Michael Pujos
On 7/6/22 09:15, Dan Čermák wrote:
Michael Pujos
writes: On 7/5/22 17:46, Dan Čermák wrote:
- aim: provide a good desktop for a ALP but don't duplicate work for maintainers (they don't want to ship rpms & containers/flatpak)
The day some essential software (such as Firefox) is only available as flatpak on Tumbleweed (whether audited or not), will be the day I seriously consider switching distro. I sort of understand why the trend is to run software into boxes into boxes, but I really dislike it. Would you mind to elaborate why? I would like to stress out that you will not be "forced" to download Firefox from flathub. You will get the same Firefox as you get today from OBS, it will just be a flatpak and not an rpm so that it can be reused across all released distributions (actually any Linux distribution supporting flatpak).
Cheers,
Dan
I've been using Linux since forever. As time goes by, I try to simplify my computing experience with less software, not more. Especially, less hugely complex software.
For example I'm not using KDE Plasma nor GNOME, but instead I use i3 (window manager) + a few simple helper programs. Or SDDM that I replaced with startx. Disabling Plymouth. That kind of stuff.
Flatpak as you guessed, go against that philosophy, adding another layer of complexity and overhead.
I would agree with complexity to a certain degree: yes, you have to use another binary to launch your applications. But then again, rpm is also adding complexity to your system. You could also just compile everything from source and you would not have to have rpm installed at all. Flatpaks are at the end of the day really just a different distribution method for packages.
It also goes a bit against the concept of a coherent whole as we have now. What I am aiming at has nothing to do with misplaced minimalism for the sake of minimalism. For example, I do not care much that the distro pulls a ton of recommended packages (by default) that I never use.
I fail to understand your point then. If you don't care about bloat by getting a ton of RPMs, what is the issue of getting your applications via flatpaks (which are according to you bloated as well)? I'd also like to add that the whole story is imho very coherent: the base OS will be RPM based and most of the applications will be added on top via containers and flatpaks (at least that's the current-very-in-flux-state-of-the-art). It's just a different story than it was before.
To get back to Flatpak, I do not deny it may solve real problems. But I absolutely do not need it on my PC, for my usage. I don't need to run Firefox, Thunderbird or some other desktop program containerized.
You don't, but from a security standpoint, you really do want to run your browser as isolated from the rest of your system as possible.
I suppose I could get over it and forget it, but I really dislike that trend and added complexity. For the same reason, I do not use any Electron program.
There will always be plenty of distros never making use of Flatpak and containerizing all the things, so there is choice, and that's good.
Sure and Tumbleweed will stay as it is for the foreseeable future. It
will probably get even more attention than it currently gets, because we
will (probably) base a lot of our containers and flatpaks on
Tumbleweed. So your use case will not be threatened by ALP. In contrast,
I believe you'll benefit indirectly from ALP.
Cheers,
Dan
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Dan Čermák