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Comment by dheera | Hacker News Reader

What is with this mess?

    flatpak remote-add --user flathub-beta 
    https://flathub.org/beta-repo/flathub-beta.flatpakrepo

    flatpak make-current --user org.gimp.GIMP beta
    flatpak make-current --user org.gimp.GIMP stable

Why isn't it just

    sudo apt-add-repository ppa:gimp/unstable
    sudo apt update && sudo apt install gimp

? Or:

    wget https://gimp.org/releases/gimp-2.99beta.deb
    sudo dpkg -i gimp-2.99beta.deb

?

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Installing it through Flatpak here is actually fewer commands than your apt example.

You just run this to add the repository, > flatpak remote-add --user flathub-beta https://flathub.org/beta-repo/flathub-beta.flatpakrepo

Then this to install it > flatpak install --user flathub-beta org.gimp.GIMP

The next two commands let you switch between the beta and stable branches, which is something apt can't do.

As someone not as involved, it's hard to follow why it's a mess.

The actual installation with flatpak also seems to use

flatpak install --user flathub-beta org.gimp.GIMP

and the make current is only for managing the active installation. From someone that has never used flatpak it doesn't seem more a mess than apt or the deb way in any way and also manages to have the unstable and stable version installed at the same time (which apt doesn't as far as I remember).

Am I missing some hidden problem besides that it's not available in the manager of choice?

I've been out of the loop for a while but I imagine this is because Flatpaks bundle all of the dependencies and thus you don't run a risk of the installation of one deb resulting in broken dependencies for other programs.

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