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Flatpak 1.0 Is En Route For Linux App Sandboxing & Easy Program Distribution

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  • Flatpak 1.0 Is En Route For Linux App Sandboxing & Easy Program Distribution

    Phoronix: Flatpak 1.0 Is En Route For Linux App Sandboxing & Easy Program Distribution

    At the recent GUADEC 2018 conference in Spain, GNOME developers plotted the imminent Flatpak 1.0 release as well as what's coming after the big 1.0 milestone...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    I like that the idea of an auto-start portal "spawned a bigger discussion of application life-cycle control, background apps and services".

    While there is a unified auto-start mechanism for un-sandboxed applications (drop a .desktop file into /etc/xdg/autostart or ~/.config/autostart), the UIs desktops expose for adding/removing/enabling/disabling entries vary significantly in quality and even the best ones I've tried have room for improvement.

    I also really like that Alex wants to focus on tests and CI for a while. Anything which either reduces the ability of something I use to regress or reduces the barrier to me writing a repeatable automatic test rather than testing something manually makes me happy.

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    • #3
      As long as snaps, flatpacks, appimage etc. don't see installed software, I can't see why I should bother to use it at all.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by mike44 View Post
        As long as snaps, flatpacks, appimage etc. don't see installed software, I can't see why I should bother to use it at all.
        What do you mean? Why would flatpack app A want to know about "installed" app B?

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        • #5
          Originally posted by mike44 View Post
          As long as snaps, flatpacks, appimage etc. don't see installed software, I can't see why I should bother to use it at all.
          Would you mind clarifying what you mean by that? I'm having trouble finding an interpretation which comes across as a reasonable expectation to hold.

          For example:
          • snapd and flatpak are intended as backends for existing add/remove GUIs, so it doesn't make sense to expect their raw install/uninstall commands to support acting as frontends for other installation mechanisms.
          • if you mean "As long as infrastructure like snapd, flatpak, etc. doesn't support software installed through other mechanisms, I can't see why I should bother to use it at all", then it's like saying "As long as apt-get doesn't pick up the stuff I installed via make install, I don't see why I should bother to use it at all". (After all, if you're used to not having reliable uninstall and automatic capability and you use applications not yet distributed through apt-get, why would apt-get appeal? The strength of things like flatpak and snapd is that they add new features over and above existing solutions.)

          The closest I could get to something I found reasonable was reinterpreting that "don't see installed software" into "don't show up as installed software (in the launcher menu)", but I don't get the impression that you're struggling with English as a second language, so that's not likely to be what you meant.

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          • #6
            As far as I know they reinstall all dependencies. So you end up with multiple libs. Dumb concept in my opinion but maybe I'm to lazy to dig into details. I've tried appimage and it didn't show in the menu etc. Like a statically linked app that you could place anywhere.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by mike44 View Post
              As far as I know they reinstall all dependencies. So you end up with multiple libs. Dumb concept in my opinion but maybe I'm to lazy to dig into details. I've tried appimage and it didn't show in the menu etc. Like a statically linked app that you could place anywhere.
              No, Flatpak reuses runtimes between apps, they're not separately installed. Also applies to runtime extensions. It may also be able to deduplicate libraries installed directly into apps through ostree though that's not guaranteed

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              • #8
                Originally posted by nanonyme View Post

                No, Flatpak reuses runtimes between apps, they're not separately installed. Also applies to runtime extensions. It may also be able to deduplicate libraries installed directly into apps through ostree though that's not guaranteed
                Deduplication is done at a file level in ostree which is what Flatpak uses

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by RahulSundaram View Post

                  Deduplication is done at a file level in ostree which is what Flatpak uses
                  Yeah, it's just that with bundled libraries you need 1) identical versions 2) reproducible builds for sharing normally with Flatpak

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by mike44 View Post
                    As far as I know they reinstall all dependencies. So you end up with multiple libs. Dumb concept in my opinion but maybe I'm to lazy to dig into details. I've tried appimage and it didn't show in the menu etc. Like a statically linked app that you could place anywhere.
                    It is an idea concocted by developers who think that the normal PC configuration is Intel core -I7 with 16GB memory and oodles of disk space. Yet, on the other hand they fantasize of running this software on the Purism phone.

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