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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).

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172

Is there a downside to Flatpak? (lemmy.world)

submitted 9 months ago by 0485919158191@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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Basically title.

I’m wondering if a package manager like flatpak comes with any drawback or negatives. Since it just works on basically any distro. Why isn’t this just the default? It seems very convenient.

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[–] garrett@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, that's a big, weird if though. Most modern apps can rely on the runtimes for their dependencies and not have to ship their own custom dependencies.

It's different from something like AppImage, where everything is bundled (or Snap, where a lot more needs to be bundled than a typical Flatpak, but not as much as with an AppImage).

Additionally, there's always some level of sandboxing in Flatpaks (and Snap packages) and none at all for RPMs, Debs, or AppImages.

Also, Flatpak dedupicates common files shared across flatpak apps and runtimes, so there isn't "bloat" like what you're talking about.

https://blogs.gnome.org/wjjt/2021/11/24/on-flatpak-disk-usage-and-deduplication/

[–] sugartits@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I think bringing in an entire operating system, which may well include libraries and other files that I already have installed, to run something small can be considered bloat.

I currently have multiple versions of Nvidia's libraries installed for some reason on my system through flatpak. I have no idea why that's necessary but if I don't allow this to happen I get dropped down to software rendering.