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this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2025
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Linux
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This is why I've never liked the idea of flatpak, it really seems like the Windows way of doing things. It honestly still kind of surprises me that Linux people really wanted to download random binaries from non-trusted distributors that contain a copy of every library that software needs to run. wedontdothathere.jpg
Many modern programming languages like Rust and Go and Zig compile statically anyway, so don't use any libraries. The whole "my distro supplies my libraries" model has been steadily losing relevance for years now. Flatpaks are just one more example of this.
Exactly what I'm talking about. It reminds me of the time microsoft introduced memory compression to compensate for every application bringing it's own DLLs
But I still think flatpak is superior to windows way of doing things because it actually has dependency management. I kinda like the idea of having multiple versions of the same library but I wish they did not come in big bundles (runtimes), but instead, came in small 1-2MB pieces.
This is overexaggeration. Flatpak, unlike places windows users get software from, is moderated, and flatpak (although chunky) has shared dependencies
Fedora Flatpaks are better in this regard. They are built entirely from Fedora rpms. When an rpm gets updated in the Fedora repos, rebuilding the flatpak will automatically pull in that updated rpm. And with flatpak's deduplication feature, any reused vendored dependency should be perfectly deduplicated since the input is exactly the same (the rpm).
The problem just is that the repo is small, it's affected by Fedora's risk-averseness (so no codecs), and people don't like them.
I kinda get it for immutable distros, where you can't just install dependencies. But other than that the appeal is also very lost on me.
The appeal of Flatpak is not that I prefer it to my distro package manager.
The appeal is for the application author who finds the fragmentation in Linux a problem. It is a way for them to target “Linux” and not individual distros. It is a way for app authors to control the distribution and the support surface in a way that turning over control to package managers does not allow.
Which means the appeal for me is just that I can get apps as Flatpak that I cannot find in my distro repo.
On Arch, I hardly ever use Flatpak. On other distros, I use them more. I do use the pgAdmin Flatpak everywhere though because all the distro versions I have tried are garbage.