Clasen: Continuing To Push Modularity On The Linux Desktop

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Clasen: Continuing To Push Modularity On The Linux Desktop

Matthias Clasen, well known Fedora / GNOME contributor at Red Hat, has written a blog post about the ongoing modularity work in the Linux desktop realm...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-Desktop-Modularity-Flat

[starshipeleven]

Yes please. We desperately need this for crap closedsource applications, and will be useful for opensource ones too.

[rastersoft]

Now that I read more about it, I think it can be a good idea. Since each app runs in its own environment, it is possible to have several library versions at the same time, but also allow several applications to share the common versions.

[Maxjen]

Would be cool if Steam or gog used this internally.

[ssokolow]

Nice in concept. Let me know when I can trust it to work without regressions in a desktop that's an arbitrary mix of KDE, LXDE, and individual components.

Given my visceral opposition to GNOME's "we know what desktop you should be using" approach to UI/UX design, that's the kind of modularity I care most about.

[computerquip]

Nice in concept. Let me know when I can trust it to work without regressions in a desktop that's an arbitrary mix of KDE, LXDE, and individual components.

Given my visceral opposition to GNOME's "we know what desktop you should be using" approach to UI/UX design, that's the kind of modularity I care most about.

I have no clue what you're talking about. This whole project is literally about application deployment in a distro-neutral manner. Why would the DE have anything to do with it?

EDIT: I suppose the actual intent of the project is to sandbox potentially untrusted applications. However, since sandboxing in this case essentially means you can drag your environment around with you, it's ideal for application deployment in general.

[computerquip]

I do actually have some concerns about Flatpak that I'm still curious about. For instance, reading their FAQ, there's this:

Can Flatpak be used on servers too?
Flatpak is designed to run inside a desktop session and relies on certain session services, such as a dbus session bus and a systemd --user instance. So, is not a good match for a server.
However, the build features of Flatpak run fine outside a session, so you can build things on a server.

For instance, if I wanted to run a Teamspeak server, would that not be an valid application of Flatpak? If the point is simple sandboxing, I don't see how sandboxing a daemon is considered an potential misuse of Flatpak. Can someone explain this to me?

[microcode]

I do actually have some concerns about Flatpak that I'm still curious about. For instance, reading their FAQ, there's this:



For instance, if I wanted to run a Teamspeak server, would that not be an valid application of Flatpak? If the point is simple sandboxing, I don't see how sandboxing a daemon is considered an potential misuse of Flatpak. Can someone explain this to me?

The main purpose of Flatpak seems to be to hook up complex interfaces like compositors and input devices to sandboxes. If you're just looking to sandbox a simple server application, you'd be better off with Docker or rkt.

[boxie]

How cool would it be if Windows apps were flatpack'd with wine and "Just Worked" without having to "install" them, or wine, or mess around with configs etc.

[jaxxed]

Nice in concept. Let me know when I can trust it to work without regressions in a desktop that's an arbitrary mix of KDE, LXDE, and individual components.

computerquip is right: this is meant to bridge the mixed desktop, and is even designed to handle mixes across different framework versions (QT4|QT5, gtk2|gtk3) and language versions (py2|py3), all without having to perform silly namespace tricks.

You are right about one thing though, it does leave some gaps across configurations so far. My gnome is using the dark theme, but any flatpak app I've tried doesn't use that. This issue, and the lack of dependency inclusion (right now you have to manually install all of the layers for an app) are clearly results of the early status of flatpak.

It works already, and even integrates with the software installer, and the software launcher (to some degree,) although I've not tried anything that uses sound yet though.