flatpak

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

no app desktop entry

they can be added manually but yeah i get how that's inconvenient.

just run ./appimage.appimage --appimage-extract and you have the .desktop file there, then just edit the path to the executable

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Yes but that is unimportant. This is not user friendly at all. I do that all the time for random stuff, but especially on GNOME the system hides stuff like that away from users and thats okay.