Flatpaks, as well as snaps and appimages to a lesser extent, are a true godsend to the linux desktop. I can finally have a stable system and software released yesterday.
Unfortunately each has its own drawbacks and, in typical Linux Desktop fashion, it's 3 fragmented solutions to roughly the same problem with none of them being standard or enjoying a particularly de-facto status.
The end result being that you can't get everything in any one of them, and often can't get a particular application in any of them.
As someone who's released commercial software on linux before - having only 3 solutions to target is actually pretty delightful (We still build .deb and .rpm as well, so 5 really, after snap, flatpak and appimage)
Plus I find the general sandbox approach to be a LOT more stable - distro upgrades rarely causes issues, and dependencies are much easier to wrangle.
Definitely still some hiccups, but overall it feels like it's moving in a direction that I find easier to work with - both as a user and a developer.
Plus the markets are generally fairly large - sure I still dip into aur every now and then, but I mostly find the "Software I need at work" stuff available
In what sense? If you mean the fact there are multiple solutions, I don't think it's anything to do with Linux Desktop. I don't think that's even to do with Linux. More the plethora of alternatives in general when using FOSS. But that to some is its strength, not failure.
I disagree. Now to ensure I can install software I need not just one package manager, but at least 2 or 3 (atp, flatpak, snap). Of course that doesn't cover all the bases either, I'm still occasionally going to have to compile something from source because the developer didn't even bother making a binary because they don't want to build it for 5+ different packaging formats, several of which will need constant maintenance.
When it comes to platforms[0], you need to be able to depend on certain things being there and working a certain way. Fragmentation of a platform is bad, and Linux Desktop is so fragmented the various distros style themselves as entirely different OSs!
[0] As opposed to applications. Part of the problem is that historically there has never been a clear delineation in Linux Desktop.
> Fragmentation of a platform is bad, and Linux Desktop is so fragmented
This is the point I'm making though. There is fragmentation on the desktop (even if we just stick to window managers, display managers, desktop environments). But there's fragmentation EVERYWHERE. I can choose from thousands of distros, in numerous package formats, with different opinions on that collection of software and its default configuration.
Linux Desktop is fragmented but no worse, IMHO, than elsewhere. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but some people do like the choice otherwise those other choices wouldn't exist.
Android is also a prime example of the same thing.
I think there may be some misunderstanding. I'm using "Linux Desktop" to denote the collection of all software for Linux that provides the desktop experience. That includes all the distros, packaging formats, and whatnot.
If you compare Linux Desktop to other desktop operating systems it is catastrophically fragmented by comparison.
> Android is also a prime example of the same thing.
No, it really isn't, because I only have one package format that I have to package Android applications in and the only API I have to deal with is the Android API. Though of course that's a headache because of how new permissions and older APIs interact, but that's still a lot more straight-forward.
The point of the statement wasn't to badmouth developers for not making a Linux binary, it was to criticize the state of application deployment on Linux being so terrible that a developer didn't want to bother making a binary for it. That's true regardless of the cost of the software. Linux Desktop doesn't get to be all "please use me, I'm great!" and "well, what do you want for free?" at the same time.
Can't say I've stumbled upon a lot of desktop apps (not terminal utilities) that are not on Flathub. The list is pretty long: https://flathub.org/apps/category/All
From my experience, most of the popular proprietary ones (think: Slack, Discord, Spotify, whatever) are distributed both as a flatpak and as a snap, while more niche desktop apps are usually flatpak-exclusive (out of those options).
> Can't say I've stumbled upon a lot of desktop apps (not terminal utilities) that are not on Flathub.
Perhaps you just don't use that many things that aren't really popular or well known? I can't find PuTTY and KeePass (though obviously there are alternatives in those cases), applications that both have Linux versions and that I use every day (and aren't even that unknown).
Also, unfortunately the limitations of Flatpak mean even if what you want is there, say Wireshark, it often won't have full functionality because it is impossible to give it the permissions it needs. In Wireshark's case, it can't actually capture any packets. If you want to actually use it you'll still need to resort to a different installation method.
Window management. It's basically a way to segregate a general terminal (usually used for local stuff) from a window specifically for SSH.
For me this was a much bigger issue when I was on Windows, but also in Ubuntu which groups programs together similarly to the Windows taskbar. I'm on i3 now mostly and just use a normal terminal for ssh, but for quite some time I was using putty on linux specifically for window management.
Hi AnIdiotOnTheNet! I really appreciate your comments against linux. I'm true. Since I don't have much knowledge about NT's strengths, the comments I like the most are the ones where you highlight advantages of the NT kernel over linux.
It's been some time since I last read anything like that from you. Would you mind to comment if ebpf usage and the possible new futex2 syscall helps to close the gap between linux and NT with regards to async primitives?
