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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Is there a downside to Flatpak? (lemmy.world)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

162 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I've used flatpak for a while because it's the default ob Fedoras GUI Software Center, but I've recently switched back to dnf and native packages where I can.

The thing is, that I have a shitty 500GB SSD with a shitty 50Mbit Internet connection (which is closer to 30Mbit because my house still has lead cables instead of copper). So downloading 300+ MB of libraries for a 2MB Program is just not feasible for me.

[+] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Yes, of course. But afaik the idea of flatpak is, that every program has a list of libraries and versions of them that it wants. So when program X was built with libfoo version 1 and program Y needs libfoo version 2, you basically download the library twice.

When you go through the package manager, you just download the current version that's in the repository. This can lead to problems when a program expects some functionality that has since been deprecated, but I never actually had issues with that.

Also, a lot of the libraries a flatpak downloads are already installed on the system, just in a different version, I noticed.

I'm on a home computer that I use by myself, mind you. So if something breaks, it's just my own problem. If I were to use software in production or even just administer the computer of a tech-unsavy relative, I'd likely use flatpaks or similar for stability and security reasons.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

It does not. Flatpak uses the full platforms, the native package manager will install the individual libraries that are needed. This is technically a flathub thing and could be implemented more granularly, but I don’t think that is going to happen.

I’ve started getting warnings about deprecated platforms but flathub is very slow to update the packages that use them (even with reports), which is unfortunate too and not something I’ve encountered in my distro repository.