On Thu, Jun 16, 2016 at 11:25 PM, J. <jyo.gar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> They say it's not a GNOME thing only, but born in the GNOME project, > Quote from their FAQ: > > "Is Flatpak tied to GNOME? > > No. While Flatpak has been developed by people with a long involvement > in the GNOME community it is not tied to any desktop. In fact, it was > designed with the explicit goal of allowing it to build applications > using any library stack or programming language an application author > might want." Marketing's-speak is marketing speak... AFAIK, the only current implementation of a GUI from which to install a Flatpak is Gnome Software, with KDE apparently working on something similar. So, unless you want to download a file and double-click on it, it's Gnome for now and KDE soon. > The flatpak packages take less space because there's a separation > between runtimes and applications, with the runtime(s) containing many > of the libraries/packages required by an application, and intended to > be used by many of these, and the application package only containing > the remaining required libraries, or maybe only the app, so it could > reduce but not eliminate the problem previously discussed of > dependencies being left unmaintained and not upgraded with security > fixes. IMHO Flatpak seems a better option than Snap, and certainly > reducing file system and device access is a good thing about both, but > with these advantages some other problems are created, so it's a trade- > off. If you start relying on too many libraries in the runtimes, you end up with the same "problem" as non-Flatpak, non-Snap packages. > Maybe we will see Snaps/Flatpaks of popular proprietary software that's > only available for Windows and MacOS right now that has no real FOSS > competitor e.g. AutoCAD and family, I often hear the excuse of these > vendors not supporting Linux because of the many distributions. Getting > LibreCAD to the level of AutoCAD would take a decade or more at the > pace it is going, right know it reminds me of AutoCAD 2004, and it > isn't even a that level. Linus has complained that the dive software that he created had nightly or weekly (I forget) builds for macOS and Windows but not for Linux because of the multitude of distributions. So he and those now maintaining that app'll be happy.
