FLATPAK ?
 

The new Linux Mint 18.3 & 19.0 have FLATPAK. Some developers have fully embraced FLATPAK and that irritates me, that & the new 4.15 kernel.

It is bad enough installing programs. You either use the repository (adding repositories) or manually install. Now we have FLATPAK, yet another way to install stuff. The repositories have dependencies that are checked when installing, so why FLATPAK?

Will I soon not be able to install a program unless I have FLATPAK?

I thought the whole idea of Linux was that stuff would run the same on different systems. But I was wrong, turns out different desktops do not work the same; a KDE app will not run well in GNOME/GTK. I don't mind desktops being different but the way a program runs should be the same for all Linux systems. 2 + 2 should always = 4, not 3 or 5 or anything but 4!

So instead of getting desktops unified, the powers that be are throwing a layer on top to do the unifying. Adding a layer to an OS to force things to run the same is like putting a bandage on a wound, you need to fix it, not patch it. And that is what FLATPAK looks like to me, a patch.

It also sounds to me like FLATPAK is running a virtual machine, like Virtual Box. Why? A Linux program is not something like DOS or Windows that needs a virtual machine to run. So we need FLATPAK running native Linux programs virtually... more complication!

FLATPAK is just complicating things like Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) do. 4,000 lines of CSS Code cascading into 4,000 lines of CSS Code cascading into 4,000 lines of CSS Code just to find the background color for the window. And of those 12,000 lines of CSS Code only about 20 lines are actually needed.

Web Pages are the same XML/CSS - thousands & thousands of lines of crap! And don't get me started on Object Oriented Programming (OOP) like C++. Some OOP stuff is neat but things just get overly complicated and bloated.

I guess most modern programmers have not heard of "Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS)"!

Soon Linux will be nothing but another bloated Windows 10 or a cumbersome Steam which will only run on the newest of systems.

I guess I need to look into another Linux Distribution, something simpler without FLATPAK, something more open as it should be in Linux.



I weep for todays' systems users...
Liz
Electrical Engineering / Computer Science
Old School C Coder

You know, we also have new low-level tech like Rust and Vulkan, for those who prefer to work there...

I doubt you will be forced into some boxed solution as long as developers offer source code.

I'm not seeing that this is a force of anything.

I'm running 18.3 and I still use aptitude without having thought to look for flatpak.

I'm not honestly sure how to take this post; I think I'll reply in at least a couple of parts:

a. "Some developers" means some and not all developers.
b. It's "bad enough installing programs", how so? If your using a package manager that includes "automatic dependency resolution", then the package manager sorts out which dependencies are needed and installs them for you. Unless it's software not included in your distro's default software repo's, then there's no need to add any other repo's to begin with. With a lot of package managers it's a rather simple process to add any non-default repo's anyway.
c. I doubt it. I don't think you understand what flatpak's where introducted for, so here's a little something;

The above from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatpak

Linux itself is just the kernel, not a complete OS. So what makes you think that every piece of Linux software is all going to work the same way? People don't work the same way. People write the code that makes up that same software.

I think the users of Slackware Linux for one are going to strongly disagree with you on that point.

I take it you've never heard of AntiX for one - but not limited to.

You might be looking for a while. ;)

I weep for this planet and at least some of the people on it, but that's another story. ;)

It's a "kids these days write bloated crap because they're not cool enough to write C like I did" rant.

I'll bet his code had a buffer overflow vulnerability in every line.

Sounds like a fair description. ;)

In an earlier post, he mentioned that the last time he personally wrote C was in university, so I'll make a point I think is relevant:

People still write C in university.

blaming CSS for what lazy web designers do with it is just wrong.

but i'll say this:

i recently installed vlc on a fresh Xubuntu 18.04 install and was apalled to see that the software center defaults to either snap or flatpak, i forget which, although there's a perfectly working version of vlc in the repos (which i found after removing the snap or flatpak plugin)!

I'm not entirely unsympathetic, but

Is there any software that's only available as a Flatpack? And it's not too difficult to remove Flatpack support. A recent web article, "Ten things to do after you've installed Mint" lists that as one of them.

Well, it won't look the same, but that was ever so: do you suggest that we use only one graphics toolkit? If so, which one? That's a recipe for a flame war!

The problem with the internet is that there are more people who want web sites than there are competent programmers to write them. And it was ever so. Remember the days when you needed different code for IE and the rest, because the Microsoft programers has mis-read part of the HTML specification?

And who says you have to use it? That's why Fontforge is written in plain C.


Cheer up, Liz. One of the privileges of retirement is knowing you could do it better without having to prove it! Only the other day I noticed a really stupid mis-classification in the Library of Congress catalogue, of all places. And don't get me started on RDA…

maybe not, but it kinda sucks when a newly installed mainstream distro defaults to it. (actually i'm mushing together flatpak and snap here, because i'm too dumb to separate one from the other)
this will create loads of new threads with specific software installation problems that have nothing to do with package management, newbies not knowing the difference anyhow, terabyte storage running out of space etc. etc.
the apocalypse has already started (you can find these questions here on LQ).

The attached images pretty much sums up how I feel about computing.

Things are just getting way to complicated.

Instead of getting GUI's so they can execute the same program we get FLATPAK to overlay the GUI to make things run.
I have yet to see any justification for FLATPAK.

Let's just RUIN Linux!
Throw me out the window - I don't care!

Breathe. It's going to be okay.

All I see Caltrop doing is ranting about stuff he doesn't understand...

Do you, or do you not, understand that there is more than one Linux distribution and more than one packaging system? Yes or no?

Do you, or do you not, understand that the above is an issue for people who people who want to provide prebuilt binaries of their software, and who want to support Linux in general, not just specific distributions? Yes or no?

Do you, or do you not, understand, that this is the justification for Flatpack? Yes or no?

Have you, or have you not, actually heard this justification before? Yes or no?

I'm going to go with no to all of the above... Caltrop doesn't. ;)