this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2025
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Be preinstalled on laptops/desktops.
everything else is ready unless you use niche software. Most people just use a browser and word or a pdf editor.
note the distro MUST be an immutable up to date kde flatpak using one for normal people, however
Yeah a lot of people will complain about their OS but never try installing another one.
ChromeOS is best example. It doesn't have half the functionality linux or windows has but nobody is installing another OS on their chromebook.
Well, it may be actually due to the fact that schools often lock down the Chromebooks so you simply cannot install another operating system on them, and if you do manage to it will be quite a headache and may even include fines (at least for my former high school). I couldn't even install real apps on my Chromebook (all I had was webapps and extensions), even though the feature was already technically out there (it was just locked down my school).
Also yes, as a Linux user, I really hated my Chromebook.
I was in agreement until you talk about flatpak...
Flatpak is infinitely easier for people who don't know what they're doing, because it's sandboxed and separate from the native system. If you know what you're doing it's different though, I don't use them personally.
Flatpak is great for two groups of users: the ones who only use default settings in standalone apps and the privacy-oriented experts who know how to tweak things to their liking. In the middle is a large group of users who don't know or care how things work, but they want that one feature an app is supposed to do but mysteriously doesn't work with flatpak.
Even one of these occurrences is enough to make most users give up on that app or the OS entirely. I like the idea of sandboxing apps, and I use flatpak daily, but we have to acknowledge and hopefully improve some of its limitations or many users (yourself included, it seems) will consider it unusable.
My opinion on flatpak is that it only allows developers to be loosy with dependencies. I'm convinced it will fall appart in a decade or two because it's too messy and bloated as a technical solution.
It's just a weird linux distro that you install atop your distro, honestly, I have no idea why you think that.
Piling abstraction layers is bad design imo. For performances, complexity and maintenance.
But this one in particular vastly reduces maintenance, doesn't do anything at all to performance, and only arguably adds complexity, I think it needs to be case by case.
It does not reduces maintenance. And it costs hard drive, and with heavy use, probably ram too
Redundancy of dependencies in different versions, might also be loaded in ram in different version, which can add its own kind of problems in some circumstances.
Maintenance is only reduced on the surface level. The complexity you don't see as a problem is the actual maintenance problem. It's not a problem only if you're not the one dealing with integration, maintenance or security.
It absolutely does, package maintainers just have to maintain ONE package for all distros.
This isn't performance really, it's storage, and I don't think it actually impacts ram.
This is a case you're going to have to try a lot harder to make, I don't see what you're saying at all.
actually, MUST NOT. The moment I see "this is immutable, all things are flatpack/snap/etc.", I am out, and not because of being a dev myself
Flatpak is infinitely easier for people who don't know what they're doing, because it's sandboxed and separate from the native system. If you know what you're doing it's different though, I don't use them personally.
So we can agree that something targeted at "general user" should play nice with it, but making it a hrd requirement is too much for me