On Sun, Feb 26, 2017 at 2:37 PM, Thomas Kluyver <tak...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 26 February 2017 at 20:14, Charles <cco...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> What does it have over Docker? > > > Short answer: Docker is aimed at server applications, Flatpak at desktop > applications. > That's a good point alright. I just spent the last 8 days working with and understanding Docker, but in a server context, indeed. Here <https://learning-continuous-deployment.github.io/docker/images/dockerfile/2015/04/22/docker-gui-osx/> is a link I just found about running a desktop app in Docker. Using `screen` to get the IP of the VM, as that link suggests, emphasizes the need for an easier way to run containerized desktop apps. Thanks for the info Thomas! > > Longer answer: I'm not sure I know enough about the technologies involved > to really do them justice. But the sandboxing in Flatpak is built with > awareness of desktop Linux technologies, like X, Wayland, OpenGL, > PulseAudio and DBus. There's also a 'portals' mechanism which allows the > user to do things like opening files that would normally be outside the > app's sandbox. And Flatpak is getting integrated into GUI installer tools > like gnome-software, so it should be possible to install apps without using > the command line (this doesn't seem to fully work just yet, but the pieces > are coming together). > > Of course, some of this is stuff that *could* be done on top of Docker - > Subuser is an interesting effort to do precisely that. But Flatpak seems to > have the backing of the GNOME developers, and KDE are starting to do stuff > with it as well, so it looks to me like the front runner at the moment. > > I should also mention Snappy here, which is Canonical's horse in the > sandboxed Linux packaging race. I've played around with that a bit too (I'm > interested in this stuff ;-), but my impression is that Flatpak is more > likely to become a standard, because: > 1. The desktop Linux community is suspicious of stuff from Canonical, > rightly or wrongly > 2. Snappy also targets server and mobile use cases, and I get the > impression Canonical's more interested in those than in desktops (they've > found it hard to make money on desktops, I believe) > 3. The architecture underlying Flatpak is more sophisticated than that of > Snappy (my impression); I think its separation of apps and 'runtimes' will > make it marginally more palatable to people who like using shared > dependencies. > > Thomas > -- Linkedin <https://www.linkedin.com/in/charles-cosse> | E-Learning <http://www.asymptopia.org>
