Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

frozenspinach

iit: nerds unable to comprehend that building a piece of software from source in not something every person can do


huh? Using package managers almost never involves compiling. It's there as a capability, but the point is to distribute pre-compiled packages and skip that step in the vast majority of cases.

Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

frozenspinach

one of my least favorite things about arch and other rolling distros is that yay/pacman will try and recompile shit like electron/chromium from source every few days unless you give it very specific instructions not to


My understanding is that constantly triggering compiling like that shouldn't be happening in any typical arch + pacman situation. But it can happen in AUR. If it does, I think it's a special case where you should be squinting and figuring out what's going on and stopping the behavior; it's by no means philosophically endorsed as the usual case scenario for packages on arch.

There's certainly stuff about Arch that's Different(TM) but nothing about the package manager process is especially different from, say, apt-get or rpm in most cases.

in reply to AndrewZabar

I view the delays during launch and the extra time spent during updates as a "load on the system."

Also, it entirely depends on your deployment environment. I develop system images that go out on thousands of devices deployed in "Cybersecuity Sensitive" environments, meaning: we have to document what's on the system and justify when anything in the SBOM (list of every software package installed on the machine) is identified as having any applicable CVEs... soooo.... keeping old versions of software anywhere on the machine is a problem (significant additional documentation load) for those security audits. Don't argue with logic, these are our customers and they have established their own procedures, so if we want their money, we will provide them with the documentation they demand, and that documentation is simplest when EVERYTHING on the system has ALL the latest patches.

The most secure systems are those that don't do anything at all. You can't hack a brick.

Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

Crozekiel

I seem to have constant issues with AppImages. Every single one I have currently won't open. I get an error message relating to either qT or GTK. Tried searching for the error and get a bunch of old forum threads talking about either not being compatible with Wayland at all, or comments stating that the one specific AppImage in question must have been "packaged badly". Thankfully, nothing 'mission critical' for me is an AppImage currently, but it is quite upsetting that I have the most problems with the supposed "just works" app packaging/distribution option.
in reply to shrewdcat

i mostly use them for proprietary stuff or for software that is incredible painful to package (mostly electron apps). i will probably never use them for anything that actually matters but i also use rolling release distros everywhere so latest release is never too far. for testing latest version of any software i prefer appimages since they are simpler and don't need a messy setup as flatpak, but i also won't use them pass the testing phase and i prefer packaging the software if possible.

snaps, on the other hand, will never go near any of my systems. not even by accident

Unknown parent

mbin - Link to source

sunzu2

All of this is true and precisely zero normies care about any of it.

The fact that I can put my ~~idiots~~ family on any modern distro and tell them to use the app store alone makes flatpaks king of the app management

in reply to MaysaMayako

The thing that grinds my gears is when I'm doing an apt update and then it goes off to check on the snaps and drags the process out a lot longer. It doesn't help that they're slower to load the apps too. Then there's the additional attack surfaces to accumulate more CVE reports (and more out of date library versions on your system begging for a security patch...) Mostly, I just purge snap support from Ubuntu these days - but for people who don't notice / mind such things, you do you - maybe they'll eventually improve the lightweight container system until the rest of us don't notice it either.
This entry was edited (3 days ago)
Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

machinya [it/its, fae/faer]

main selling points are isolation and having the latest version directly from developers without having to wait for your distro to package/update it.

both are debatable since they are not as good as promoted (isolation doesn't always work correctly and it's a mess to configure it once you use anything different than the more mainstream distros) or goes against the historical preference (using bundled everything instead of cooperating with your distro packages and trusting every individual over trusting your distro as a whole) but having the latest version on any distro without having to wait is a popular need so they gained traction quite fast. this might make little sense for rolling release distros (arch, nix) but it's helpful if you have a stable base (years old debian) but need the latest feature on an specific application or have to use very specific libraries that are not packaged on the main distro and would require complex upgrades

in reply to shrewdcat

There was a few years where I pretty much only used Flatpaks because I was scared of the terminal. But now that I've learned how to use the terminal, it's so much more convenient because I can quickly update all my applications all in one place without having to open a separate app. Plus, some Flatpaks can fall really behind on software updates.

There might be a Linux userbase someday where no one over than developers actually knows how to use the terminal, because users can run everything they want without a command line, but maybe that's actually a good thing because it'll drive up how many people use a Linux distro.

With Windows and Mac, there's a shareholder incentive to enshittify. With Linux, if a distro goes bad and gets commercialized, there's always another distro people can move to, not to mention there's no financial incentive. The more people get on Linux, the less power these tech companies have. Personally, that and privacy are what drew me to Linux much more so than being able to tinker or fine-tune my experience.

This entry was edited (3 days ago)
in reply to MystValkyrie

There might be a Linux userbase someday where no one other than developers actually knows how to use the terminal, because users can run everything they want without a command line


Ideally, all the essential terminal commands could be replicated in a user-friendly GUI-applicable manner. Don’t ever have to remove the terminal for those that enjoy it, but if we could have a magic world where even the failure states could be navigated with little to no prior knowledge required and it gets everyone away from Windows and Mac for good, I’m all for it.

Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

gravitas_deficiency

It’s extremely context-dependent.

If we’re talking about enterprise-grade, five-nines reliability: I want the absolute simplest, bare-bones, stripped down, optimized infra I can get my hands on.

If we’re talking about my homelab or whatever else non-critical system: I’m gonna fuck around and play with whatever I feel like.

in reply to frozenspinach

saying it can happen in the AUR feels disingenuous to me when you consider how integrated the AUR is to the arch ecosystem. this is a genuine complaint from a user perspective and is an issue with the design philosophy imo. it is a special case but it’s so frequent as to be annoying, is my point.

not sure why everyone is replying like i’m unaware and totally ignoring the actual grievance i have. im very well aware of pacman and yay’s intended behaviors, i just think they’re shit in some cases. idk if people who say this have never tried to daily drive arch before or something but the AUR is absolutely not optional unless you want to constantly hand roll your own shit. see my edit to the original comment.

in reply to frozenspinach

saying it can happen in the AUR feels disingenuous to me when you consider how integrated the AUR is to the arch ecosystem. this is a genuine complaint from a user perspective and is an issue with the design philosophy imo. it is a special case but it’s so frequent as to be annoying, is my point.

not sure why everyone is replying like i’m unaware and totally ignoring the actual grievance i have. im very well aware of pacman and yay’s intended behaviors, i just think they’re shit in some cases. idk if people who say this have never tried to daily drive arch before or something but the AUR is absolutely not optional unless you want to constantly hand roll your own shit. see my edit to the original comment.

Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

VitabytesDev

Immutable OSes are difficult to use for coding or other tasks that include installing many terminal utilities and for that reason, I don't recommend them and certainly don't want them to be the future of Linux distros. And if I'm going to create a container running a different distro to install and run the apps I want to use, then I may as well use that distro on my host.
Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

BeardedGingerWonder

I've no real preference so long as my PC starts stuff. The reason I avoid flatpaks is because I have at some point acquired the habit of anything I install that's not an appimage I pretty much launch from the terminal and I remember trying flatpaks and them having names like package.package.nameofapp-somethingelse and I can't keep that in my head.
in reply to setVeryLoud(true);

And they are still, in my experience, slow to load, a cumbersome addition to the update process, and often un-necessary.

Don't get me wrong, if you're in a tight spot and can't make two significant software packages work in a distribution due to conflicting library version requirements... some kind of lightweight container solution is attractive, expedient, and better than just not supporting one of the packages. But, my impression is that a lot of stuff has been moved into flatpak / snap / etc. just because they can. I don't think it's the best, or even preferred, way to maintain software - for the desktop environment.

(Returns to checking on his Docker containers full of server apps on the R-Pi farm...)

This entry was edited (3 days ago)
in reply to MangoCats

I'm running an immutable distro at the moment (GNOME OS), and I felt no loss of performance due to Flatpaks. Snaps, on the other hand, do have a perceivably longer launch time.

Given that it's an immutable distro, everything I need needs to be either a Flatpak, a Snap, an Appimage or an extracted tarball, otherwise it runs in a container. The advantage of this system is stability and making the host incorruptible, as well as the ability to very easily roll back updates or failed systemd-sysext layers.

Not everything can run in a Flatpak at the moment, but we're hoping the evolution in Flatpak, XDG portals as well as encouraging developers to use the available XDG portals can make this a possibility someday. Namely, IDEs don't run that well in a Flatpak, but GNOME Builder has proven that it's 100% possible with the currently available XDG portals as well as connecting your IDE or editor to a container.

This entry was edited (3 days ago)
in reply to MangoCats

Ubuntu Core, based on Snaps, is very much not ready for prime time IMO. It's kind of a mess outside of server use.

Look instead at Fedora Silverblue, Vanilla OS, and for the bleeding edge of immutable systems, GNOME OS.

KDE is about to launch their analogue to GNOME OS relatively shortly, named "Project Banana". These two are not exactly distros as they do not distribute the kernel, they are simply platforms that layer a bunch of images together to create a stable, reproducible system. There's also OpenSuSE Aeon, but I don't like its style of immutability as it's immutable by rootfs lock-out rather than immutable by image.

As for advice, learn how to use Distrobox / Toolbx containers. If you're a developer, this is where you will be working.

Immutable Linux is still young, and a lot of software isn't written with it in mind, so expect some growing pains.

This entry was edited (3 days ago)
in reply to setVeryLoud(true);

Thanks. In the past I have worked in Slackware, and even had Gentoo on my home system for a couple of years, but otherwise I've been fully saturated in Debian and its children - so that's my "comfort zone." I used to like KDE, but drifted away from it when I got a 4K screen notebook and KDE hadn't figured out resolution scaling yet, while Ubuntu/Unity had. I never quite warmed up to GNOME, but definitely have done my time with it. XFCE has matured enough for me to daily drive it without too much pain now, and I love the ways it can be de-featured (don't want a launcher bar? Don't run it, nothing else breaks.)

Server-side, I have been filling my Raspberry Pis with Docker containers for a while now... it's not completely alien, but I do kind of tend to "set it and forget it" when it comes to container deployments.

Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

thingsiplay

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.


But why is that? I mean just because it is packaged by someone else does not mean its unusable. So its not the package formats issue, but your distribution packaging it wrong. Right? In installed the Flatpak version, because they developers recommended it to me. I'm not sure why the Archlinux package should be unusable (and I don't want to mess around with it, because I don't know what part is unusable).

in reply to shrewdcat

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
Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

jwmgregory

i agree with this but this isn’t the reality of the arch ecosystem. AUR is explicitly promoted on the wiki for a large amount of tasks the average user is going to do. it feels skeevy to acknowledge the problems with the AUR and then abscond arch’s responsibility for them, because the AUR is not like PPAs or anything. it is significantly more integrated into the ecosystem.
in reply to jwmgregory

The wiki article :
- specifically says that packages are not thoroughly vetted
- does not recommend using yay or another AUR helper (which is the primary thing I recommend against)
- has a frequently asked question section that is fairly technical and should indicate that it is not for the faint of heart

The aur helper wiki has a fun red disclaimer at the top that no one reads

This entry was edited (3 days ago)
in reply to Feyd

you (rhetorical you, not you) can recommend not using the AUR officially all you want. it doesn’t mean anything if a large number of tasks the average user is going to do require AUR packages. i’m kind of drunk rn but i’ll go find specific pages of the wiki that demonstrate what i’m talking about, i stg this isn’t nothing. the core system itself can entirely be managed with pacman, yes, but the average user is going to be doing a lot more than just that. there is a certain discord in the messaging of arch as a whole.

this is exactly my point. arch can either be a nuts and bolts distro or it can be made for normies. it can’t be both.

in reply to shrewdcat

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

in reply to shrewdcat

While I wouldn't want flakpak going deep into the OS I think the advantage of using them on the desktop is obvious. Developers can release to multiple dists from a single build and end users get updates and versions immediately rather than waiting for the dist to update its packages. Plus the ability to lock the software down with sandboxes.

The tradeoff is disk consumption but it's not really that big of a deal. Flatpaks are layered so apps can share dependencies. e.g. if the app is GNOME it can share the GNOME runtime with other apps and doesn't need to ship with its own.

This entry was edited (3 days ago)
in reply to shrewdcat

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.

Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

Ferk

Installing them is not difficult. It's the same as any other flatpak.

The problem is when running them (actually, when running any flatpak, not just CLI tools) you need to type out the whole backwards domain thingy that flatpaks use as identifier, instead of having a proper typical and simple executable name like they would have if they were installed normally.

I end up adding either symlinks or aliases for all my flatpaks because of this reason. After doing that it's ok.. but it's just an extra step that's annoying and that the flatpak devs have no interest on fixing apparently.

This entry was edited (3 days ago)
in reply to Crozekiel

Yes, Flatpak is overall a better approach when compared to AppImages, since being dependent on a known runtime ensures the program will run whenever the runtime is available.

What I wish they would add is a way to run the flatpak in a portable way. Because as it stands, AppImages is the only option for that. Flatpak doesn't really allow to have a portable installation in a pendrive, for example. At the moment there's no replacement for AppImage in such use cases, which is a pity.

But there's no fundamental technical design roadblock in flatpak that would prevent it from supporting this in the future, imho. theoretically one could create a program that mounts the flatpak file into a ramfs layered with the runtime and run it.

This entry was edited (3 days ago)
Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

Ferk

You are mixing different ideas of freedom.
Software freedom is not the same as freedom of choice of software.

You don't need Linux to have choices of what software to use, you have that in most (all?) proprietary systems, in some you might even have more choices than in Linux.. even if it includes proprietary software.

This is analogous to how being a free person (not a slave) is not the same as having freedom to choose who to work for, even if some of them are slavers (ie. having freedom to choose your master).

This entry was edited (3 days ago)
in reply to Crozekiel

Yeah that's why I'm a bit weary of switching to Wayland, so many apps still seem unsupported, or have issues, whereas on X11 everything for me just works. Plus, the two DE's I'd actually consider using either don't have Wayland support at all or have very early experimental support (Cinnamon and Xfce) so it'll still be a while for me before I am able to consider switching to Wayland, assuming everything else works.
in reply to jwmgregory

Feyd did a pretty good job of outlining the AUR disclaimers in a different comment so I won't do that here. It's true that Arch won't stop you from shooting yourself in the foot, but again it's nuts to claim that routine compiling is the usual case for all rolling distros and belies your claim that you're familiar with usual case experience. There's absolutely no routine experience where you're regularly compiling.

I've used debian and apt-get most of my life, I've used arch on a pinetab 2 for about 6 months, regularly playing with pacman and yay and someone who's never met me is saying I'm a fanboy for being familiar with linux package management. 🤷‍♂️

This entry was edited (2 days ago)
in reply to thingsiplay

But why is that?


Because the OBS developers say so.

And since I’m not on Ubuntu, I use the Flatpak version to get OBS as intended bey the OBS developers.

So its not the package formats issue, but your distribution packaging it wrong. Right?


Exactly. Most distributions fail hard when it comes to packaging OBS correctly. The OBS devs even threatened to sue Fedora over this.

gitlab.com/fedora/sigs/flatpak…

in reply to ipkpjersi

I don't actually know if it is a Wayland issue - most of those forum posts are like 3 years old... And I have definitely used these same AppImages in the past on Wayland without issue. I think the AppImages are expecting some specific dependency to be installed on my system that is no longer installed due to updates. (which I thought was counter to the entire point of an AppImage? I thought it was supposed to be kinda like Flatpak where it has it's dependencies in the image? Maybe I just misunderstood AppImage...)

To give you some hope, my Distro switched to Wayland as default a little over a year ago (i think) and I have not been running into problems (outside this AppImage problem, if it is indeed a Wayland issue, which I cannot confirm or deny).

in reply to shrewdcat

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.

in reply to 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬

The quoted image does not say so, they do not say the native packaging from your distribution is borderline unusable. That judgement was added by YOU. The devs just state the package on Archlinux is not officially supported, without making a judgement (at least in the quoted image).

As for the Fedora issue, that is a completely different thing. That is also Flatpak, so its not the package format itself the issue. Fedora did package the application in Flatpak their own way and presented it as the official product. That is a complete different issue! That has nothing to do with Archlinux packaging their own native format. Archlinux never said or presented it as the official package either and it does not look like the official Flatpak version.

So where does the developers say that anything that is not their official Flatpak package is "borderline unusable"?

in reply to muusemuuse

War with who? I'm posting this from Kubuntu and I'd happily agree with you that Snap should fuck off and die. (In particular, the backend being controlled by Canonical makes it objectively bad compared to Flatpak.) Even among people like me who tolerate Snap (for now...), I really don't think you're gonna find anybody who actually likes it, let alone enough to champion it.

Can't start a war when there's a consensus!