It needs to download the 20 distinct update patches that they added in the past 4 hours, in series, all of which combine to together change the actual product in precisely no way whatsoever.
Flatpak provides basic level of sandboxing that ensures non-malicious stupid stuff like how steam had a bug to delete the entire user directory doesn’t actually impact you.
Beyond that, discord probably won’t solve issues with the N package managers if something happens. They’re a lot more likely to solve a Flatpak problem though.
Much of this is just grumbling. I love Debian, hate Ubuntu, and think things shouldn’t change a lot.
Take a few minutes to learn how it works then. Flatpak doesn't replace apt, which is a system package manager. Flatpak is for standalone apps, like Discord.
In my case, ultimately, paranoia has won. :)
How much do you really trust discord? Or games on steam, or slack, or zoom client?
Flatpak does provide you, out of the box, with a sandbox for whole discord app. Sandbox is built on standard linux stuff like bubblewrap / seccomp / namespaces. This should prevent discord from, for example, accessing anything other than ~/Downloads (rw), ~/Pictures (ro) and so on. Or seeing what other processess are running on my pc. Or snooping in my ~/.ssh.
Some stuff might not work out of box and will require reading app's README or wiki. I imagine stuff like "john is listening to song - artist" would require additional permission or configuration. File sharing could be complicated if, for example, discord could not access my screenshots directory. Webcam, voice and screen sharing work out of box but are protected by "portals" provided by (in my case) KDE.
Discord, for example, does not pollute my /usr or /home. It stays somewhere in /var/lib/flatpak/ and keeps my user files in ~/.var/app/$APPNAME. Steam, Slack, all other "big proprietary apps" also keep their stuff in ~/.var/app/$APPNAME. It's not really a choice for them; flatpak just mounts proper directories in proper places and it works really well.
You can use `nsenter --target $PID --pid --net --mount --ipc` and look around to what kind of access flatpak apps have to your system.
Sorry about preaching, I just like that bit of additional separation from stuff I don't really want to trust or care about.
How dare you belittle the new Super Ultra Nitro Deluxe Gold Platinum emoji, stickers, and playable sound effects.
(I run a relatively small Discord community so I'm sincerely curious how people engage with servers and discover new stuff in it)
For announcement channels that I'm feeling more certain I don't want to miss: I created a server for myself with a channel that has subscriptions to all the announcement channels that I want to be notified about (I also check this manually, but at least it is a custom-tailored feed just for me).
There is no coping with the (..checks Discord..) "4k+" outstanding notifications (and counting) that I am bombarded with. Slightly ironic that the Discord interface can't even be bothered to tell me the exact count; I'm not going to bother.
It used to amuse me to see people complain about @everyone tags. The commonality of it leaves me desensitized these days.
It's an ongoing battle