?? I manage flatpaks exclusively in the terminal

My favorite part of the linux experience is the FREEDOM, but also being talked down to for not using my freedom correctly, I should only do things a specific way or I might as well just use windows.

About the image: The joke's on you, I install my flatpaks via the terminal.

I've started using flatpaks more after starting using Bazzite and I liked them more than I expected. As a dev, I still need my work tools to be native, but most of my other needs are well covered by flatpaks.

Tip: Flatseal is a great config manager for flatpaks' permissions.

I spent my time fighting AppImages until Canonical started to force Snap on me. I hated Snap so bad it forced me to switch distros. Now I appreciate Flatpak as a result and I don't find AppImages all that bad, either. Also, I haven't found myself in dependency-hell nor have I crashed my distro from unofficial Repos in well over a decade.

-It's a long way of saying It works for me and it's not Snap.

I've never heard anyone say that Flatpaks could result in losing access to the terminal.

My only problem with Flatpaks are the lack of digital signature, neither from the repository nor the uploader. Other major package managers do use digital signatures, and Flatpaks should too.

Flatpak have their own set of issues. One thing is, that Flatpak applications do not integrate that easily and perfect like a native package. Either rights are to given, you need to know what rights are needed and how to set it up. Theming can be an issue, because it uses its own libraries in the Flatpak eco system instead your current distributions theme and desktop environment.

But on the other hand, they have actually a permission system and are a little bit sandbox compared to normal applications. Packages often are distributed quickly and are up to date directly from the developers, and usually are not installed with root rights.

I'm pretty much a CLI guy as well and prefer native packages (Arch based, plus the AUR). But I also use Flatpaks for various reasons, alongside with AppImages.

I'd take a well-maintained native package for my distro over a Flatpak, but sometimes, a Flatpak is just the the easiest way to get the latest version of an application working on Debian without too much tinkering - not always no tinkering, but better than nothing.

This is especially true of GIMP - Flatpak GIMP + Resynthesizer feels like the easiest way to experience GIMP these days. Same with OBS - although I have to weather the Flatpak directory structure, plugins otherwise feel easier to get working than the native package. The bundled runtimes are somewhat annoying, but I'm also not exactly hurting for storage at the moment - I could probaby do to put more of my 2 TB main SSD to use.

I usually just manage Flatpaks from the terminal, though I often have to refresh myself on application URLs. I somewhat wish one could set nicknames so they need not remember the full name.

Perhaps ironically, this is mocking a strawman. Flatpacks can be installed and managed using the terminal! Not only that but Linux-Distros have had graphical package managers for decades.

The primary reason that distros have embraced flatpack / snap / appimage is that they promise to lower the burden of managing software repositories. The primary reason that some users are mad is that these often don't provide a good experience:

• they are often slower to install/start/run
• they have trouble integrating with the rest of the system (ignoring gtk/qt themes for example)
• they take a lot more space and bandwidth

Theoretically they are also more secure... But reality of that has also been questioned. Fine grained permissions are nice, but bundling libraries makes it hard to know what outdated libraries are running on the systems.

flatpaks are fine and useful, i just wish we didn't move into a scenario where applications that used to be easily available in distro repos start moving away from them and are only available through flatpaks. distro packages are just so much more efficient in every way. flatpaks are easier on maintainers and developers but that comes at a cost to the user. i have about a dozen or less flatpak apps installed and already i have to download at least 2 gigs of updates each week. i run debian

I kinda like flatpaks being an option, not sure when they are the only option though.

Not a fan for a few reasons. Flathub (as far as I know) works on the app store model where developers offer their own builds to users, which is probably appealing to people coming from the Windows world who view distros as unnecessary middlemen, but in the GNU/Linux world the distro serves an important role as a sort of union of users; they make sure the software works in the distro environment, resolve breakages, and remove any anti-features placed in there by the upstream developers.

The sandboxing is annoying too, but understandable.

Despite this I will resort to a flatpak if I'm too lazy to figure out how to package something myself.

If it's a mostly self-contained app, like a game or a utility, then Flatpak is just fine. If a Flatpak needs to interact with other apps on the host or, worst case, another Flatpak it gets tricky or even impossible. From what I've seen though, AppImage and Snap are even worse at this.

I love installing things from the CLI and prefer to only do it that way but Linux needs a single click install method for applications if it’s ever going to become a mainstream OS. The average person just wants to Google a program, hit download and install. If not that then they want to use a mobile-like App Store.

Flatpak is kind of perfect at achieving both those things

The issue I have with flatpaks is the size for most applications. It just doesn't make sense for me. Not that it's not useful and has it's purposes.

Enter the calm and quiet room

Pass out torches and pitchforks, guns and knives

“Snaps exist”

War erupts.

Flatpaks are great for situations where installing software is unnecessary complex or complicated.

I have Steam installed for some games, and since this is a 32 bits application it would install a metric shit-don of 32 bit dependencies I do not use for anything else except Steam, so I use the Flatpak version.

Or Kdenlive for video editing. Kdenlive is the only KDE software I use but when installing it, it feels like due to dependencies I also get pretty much all of the KDE desktop’s applications I do not need nor use nor want on my machine. So Flatpak it is.

And then there is software like OBS, which is known for being borderline unusable when not using the only officially supported way to use it on Linux outside of Ubuntu – which is Flatpak.

It's a neat concept. The distro-agnostic aspect is definitely a plus for some people but I still prefer distro-specific installation methods. The only time I would seek out the Flatpak version of a particular software is when it's the only version available.

I "grew up" with Slackware, so I definitely understand the dependency issue.

I like flatpaks (and similar) for certain "atomic" pieces of software, like makemkv. For more "basic" software, like, say, KDE, I want it installed natively.

Flatpaks are good, especially compared to snap.

The future is atomic OS's like silverblue, which will make heavy use of things like flatpak.

I'm happy to use Flatpaks but the annoyances I've had are like when one application says to use you'll need to point to the binary of another application that it depends on but very understandably doesn't package together, figuring that out to me can be annoying so I'll switch to a regular installation and it all just works together no fuss, no flatseal, no thinking about it really. Also some applications where it's really nice to launch from the terminal especially with arguments or just like the current working directory and with Flatpaks instead of just right off the bat it's application name and hit enter, Flatpak hope you remember the whole package name

org.wilson.spalding.runner.knife.ApplicationName ...

Ya alias but got to remember to do that. So far anything I'd ever want to run from terminal, no Flatpak

I like them as an option, there are some programs like Bottles or specific game launchers that work under flatpak better than the versions available via native package manager (with Bottles in particular, you can use various built-in sandbox features via flatpak which makes things a bit more secure), but it's also a bit of a pain because it's an additional package manager you have to update separately now, or tweak if things go wrong.

Personally I am okay with them actually. I use several on my system and having each app allowed to have different permissions is super useful.

But also I like things that are directly installed cause they seem just a tad faster performance wise.