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0 pointsSpivak6y ago0 comments

And it's a pretty good one since the experience with having a large catalog of useful software in Flatpaks has been awesome and largely seamless. I just wish Canonical wasn't off doing their own thing or had started out in the open from the start so it would have a chance of being a useful standard instead of the weird Canonical store.

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7 comments · 3 top-level

sq_6y ago· 2 in thread

I can never figure out Canonical's logic with going off to do their own thing. They don't do it with everything, so clearly it's not a complete rejection of things not made in-house.

It seems like they also often end up going back to the community solutions/standards eventually, so what benefit do they see in doing this over and over again?

mulmen6y ago

Does it force the community solution to improve? If the options are community or Canonical does that competition have benefits to both? Not sure Canonical are thinking that explicitly but maybe it’s just hedging their bets if the community solution doesn’t work out.

fapjacks6y ago

But this is a false dichotomy, because Flatpak is a project controlled by Red Hat. Unless by "community" project you mean AppImages.

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fapjacks6y ago· 2 in thread

Considering that Flatpak was essentially a hostile fork of the AppImage project motivated by Red Hat's insatiable hunger for control, I find it ironic when Flatpak supporters complain about Canonical "doing their own thing".

the_why_of_y6y ago

FlatPak has nothing to do with AppImage, is in no way shape or from a fork of it.

https://blogs.gnome.org/alexl/2018/06/20/flatpak-a-history/

AppImage only solves the easy part of the generic-linux-app problem, namely running the packaged appimage; it does nothing to solve the hard parts: how do you build the application so that it will actually run on generic Linux distributions, and sandboxing.

thecureforzits6y ago

Got a source for any of those claims?

vetinari6y ago

The number one reason why I don't like snap is: it puts Canonical in control.

Only Canonical can run a store. Once you install something, Canonical decides, when packages on your computers will upgrade. Wrt control, it goes way beyond Apple store/Google Play/Microsoft Store.

No thanks. Flatpak can preserve the benefits of decentralized repositories and upgrade under user control, with all the ease of packaging and sandboxing of the new toys.

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