Bottles Is Sick Of Downstream Linux Distro Packages
Bottles Is Sick Of Downstream Linux Distro Packages
Bottles and it's developers are very much in favour of upstream packaging and flatpaks especially after the situation they dealt with because of broken outdated packaging coming from Fedora Linux
Flatpak is the future, no doubt about that. I don't know how devs and distro owners put up with the normal way of distributing binaries. The motto is supposed to be "build once, run anywhere" but sometimes it felt like "build 20 times, enter dependency hell, realize your distro's repo is using a 6 month old version with no signs of updating". I don't miss those days. I'm always going for Flatpak now.
This is a very desktop-centric view. Distros like Fedora target servers, desktops, and other use cases, and each has a separate, competing set of expectations.
For example, servers want everything using a common set of libraries so security patches only need to happen in one place. Desktops, however, are more interested in getting the latest updates quickly with minimal effort, and security is a bit less important. And then you have cases like kiosks where security and rapid updates aren't particularly important, they want an immutable image so the thing has minimal chances of breaking.
My main complaint at a high level is that things like flatpaks tend to use a lot more disk space, but storage space is quite cheap relatively speaking, so that's a pretty minor concern. My more practical issue is that switching from repo-managed to flatpaks is a bit of a pain since many times that release channel isn't well tested, but that's not a technical issue with it though. The practical result is a weird mix of repo and flatpak, which is harder to maintain than just doing one or the other.
For servers there's Docker/Kubernetes/Podman, which is well-established and serves a similar purpose as Flatpak on the desktop. Servers were actually first with the increase in popularity of containers.
90 % or more of my desktop (Fedora Kinoite and Silverblue) apps are Flatpaks already. I only have four rpm-ostree overlays (native packages) left: android-tools, brasero/k3b, syncthing (I could switch to SyncThingy for a Flatpak) and virt-manager/virtualbox
With Flatpak there is "flatpak override" which gives you the ability to grant additional permissions or restrict them even further. E. g. I use it to connect KeePassXC with Firefox or to disallow access to the X server to force almost all apps to use Wayland instead of X. It also allows me to prevent apps from creating and writing into arbitrary directories in my home.
Once I reinstall my home server, all its server software will be containerised as well (five years ago I didn't see the necessity yet). I am tired of having to manage dependencies with every (Nextcloud) upgrade. I want something that can auto update itself completely with minimal or no breakage, just like my desktops.
This is one of the things I never really got about the Linux community, like first people are really eager to invite Windows users over to the Linux side (which are regular desktop users for the most part), then these people add in some criticism about matters like these but it's always met with "but server usage". Why is the average desktop user expected to care about servers?
It's great when it works. I tried to install VSCodium from flatpak the other day and that was not a good experience at all.
Oh yeah, VSCodium on Flatpak is always subpar for some reason. Thankfully this doesn't apply to every Flatpak app.
sometimes you need a (n arch) distrobox... also containerized :)
Permanently Deleted
I don't. Couple of times I tried to use it it didn't work. I avoid it now.
All my gui apps are flatpaks and I use fedora. Flatpaks are the future. Why don't they use their energy for something useful. There is a ton of things broken in fedora and they only waste their and others time.
Honestly fedora has been the most stable distro I ever used, whats broken about it?
It's broken like every other linux. I use GUI so fedora problems are Gnome problems. I have problem with bluetooth, software center is a garbage, other fundametal apps also are broken for example files, portals implemetation is shity, sometimes GNOME freezes, windows are glitchy thx to mutter and so on.
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Yeah, I used that outdated bottles package for too long before realizing.
Mastodon link: https://linuxrocks.online/@BrodieOnLinux/111281370579101098
And we're sick of pointless clickbait drama, Grodie.