Ubuntu Founder Explains Why Distro Won’t Support Flatpak | Hacker News Reader

Ubuntu Founder Explains Why Distro Won’t Support Flatpak

omgubuntu.co.uk

17 pointsthecosmicfrog12 comments

I'd be very happy about this decision, if Snap wasn't even worse. At least this disagreement will slow down, and hopefully prevent, further adaption of both.

AppImage is the only one of those three solutions I find adequate so far. But ultimately native packaging is still the best.

Do you have a solution for updating AppImages? I like them too, but I find, I have to manually check for updates. Like in, go to website, compare version numbers, download.

Genuine question, why don't package managers download and update appimages? Or do they ?

The only appimage I use regularly, KeepassXC, checks for new versions if you set the setting.

> I have to manually check for updates.

I've disabled auto upgrading for apt too. I prefer doing it manually when I need / have time for it.

> Do you have a solution for updating AppImages?

Bash.

The right decision as far as I'm concerned, but replacing it with Snaps isn't much better.

Support native packaging. Flatpak is unnecessary and harmful to the ecosystem. Simple as.

And what exactly do you mean by native packaging? AppImage? The dpkg system progresses at a snail's pace. It is hard to package for, unable to cleanly sandbox dependencies, and most importantly relegates application updates to third party maintainers. If we wanted a gatekeeper between our apps and the end user, we would have become a Mac-only shop.

Application authors can publish deb packages themselves. The tooling is not amazing for it, but plenty of people do it. Including Google Chrome, Docker, Elastic, and Kubernetes.

Call me back when your packaging format can ship system daemons.

I'm happy dpkg is stable, dedups dependencies and security updates by automatically resolving version conflicts (which is NP complete, by the way), and large communities of third party packagers provide QA and act as a line of defense against supply chain attacks.

I also like how easy it is to add third party repos, so I can get software direct from larger shops.

I think we want opposite things from our package managers. That may be because I'm predominantly an end user of packages, and it sounds like you develop things that get packaged.

Anyway, when people say that flatpack and snap are user hostile, I generally agree, and other people that share your opinions are usually baffled.

Could someone please explain this ? I don't understand what he means:

"I don’t think they [Flatpaks] have the security story and I also don’t think they have the ability to deliver the same integrity of execution over time that Snaps have ‘cos we built those things into Snaps"

> Distro Won’t Support Flatpak

Until they realize that users prefer not to use Ubuntu because of snap.

I think snaps future is the same as Upstart, Unity etc.

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