I'm relatively new to Linux. I honestly don't see what the problem is.
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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What’s a flatpak? Is that like a worse NixOS package? I prefer NixOS, BTW.
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I am definitely a fan. A lot of people say that flatpaks are bad because of sandboxing but I haven't seemed to have any issues with it.
Although I do try to use dnf when a dnf package is available (I use fedora)
Idk how, but one time I tried installing something as a flatpak and it took like 300+MB and a very long time. I figured something was wrong, found a way to install it normally and it took like 10MB and installed quickly. Idk what went wrong, but I'll never touch this garbage again
Edit: oh they're not for arch. Maybe they should have told me before the 300mb slog
If i got it right, flatpacks gather all of the dependencies of the package and bundles them with tha package. Maybe those extra 290mb were from dependencies that you already had installed but that flatpak wanted to install another copy.
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theyre whatever, they have their place in my system, but inprefer installing debs from the repo
Honestly, i'm not entirely sure what Flatpaks are all about. Not sure I could explain them. But I use them. I've used apt. I've even used Pacman and Yay in Manjaro for a few years. Now, I also Flatpak (no longer on Manjaro, though. I no longer boot to a blank screen every 6 months or so! Very nice!)
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Furniture? Integrated circuit packaging?
Is that supposed to be Ed Norton, or just an uncanny coincidence?
Honestly, I am a little scarred from snap.
Otherwise I'm agnostic on flatpaks - I've used a couple and they're ok? They just remind me of old windows games that dump all their libraries in a folder with them.
On a modern system the extra space and loss of optimisation is ok, but on older hardware or when you're really trying to push your system to run something it technically shouldn't, I can see it being an issue.
That reminds me, is Flatpak packaging CLI tools already?
Looks like it does? Or at least could?
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/740712/does-flatpak-support-command-line-applications
I've never seen one so far though
I've packaged a CLI that I made as a flatpak. It works just fine. Nothing weird was required to make it work.
The only thing is that if you want to use a CLI flatpak, you probably want to set an alias in your shell to make running it easier.
I'm not sure why more CLIs aren't offered as flatpaks. Maybe because static linking them is so easy? I know people focus on flatpak sandboxing as a primary benefit, but I can't help but think of static linking was easier for bigger applications, it wouldn't be needed as much.