Why isn’t Flatpack really taking off...

What's stopping you from changing stuff with flatpak?

It's not like flatpak stops you from downloading other binary packages or compiling from source.
And unlike snaps you can have custom flatpak repos.

Aren’t those not even uploaded by the developed themselves.

It probably will eventually. Some issues I think that are slowing it down:

- Gnome-software is kind of jankey and the Flatpak website is unappealing to browse.
- Distros need to support it out the box, but the most popular distro Ubuntu won't, so we need to wait for Ubuntu to slowly lose popularity.
- The portal system needs improvement, like its currently not possible to import a folder or use drag and drop through the file portal.

Because it's probably worse for other distros than AppImage or even nix/guix or docker / podman?

>download the manifest file of a flatpak
>change whatever I want, it's literally just editing a json file
>rebuild the flatpak and install
That was hard

then you might as well just use the default package manager

Why?

Appimages exist, but containers seem to be the winning bet

Isn't flatpak pretty much containers but for desktop GUI apps?

The launchpads are developed specifically against the upstream repos and the relevant package versions. This isn't in any way general because they have to update to keep up. If the package (or whole launchpad) stops being developed, and upstream libraries start changing too much, you'll still be able to install the launchpad program but it will fail to launch with "couldn't find library XXX" or "segfault" (much less useful).
Source-based distros like gentoo don't have that problem which is a really cool advantage to source-based distribution, but you might still have to patch packages to work with future versions of libraries (the difference is 1- you compile against the new library so so long as API is compatible, you're good to go even if the library updates and the pointers to the symbols in the library are no longer at the same place, not true for binary distribution; 2- you can patch on-the-fly).
But it's still not as consistent as docker/flatpak/snap/whatever.
Also one of these formats (snap I believe) relies on specific system libraries being present and don't include them (flatpak too?) so even if everything else is included, shit only works on ubugu.

For any program, not just GUI programs. Yes, it's basically a container, making use of linux kernel features to separate resources. But appimage also basically is (though it's a lot less restrictive/controllable). So is snap.

In a few years youll be able to run a windows container and effortlessly pass hardware to it that youre also using

>Why isn’t Flatpack really taking off?
Because most people get their stuff directly through their distro package manager, with them adding an non-official repo when needed (or AUR for Arch).

Still I expect flatpak to grow, and Canonical will push their snap hard on their users, so eventually we'll see it be competitive against platform native packaging with the exception of core packages.

So is it correct to say that flatpack is basically like launchpad except it includes ALL the relevant files needed to use the program?

I'm not a big fan of having first-party devs handle packaging and publishing. Traditional repositories have the benefit of being maintained (checked for malware and bugs, etc.) by independent people, so it's another layer of verification before you run any random crapware. I know that flatpak includes a sandbox, but that isn't a complete excuse by itself.
If flatpak does take off, I strongly hope that there will be popular and well-curated repositories you can choose from, rather than just a mess of flatpakrefs directly from each developer's github.

Because I can get every software I need from my distribution's repositories and they work just fine.

>Wasn’t it supposed to be the thing that solved the problem of acquiring applications on different distros?
This was never a real problem.

No, it contains all that's needed except the "system" (for some arbitrary definition of system) libraries, which very often causes issues on anything not ubugu. Otherwise, yes.

Because it sucks

It's relatively niche (in my opinion).
People who want to get programs by just clicking install and being done with it already use distros that have all the shit in their repos and people who want to have more control and use more obscure distros most likely have other ways of installing programs needed.

>download moonlight flatpak
>1GB kde dependency
>moonlight itself is no more than 70MB, not sure of exact size
>get it off ubuntu snap store
>only moonlight is installed

at first there was one
and then some guy said 'fuck this it sucks I'll make a better one and everyone switch to that'
and then there were two
and then some guy said 'fuck this why are there two I'll just make one so everyone can switch that'
and then there were 3
this process continues indefinitely.

Stop.
Trying.
To turn.
Linux.
Into.
Windows.

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But user windows is simple and works.
and I have to compile my program at one configuration and I am sure it will work.
I don't have the time or resources to compile for 10 different distros.
That's literally stupid and time wasting.

Probably everyone is just tired of Red Hat pushing things they don't want into upstream. Canonical at least keeps their bad ideas segregated into their own little environment. Red Hat seems to insist that their beta testing be done by the whole linux community.

Then use fucking Windows...
All you newfags to Linux (or oldfags just getting lazy) with your pissypants whinging about muh dependencies and central repository """slavery""" are going to eventually turn this shit into just another giant megacorp bowl of slop.
You're going to turn it into ChromeOS, there's going to be ONE distro with ONE desktop environment, ONE package manager, ONE init system, closed source and proprietary shit embedded everywhere, you're going to kill freedom as we know it.
It's fine the way it is.
Stop.

>things can't be nice and simple!
>it needs to be convoluted and hard! that's the Linux way reeeeee
lmao this is pretty much the same mentality Cniles have. Which, considering most diehard linuxfags are also C fans, would explain a lot.

It's only convoluted and hard for you because you have no clue what you're doing.
For us it's significantly faster and simpler and the windows model is both dangerous and complicated. Ever tried doing actual development on windows? It's just one example.

what did he mean by this

then use Arch with AUR retard if you want some shitty alien software. I solved your problem. You can thank me in headpats.

Freedom ain't easy you fucking commie.
Go buy a Mac.

I don't know, but I actually use it for shit like gimp and krita instead of hoping that my distro will update it one day.

This is probably a really dumb question, but are there really not programs that can compile programs from source code almost automatically? Seems like that could be a pretty easy solution for people of any distro to access any program from the source code

The biggest issues with flatpaks atm are that uploading to and maintaining anything in flathub is incredibly awkward. They also don't seem to have a clear plan for EOL runtimes. Will an old flatpak app keep running ten years from now even if it didn't get updated to new runtimes?
As much as I hate snaps I feel like they will end up being more popular since you can just dump shit to snap store easily and canonical seems to have a better support plan for their core libs/runtime whatever it's called.

because compiling from source with the help of portage is better in virtually every way

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It was called tarballs. You could just configure, make, make install. People found that too difficult.

It's the best way to install Steam if you're running a distro that's not UBANTO

If that worked for everything, people would do it. But often it’s not as simple as configure, make, make install. A fair amount of times I download a source code, there might be an issue, perhaps there is no configure file, or the make file doesn’t work, or something like that

There's the AUR, or, y'know ... Install Gentoo.

Sing it, brother.
Oh yes.

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Yes, it's called a build system. But every project uses a different build system for various reasons so you need to be aware of that. Moreover many projects come with broken build scripts. Gentoo tries to automate the process by using scripts that describe what build system the project is using and how to operate it. AUR does something similar.

It is the worst of both worlds.
When you compile your shit statically you get at least a massive speed bump and save a lot of memory via link time optimizations.
Packing dynamically loaded libraries with an executable will still keep those libraries when e.g. security updates are needed.

If Flatpack was truly portable there would be no "support" from distros necessary.

>try an flatpack
>pull a ton of bloated dependencies
>slow as a rusted snail
>sound doesn't even work
as opposed to
>try an appimage
>it just werks

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>install some flatpack music player
>no access to filesystem by default

dropped.

You can open the image and manually update the dynamic libraries though, the same could not be said about statically linking.