asieApr 5
https://s3kshun8.games/blog/flatpak-won/

This should be mandatory reading for everyone invested in the Linux ecosystem, whether you leave feeling heard by or enraged by the author.
Gabe Newell Is Shitting Yacht Money into Flatpak and You're Still Arguing about Init Systems

S3kshun8's Lair
Show threadtea 
@asie I think this post is good in the wake of lots of maintainers of (gui) applications being against flatpak.
I want to run a simple command to install your application, and not download an appimage which likely never ends up leaving my downloads folder.
I want automatic updates for those applications (whenever I decide to run flatpak update) instead of them doing their own update checks and bothering me with popups on startup.

I get that publishing to flathub is extra effort, but why is barely anyone building .flatpaks for their releases, when it is "close" downloading and running an appimage?
Apr 5 at 9:05amWeb
Show threadasieApr 5
@tea There are some programs which can't be published to Flathub, unfortunately. In particular, I'm thinking of Minecraft launchers, where old versions of the game don't run well on Wayland at all, while new versions of the game run worse on xwayland than native Wayland:

https://github.com/flathub-infra/flatpak-builder-lint/pull/935
add exception for com.moulberry.PandoraLauncher by fluoriteByte · Pull Request #935 · flathub-infra/flatpak-builder-lint

Needed to allow older versions of the game to launch

GitHub
Show threadasieApr 5
@tea (Well, Pandora is on Flathub, but...

https://github.com/Moulberry/PandoraLauncher/commit/1db9c06e145796a5eed1020638010768e78198c1#diff-c8f792921248386552ff596b903f7cd4bb20339255d0a8d674619d6d72bda984R209)
Add warning when X11 is unavailable on linux · Moulberry/PandoraLauncher@1db9c06

Pandora is a modern Minecraft launcher that balances ease-of-use with powerful instance management features - Add warning when X11 is unavailable on linux · Moulberry/PandoraLauncher@1db9c06

GitHub
Show threadtea Apr 5
@asie but that's what I mean, why can't they put a flatpak in their release assets in addition to the appimage?
in this case I'd probably phrase the error differently since the issue is not the flatpak itself and you can enable the x11 socket yourself (I know we want to avoid the user having to do extra fiddling, but still)

flatpaks could just be a "one click installer" even without using flathub
Show threadaApr 5
@tea @asie

> I want automatic updates for those applications (whenever I decide to run flatpak update) instead of them doing their own update checks and bothering me with popups on startup.

package managers solved this decades ago, though?

"i want automatic updates for those applications (whenever i decide to run {apt update, dnf upgrade, pacman -Syu}) instead of them doing their own update checks and bothering me with popups on startup"

in that regard, flatpak is just another package manager. (yes appimages suck but appimages aren't packages and they don't really have a good way to manage them or integrate them with your system)

> why is barely anyone building .flatpaks for their releases

more effort than just providing sources and letting people / distros build it for themselves? flatpak also forces sandboxing on you so all your dependencies need to be in flatpak as well. (one practical example is the obs studio flatpak not working with blackmagic decklink drivers)
Show threadtea Apr 5
@a @asie so what you're saying is we shouldn't bother with flatpak at all since every distro packaging something makes less problems for the user? (apart from updates being slow depending on the distro, and no sandboxing (for applications where it makes sense).

no one ever claimed flatpak was the perfect format for and should be used for everything, but it makes sense for a lot of cases and should be used where it makes sense
Show threadaApr 5
@tea @asie no? i'm not sure how you got that from what i said. you can use flatpak just like you can use anything else