this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2024
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I just want to install the latest version of an app without downloading half an OS worth of dependencies. AppImage had me dreaming of this day but the project seems like it's dying, if not dead already.
Didn't appimage bundle all the dependencies inside it? That leads to way more taken disk space cuz of duplicate libs
I know this, but it's still way lighter than flatpak. (the required app depencies size <<< whatever the hell flatpak downloads)
An app image that weighs a few hundred megabytes ( it's often less) becomes several gigabytes as a flatpak. I can download more than a dozen of appimages and it still would weigh as much as a single flatpak. I think it's just that my use case require me to have a handful lightweight apps in their latest version and the rest can be managed by the OS.
Yes, the first flatpak is big cause you have to download the runtime (most common dependencies you will probably need anyways in the future). The majority of other flatpaks you will download will use the runtime you've already downloaded so those flatpaks will be lighter than the appimage variant
Solution to too many package managers: two more package managers
Flatpak nowadays feels like the spiritual successor to appimage. All the dependencies are containerized, and uninstalling an app doesn't leave behind a residue of automatically created files on your system... at least in theory. All of these benefits are kind of negated if an app has full disk read/write permission.
Appimage is kind of silly in my opinion. Appimage is just "portable application" (i.e. when an app gets shipped as a folder containing the executable,
.sodependencies, and resources), but crammed into a disk image for some reason.I was referring to flatpak when I said 'half an OS worth of dependencies'. I have an extremely shitty and unstable internet, so downloading like 5gb for a simple app isn't worth it. Even if my internet wasn't as horrible, Flatpak is only worth it when you want to install dozens of big app and not when you want to install 2-3 apps, the heaviest being a 100mb or so as a .deb.