Cor Blom
Op 05-07-2022 om 17:46 schreef Dan Čermák:
we have mostly focused this week's meeting on how the ALP Desktop is going to look like and how we can dispel fears around flatpaks and containers when it comes to the ALP desktop.
tl;dr; Fear not, you will not be forced to download random flatpaks or containers from dockerhub/flathub. We (probably) just change the deliver method, but the packaging workflow will stay the same.
Sorry to be a bit late in the discussion, but personally I think it looks promising. I don't know anything about the enterprise side, so I am strictly speaking as an end user.
I am already using flatpak on my Leap installation and I direct others in that direction. Sometimes a new version adds a feature that can be beneficial, esp. in applications that see quite some development. Flatpaks are simpler than backporting an rpm. So the flexibility is good.
Still, there are quite a number of papercuts, esp. when it comes to permissions. An example: I tried the digikam flatpak, but the flatpak by default wants the photos in xdg-pictures, but I have them not only in another folder, but also on another disk. So I needed to install flatseal and learn about permissions. I do that, but I know some people who simply get stuck there.
If flatpak indeed will be used, I understand there will be a (open)SUSE repository, which for Enterprise users is a must. But for consumers like me and others I imagine not all apps will be there and we want to add flathub. Will they work together, esp. when it comes to similar run-times?
This shouldn't be a problem as long as the runtimes have different names. If we would provide a runtime with the same name as flathub, then things will most certainly break, but I imagine that we will add a policy for naming flatpak runtimes e.g. as org.openSUSE.$runtime.$stream or something along those lines.
As a packager I assume I need to learn how to package flatpaks. I hope the documentation will be there in a not too distant future, but I do not have that much time, so it will take me a longer period to learn it. One of the packages is LyX, which is not on flathub because there is no texlive runtime. Looking forward to the challenge. :)
I understand the whole process has just started, but thanks for sharing this and for the work.
You are most certainly welcome and thank you for your kind words :)
Cheers,
Dan
--
Dan Čermák