Israeli forces arrest Al Mayadeen bureau chief in West Bank
Israeli forces arrest Al Mayadeen bureau chief in West Bank
TEHRAN, Jul. 07 (MNA) – Israeli occupation forces arrested Nasser al-Lahham, director of Al Mayadeen’s office in occupied Palestine, on Monday, during a pre-dawn raid on his home in Beit Lahm, southern West Bank.Marzieh Rahmani (Mehr News Agency)
Elon Musk reacts to Epstein list report: "final straw"
Elon Musk has said an Axios report that the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had concluded there was no evidence of a Jeffrey Epstein client list was the "final straw".
The report also said the agencies had concluded there was no credible evidence the disgraced financier and pedophile blackmailed high-profile and prominent individuals, and confirmed that surveillance footage showed Epstein had killed himself in prison.
"So... umm... then what is Ghislaine Maxwell in prison for?" Musk posted to his X platform, referring to Epstein's former girlfriend and associate who procured underage girls for him to abuse.
Elon Musk Reacts to Epstein List Report: 'Final Straw'
Jeffrey Epstein is a disgraced financier and pedophile who died by suicide in 2019.Shane Croucher (Newsweek)
Weekly Briefing: The world is moving on, but Israel refuses to change
Weekly Briefing: The world is moving on, but Israel refuses to change
Zohran Mamdani’s primary victory, a potential ceasefire in Gaza, and new polling from Israel reveal a widening global divide over Palestinian freedom, and signal a political shift in the U.S. that establishment forces can no longer ignore.Dave Reed (Mondoweiss)
The tears of Gaza’s men are an act of rebellion | 972 Magazine
cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/32817999
from 972 Magazine Sunday Recap newsletter [published in Israel]
07/06/2025Other articles
* Gaza’s Al-Baqa Cafe was a sanctuary amid the genocide. Now it lies in ruins
* The Knesset vs Ayman Odeh
*The UK can excuse genocide, but draws the line at festival chants
* ‘It comes with the territory’: How Israel’s archaeologists legitimize annexation
The tears of Gaza’s men are an act of rebellion | 972 Magazine
from 972 Magazine Sunday Recap newsletter [published in Israel]
07/06/2025Other articles
* Gaza’s Al-Baqa Cafe was a sanctuary amid the genocide. Now it lies in ruins
* The Knesset vs Ayman Odeh
*The UK can excuse genocide, but draws the line at festival chants
* ‘It comes with the territory’: How Israel’s archaeologists legitimize annexation
Roko has ideas
"Ban women from universities, higher education and most white-collar jobs."
"Allow people to privately borrow against the taxable part of the future incomes or other economic activities of their children."
So many execrable takes in one tweet, and that's only two of them. I'm tempted to think he's cynically outrage-farming, but then I remember who he is.
The tears of Gaza’s men are an act of rebellion | 972 Magazine
from 972 Magazine Sunday Recap newsletter [published in Israel]
07/06/2025
Other articles
* Gaza’s Al-Baqa Cafe was a sanctuary amid the genocide. Now it lies in ruins
* The Knesset vs Ayman Odeh
*The UK can excuse genocide, but draws the line at festival chants
* ‘It comes with the territory’: How Israel’s archaeologists legitimize annexation
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Los Angeles: Thousands Denounce ICE Raids in July 4 Protest
July 5, 2025
"The article below first appeared in the Los Angeles Times on July 5, 2025. The protest the article describes was a fitting way to mark US Independence Day, given the Trump administration’s intensified workplace raids and deportations of undocumented immigrants. L.A. has been the epicenter of many such protests over the last month since the White House picked the city to launch its aggressive dragnet, carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, targeting millions of workers across the country.
As a recent article published by the Washington Post revealed, ICE arrests have more than doubled since Trump took office in January, compared to the same period last year."
Los Angeles: Thousands Denounce ICE Raids in July 4 Protest - World-Outlook
This article describes a pro-immigrant protest in Los Angeles on July 4. It was a fitting way to mark U.S. Independence Day, given the Trump administration’s intensified workplace raids and deportations of undocumented immigrants. L.A.world-outlook.com (World-Outlook)
Los Angeles: Thousands Denounce ICE Raids in July 4 Protest
cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/32817365
July 5, 2025"The article below first appeared in the Los Angeles Times on July 5, 2025. The protest the article describes was a fitting way to mark US Independence Day, given the Trump administration’s intensified workplace raids and deportations of undocumented immigrants. L.A. has been the epicenter of many such protests over the last month since the White House picked the city to launch its aggressive dragnet, carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, targeting millions of workers across the country.
As a recent article published by the Washington Post revealed, ICE arrests have more than doubled since Trump took office in January, compared to the same period last year."
Los Angeles: Thousands Denounce ICE Raids in July 4 Protest
July 5, 2025"The article below first appeared in the Los Angeles Times on July 5, 2025. The protest the article describes was a fitting way to mark US Independence Day, given the Trump administration’s intensified workplace raids and deportations of undocumented immigrants. L.A. has been the epicenter of many such protests over the last month since the White House picked the city to launch its aggressive dragnet, carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, targeting millions of workers across the country.
As a recent article published by the Washington Post revealed, ICE arrests have more than doubled since Trump took office in January, compared to the same period last year."
Los Angeles: Thousands Denounce ICE Raids in July 4 Protest - World-Outlook
This article describes a pro-immigrant protest in Los Angeles on July 4. It was a fitting way to mark U.S. Independence Day, given the Trump administration’s intensified workplace raids and deportations of undocumented immigrants. L.A.world-outlook.com (World-Outlook)
Drone Shows: From Novelties To Mainstream In Record Time
The evolution of drone shows, a concept that went from an art collective experiment in de-fanging warfare tech to a municipal favorite in record time.
As China prepares to invade Taiwan, a reality check: sitting on the sidelines won’t help Australia
This is an op-ed by Jennifer Parker, a defence and national security expert associate at the ANU’s National Security College. She has served for more than 20 years as a warfare officer in the Royal Australian Navy.
[...]
A major flaw in Australia’s Taiwan debate is the simplistic “will we or won’t we intervene?” framing, which assumes any conflict would be confined to Taiwan. In reality, an invasion would be far more complex. The Taiwan Strait’s geography, weather and Taiwan’s defences already make it a formidable task. That challenge is amplified by expected US and Japanese intervention from bases in Japan and the Philippines, forces China would try to neutralise pre-emptively.
Any invasion would almost certainly immediately trigger a broader regional conflict involving one of Australia’s key allies and at least two of its closest security partners. In a region-wide conflict, Australia’s national security interests would be jeopardised, and it would have little choice but to respond. Its key role would be defending Australia and its sea lines of communication.
[...]
Staying on the sidelines would be inconsistent with our national interests. Australia’s security, including maritime trade, would be directly threatened. Not to mention Australia’s obligations under the 1951 ANZUS Treaty.
It would also seriously damage Australia’s credibility with key security partners and regional neighbours. Moreover, if China resorts to force against Taiwan, it is unlikely to stop there. Beijing is also engaged in maritime and territorial disputes with South-East Asian states and South Korea and Japan. A successful invasion would embolden further aggression.
A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would not be an isolated act – it would trigger a regional conflict with direct consequences for Australia’s security. An invasion may not be imminent or inevitable, but China’s clear preparations demand serious attention. Australia must invest in its own defence – not because war is certain, but because deterrence depends on capability. And if deterrence fails, we must be ready to defend our vital interests.
[...]
As China prepares to invade Taiwan, a reality check: sitting on the sidelines won’t help us
Australia must prepare. China attacking Taiwan is not inevitable, but if it happens, it will become a wide-ranging Indo-Pacific conflict.Jennifer Parker (The Sydney Morning Herald)
I don’t think they will straight up invade.
I think they will blockade, fund disinformation campaigns, increase “cooperation”, it’ll be a government capture à la Hong Kong.
Did you miss the “one country two systems” -> “national security law” -> anyone who opposes the ruling party goes straight to jail thing.
(Which happened 20 years later).
Google Gemini is coming for your private apps. Here's how to stop it
Google Gemini is coming for your private apps. Here's how to stop it
Starting July, Google's AI assistant Gemini will have access to even more apps on your device—even if you don't actually use it. But you can prevent it.Laura Pippig (PCWorld)
New US directive for visa applicants turns social media feeds into political documents
In recent weeks, the US State Department implemented a policy requiring all university, technical training, or exchange program visa applicants to disclose their social media handles used over the past five years. The policy also requires these applicants to set their profiles to public.This move is an example of governments treating a person’s digital persona as their political identity. In doing so, they risk punishing lawful expression, targeting minority voices, and redefining who gets to cross borders based on how they behave online.
Anyone seeking one of these visas will have their social media searched for “indications of hostility” towards the citizens, culture or founding principles of the United States. This enhanced vetting is supposed to ensure the US does not admit anyone who may be deemed a threat.
However, this policy changes how a person’s online presence is evaluated in visa applications and raises many ethical concerns. These include concerns around privacy, freedom of expression, and the politicisation of digital identities.
New US visa rules will force foreign students to unlock social media profiles
Diplomats to look for ‘indications of hostility towards citizens, culture or founding principles of United States’Andrew Roth (The Guardian)
"I smell the bodies, I can’t take it anymore": Daniel Edri (24) ended his life yesterday
"I smell the bodies, I can’t take it anymore": Daniel Edri (24) ended his life yesterday
Haunted by the horrors of war and the loss of his closest friends, 24-year-old Israeli reservist Daniel Adri took his own life in a forest near Safed.Gila Isaacson (JFeed)
There are now more than half a billion mobile money accounts in the world, mostly in Africa — here's why this matters
Mobile money allows people without banks to securely transfer funds via text message, and its adoption is growing rapidly.By the end of today, you'll probably have used your bank account — maybe to buy groceries, pay rent, or send money to a friend. Even better, to receive your salary. It's something many of us take for granted.
However, for more than a billion people globally, transactions only happen with cash. That means carrying around physical notes and coins, traveling long distances just to send or receive money, and facing the constant risk of losing it or having it stolen. The absence of formal banking services adds yet another hurdle for people trying to escape poverty.
But in recent years, “mobile money” has transformed how many people access financial services. Mobile money differs from traditional bank accounts; you don’t need a physical bank branch or even an Internet connection. Instead, you use text messages for services like deposits, transfers, and payments via a mobile phone. In this sense, it’s not the same as standard Internet banking, which many of us now use for most transactions.
Many people might be unfamiliar with how mobile money works, so let me briefly explain. You dial a short code for the mobile money provider, choose “send money”, and enter the recipient’s phone number (which serves as their account number). Next, type the amount and your secure PIN. That’s it — both the sender and recipient get an SMS confirmation within seconds. If you need to add funds to your mobile money account or retrieve your PIN, you can visit a local mobile money agent, often found in small shops or kiosks, which can be easier to reach than traditional banks.
Texas lawmakers failed to pass a bill to improve local disaster warning systems this year
Bill to boost disaster warning systems died in Legislature
A GOP state lawmaker who represents Kerr County says he likely would vote differently now on House Bill 13, which would have established a grant program for counties to build new emergency communication infrastructure.Terri Langford (The Texas Tribune)
Yemen’s Ansarullah vows to ‘rob Zionists of sleep’ following Israeli aggression
Israeli warplanes on Sunday night launched at least 20 airstrikes on Hodeidah in western Yemen.
The Yemeni Armed Forces said in a statement that the Air Force confronted the Israeli aggression on Yemen.
“Gaza is not alone and Yemen will not remain silent in the face of oppression,” he said, adding that the regime “has not been able and will not be able to stop Yemeni strikes deep into the occupied territories.”
Yemen’s Ansarullah vows to ‘rob Zionists of sleep’ following Israeli aggression
A senior Ansarullah official pledged that the Yemeni armed forces will “rob the Zionists of their sleep” following the Israeli regime’s recent aggression against the country.PressTV
Ginevra Di Marco - Kaleidoscope (2025)
Ginevra Di Marco - Kaleidoscope (2025)
di Luca Cremonesi Dopo cinque anni, Ginevra Di Marco torna in sala d’incisione per “Kaleidoscope”, un lavoro nato a seguito di un’importante...Silvano Bottaro (Blogger)
Bob Dylan - Tempest (2012)
Palestinians left 'without shelter and water' as settlers empty West Bank village
cross-posted from: feddit.org/post/15373488
A few excerpts:
That night, the settlers moved from home to home forcing families out at gun point.Resident Aliya Mlihat immediately rang the police, who were slow to respond. When border police and three military jeeps arrived on the scene, they did nothing to stop the onslaught, even facilitating the raids on people's homes.
Mlihat recalled that "the expressions on the soldiers' faces revealed satisfaction - even joy - as if they were endorsing the settlers' actions".
In one photo taken by Mlihat, settlers can be seen lounging in chairs and grinning alongside soldiers in fatigues.
The attack was led by sanctioned Israeli settler Zohar Sabah, who had set up the new outpost. According to Mlihat, Sabah stormed the area armed with an M16 rifle, shouting at residents to "flee to Jordan".
Israeli rights group Stop the Wall reported that settlers pitched a tent in the middle of the village, hooking it up to running water from a nearby outpost. They then proceeded to expand the outpost, forcing the 125 residents to flee to the industrial zone of Beitunia, where they do not have access to water or electricity.
"It involves just a couple of people setting up an outpost, herding their own flocks on the community's traditional grazing land, taking over access to water resources, stealing sheep, intimidating the community and preventing them from having access to all the natural resources around them.
"And then we'll see this escalation of violent attacks, often at night. This is what we're seeing now, just copy-paste, replicated all across the area east of Ramallah."
"It means that the two-state solution that the international community purports to support will no longer be viable, or is not viable if there's no Palestinian presence in large parts of the West Bank."
Low emphasised that despite frequent visits by diplomats to imperilled Palestinian villages in the West Bank, the international community is doing little to prevent their displacement.
Palestinians left 'without shelter and water' as settlers empty West Bank village
On Thursday evening, Israeli settlers erected a tent just metres away from a Palestinian Bedouin village in the Al-Mu'arrajat area in the occupied West Bank's Jordan Valley.Katherine Hearst (Middle East Eye)
Daily Kos is moving to WordPress
Daily Kos is moving to WordPress
For most of its existence, Daily Kos has run on custom-built publishing platforms. That might’ve made sense a decade or two ago, but now it’s expensive, outdated, and difficult to maintain. ...Daily Kos
Hebron locals denounce sheikhs' plan to declare independence and recognise Israel - Locals dismiss Wall Street Journal report about 'Hebron sheikhs' plan to sever ties with Palestinian Authority
Hebron locals denounce sheikhs' plan to declare independence and recognise Israel
Palestinian residents of the occupied West Bank city of Hebron have disavowed a proposal by five purported local "sheikhs" to sever ties with the Palestinian Authority (PA) and establish an "emirate of Hebron" which would recognise the state of Israe…MEE staff (Middle East Eye)
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Airbus okays use of ‘Taxibot’ to tow planes to the runway
Airbus okays use of ‘Taxibot’ to tow planes to the runway
: Airlines get the chance to cool their jets rather than burn fuel on the groundSimon Sharwood (The Register)
Fairphone 6 Teardown: Proof Phones Don’t Have to Be Disposable - Scored 10 out of 10 on ifixit repairability scale.
Remember when you could pop open a phone, swap the battery, and keep going? Fairphone remembers. Their latest release, the Fairphone 6, feels like a nostalgic nod to sanity, with plenty of modern upgrades.This is a phone that puts people and planet before profits. Sure, it doesn’t have the camera chops to take on a flagship, and USB-2 feels a bit retro in 2025, but what it lacks in bragging rights, it makes up for in staying power.
Fairphone 6 Teardown: Proof Phones Don’t Have to Be Disposable
In a world full of glued-together gadgets designed for obsolescence, the Fairphone 6 earns a well-deserved 10 out of 10 on our repairability scale.Elizabeth Chamberlain (iFixit)
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Looks like it does? Or at least could?
unix.stackexchange.com/questio…
I've never seen one so far though
I've packaged a CLI that I made as a flatpak. It works just fine. Nothing weird was required to make it work.
The only thing is that if you want to use a CLI flatpak, you probably want to set an alias in your shell to make running it easier.
I'm not sure why more CLIs aren't offered as flatpaks. Maybe because static linking them is so easy? I know people focus on flatpak sandboxing as a primary benefit, but I can't help but think of static linking was easier for bigger applications, it wouldn't be needed as much.
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Flatpak Zoom had no camera access.
I used Flatpak Zoom for all my job interviews recently. Camera and mic worked flawlessly.
Flatpaks are good, especially compared to snap.
The future is atomic OS's like silverblue, which will make heavy use of things like flatpak.
They have their place, but they can’t really completely replace traditional distros.
As it stands, I kinda agree. But I truly wonder to what extent we might be able to close the current gap.
~~> plus sudden updates that nuke active applications.~~
~~This is not what's supposed to happen. If an app installed through flatpak is active while it's receiving an update, then the update is not supposed to affect the running application until it's closed/restarted.~~
Edit: Somehow I didn't realize the concern was raised against Snap and not Flatpak.
Snap is not all bad if you're on a Ubuntu based distro, I just don't like the way it's pushed and that it comes from Ubuntu mostly. Startup time is a major issue for me also, but all in all it works.
I'm still sitting on the fence, heavily prefer flatpak but when Ubuntu is going to package nvidia drivers in a snap it's a thing I'm up for trying.
My understanding is that if I'm on Ubuntu and the snap uses the same underlying Ubuntu version as my distro it should be fast but I haven't seen it.
flatpak uninstall --unused right after uninstalling a flatpak. I don't get why it doesn't do this automatically. Granted, some distro package managers (used to) operate somewhat similarly in that they required the autoremove option.
flatpak uninstall --unused and it didn't remove these ones. So there's something odd going on there. My guess is maybe Mint manually installed them through the driver manager program? That's a wild guess, I don't know how it works.
IDK why you're being so rage baity. Its easy to avoid flatpaks if you dont like them. Only thing I've ever found as an obstacle was adding the binaries to my PATH so I can launch it with dmenu_run. Otherwise my package manager works well enough.
Bonus points: Write a PKGBUILD that installs flatpaks to /opt and symlink out binaries as needed.
Well, I heard that people who use flatpacks are libs. True?
Sorry, I just think it's funny that Linux users get so defensive about this stuff. You really felt insulted by this?
I love installing things from the CLI and prefer to only do it that way but Linux needs a single click install method for applications if it’s ever going to become a mainstream OS. The average person just wants to Google a program, hit download and install. If not that then they want to use a mobile-like App Store.
Flatpak is kind of perfect at achieving both those things
Oh 100% but have you tried to explain how to use one to a computer novice? Like yes, the answer is usually “they should just…” but novice users will never. With flatpak, they get an experience similar to how MacOS works and a bit like how .exes work and it Just Works™️
Edit: like I’ve had trouble showing people how to use the GNOME App Store which could not be any more simple. Anyone who has been convinced to install Linux already feels way out of their element so making everything feel as natural as possible is essential (and I mean, flatpaks are awesome anyway)
OpenSUSE has OneClick install for RPMs. en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:One_C…
Edit: and if you happen to download an rpm, you just double click it in the filemanager (or single click if that is your setting) and it launces the install GUI.
Its similar to how MSI file install looks...just next next finish kind of thing
Just go to the package manager, type in the name of the program, install.
That's easier than on windows: go to the browser, search for the program, avoid the ads, search for the download button, follow the install wizard, avoid the toolbar
Former OS security here (I worked at an OS vendor who sold an OS or two and my job involved keeping it secure).
Fuck no.
Sorry if that makes you downvote, but it doesn't make them safer.
A few reasons security people can have to hesitate on Flatpak:
- In comparison to sticking with strictly vetted repos from the big distros like Debian, RHEL, etc., using Flathub and other sources means normalizing installing software that isn't so strongly vetted. Flathub does at least have a review process but it's by necessity fairly lax.
- Bundling libraries with an application means you can still be vulnerable to an exploit in some library, even if your OS vendor has already rolled out the fix, because of using Flatpak software that still loads the vulnerable version. The freedesktop runtimes at least help limit the scope of this issue but don't eliminate it.
- The sandboxing isn't as secure as many users might expect, which can further encourage installing untrusted software.
By a typical home user's perspective this probably seems like nothing; in terms of security you're still usually better off with Flatpak than installing random AUR packages, adding random PPA repos, using AppImage programs, installing a bunch of Steam games, blindly building an unfamiliar project you cloned from github, or running bash scripts you find online. But in many contexts none of that is acceptable.
I mean, they added "bash scripts you find online", which are only a problem if you don't look them over or cannot understand them first... Their post is very much cemented in the paranoid camp of security.
Not that they're wrong. That's the big thing about security once you go deep enough: the computer has to work for someone, and being able to execute much at all opens up some avenues of abuse. Like securing a web based service. It has to work for someone, so of course everything is still vulnerable at some point. Usually when private keys or passwords are compromised if they're doing things remotely correctly, but they're still technically vulnerable at some point.
The parent comment mentions working on security for a paid OS, so looking at the perspective of something like the users of RHEL and SUSE: supply chain "paranoia" absolutely does matter a lot to enterprise users, many of which are bound by contract to specific security standards (especially when governments are involved). I noted that concerns at that level are rather meaningless to home users.
On a personal system, people generally do whatever they need to in order to get the software they want. Those things I listed are very common options for installing software outside of your distro's repos, and all of them offer less inherent vetting than Flathub while also tampering with your system more substantially. Though most of them at least use system libraries.
they added “bash scripts you find online”, which are only a problem if you don’t look them over or cannot understand them
I would honestly expect that the vast majority of people who see installation steps including curl [...] | sh (so common that even reputable projects like cargo/rust recommend it) simply run the command as-is without checking the downloaded script, and likewise do the same even if it's sudo sh. That can still be more or less fine if you trust the vendor/host, its SSL certificate, and your ability to type/copy the domain without error. Even if you look at the script, that might not get you far if it happens to be a self-extracting one unless you also check its payload.
I used them for some things, but other things still don't work quite right. Take Steam for example. I do love flatpaks for testing out apps, things with really finicky dependencies, or pinning a specific version of a software that I want to continue to work in the future. However, for most things, Arch + AUR just covers all my needs without any hiccups.
To me flatpaks are sort of like NixOS. All the benefits they provide aren't something I need on a daily basis. Rolling back works just fine 99% of the time with downgrade. I already have system backups. Despite what some articles might insist, things don't just break all the time. I'm not running untrusted software.
Basically no solution is perfect, but they don't need to be. If the benefits I gain can be recreated through other methods without the tradeoffs they introduce, then I will go with that. Of course, that isn't to say they don't have their place, but sometimes I feel like some people think that "being designed from the ground up" to handle certain use cases is always better than whatever "cobbled together" thing we currently have and that isn't always the case. I'm specifically quoting those two phrases because these are the exact phrases you will hear projects using to justify their existence. In fact, I would go so far as to say that some people have outright confused modularity for "cobbled together".
One last example I want to make is that I make use of projects like the fish shell and helix editor. In these cases, I find the features they introduce to be worth the tradeoffs and work better because of being designed "from the ground up" to do what they do. However, I don't make use of immutable systems, containers such as docker, or say filesystems such as btrfs. The features they provide are not useful enough to me compared to the problems they introduce.
Flatpak have their own set of issues. One thing is, that Flatpak applications do not integrate that easily and perfect like a native package. Either rights are to given, you need to know what rights are needed and how to set it up. Theming can be an issue, because it uses its own libraries in the Flatpak eco system instead your current distributions theme and desktop environment.
But on the other hand, they have actually a permission system and are a little bit sandbox compared to normal applications. Packages often are distributed quickly and are up to date directly from the developers, and usually are not installed with root rights.
I'm pretty much a CLI guy as well and prefer native packages (Arch based, plus the AUR). But I also use Flatpaks for various reasons, alongside with AppImages.
I'd take a well-maintained native package for my distro over a Flatpak, but sometimes, a Flatpak is just the the easiest way to get the latest version of an application working on Debian without too much tinkering - not always no tinkering, but better than nothing.
This is especially true of GIMP - Flatpak GIMP + Resynthesizer feels like the easiest way to experience GIMP these days. Same with OBS - although I have to weather the Flatpak directory structure, plugins otherwise feel easier to get working than the native package. The bundled runtimes are somewhat annoying, but I'm also not exactly hurting for storage at the moment - I could probaby do to put more of my 2 TB main SSD to use.
I usually just manage Flatpaks from the terminal, though I often have to refresh myself on application URLs. I somewhat wish one could set nicknames so they need not remember the full name.
Me pretty much only ever using arch Linux: "what the fuck is a flatpak"
I once had to install Firefox into wsl (Ubuntu) and I wanted the kms on the spot.
But maybe it's not that bad for newer people to get started with Linux.
the weirdest one was ghostwriter from the official repos, for some reason one day the preview window showed heavily corrupted output and tinkering with it on and off for a week did nothing, including a complete purge and reinstall of the program
the flatpak was the only version of it that worked after that
It’s extremely context-dependent.
If we’re talking about enterprise-grade, five-nines reliability: I want the absolute simplest, bare-bones, stripped down, optimized infra I can get my hands on.
If we’re talking about my homelab or whatever else non-critical system: I’m gonna fuck around and play with whatever I feel like.
You are mixing different ideas of freedom.
Software freedom is not the same as freedom of choice of software.
You don't need Linux to have choices of what software to use, you have that in most (all?) proprietary systems, in some you might even have more choices than in Linux.. even if it includes proprietary software.
This is analogous to how being a free person (not a slave) is not the same as having freedom to choose who to work for, even if some of them are slavers (ie. having freedom to choose your master).
Flatpaks are pretty great for getting the latest software without having to have a cutting edge rolling release distro or installing special repos and making sure stuff doesn't break down the line.
I use Flatpaks for my software that I need the latest and greatest version of, and my distros native package for CLI apps and older software that I don't care about being super up to date.
My updater script handles all of it in one action anyways, so no biggie on that either.
Flatpaks are the best all-in-one solution when compared to Appimages or Snaps imo.
without having to have a cutting edge rolling release distro
Oh, that explains why they're completely bloated & useless to me. Arch btw
You should only install a flatpak if the program is not available for your OS, or if the native version doesn't work for some reason.
Certainly a fan, and I don't understand the hate towards it.
Flatpaks are my preferred way of installing Linux apps, unless it is a system package, or something that genuinely requires extensive permissions like a VPN client, or something many other apps depend on like Wine.
The commonly cited issues with Flatpaks are:
- Performance. Honestly, do you even care if your Pomodoro timer app takes up 1 more megabyte of RAM? Do you actually notice?
- Bloat. Oh, yes, an app now takes 20 MB instead of 10 MB. Again, does anybody care?
- Slower and larger updates. Could be an issue for someone on a metered traffic, or with very little time to do updates. Flatpaks update in the background, though, and you typically won't notice the difference unless you need something newest now (in which case you'll have to wait an extra minute)
- Having to check permissions. This is a feature, not a bug. For common proponents of privacy and security, Linuxheads grew insanely comfortable granting literally every maintainer full access to their system. Flatpaks intentionally limit apps functionality to what is allowed, and if in some case defaults aren't good for your use case - just toggle a switch in Flatseal, c'mon, you don't need any expertise to change it.
What you gain for it? Everything.
- Full control over app's permissions. Your mail client doesn't need full system permissions, and neither do your messengers. Hell, even your backup client only needs to access what it backs up.
- All dependencies built in. You'll never have to face dependency hell, ever, no matter what. And you can be absolutely sure the app is fully featured and you won't have to look for missing nonessential dependencies.
- Fully distro-agnostic. If something works on my EndeavourOS, it will work on my OpenSUSE Slowroll, and on my Debian 12. And it will be exactly the same thing, same version, same features. It's beautiful.
- Stability. Flatpaks are sandboxed, so they don't affect your system and cannot harm it in any way. This is why immutable distros feature Flatpaks as the main application source. Using them with mutable distributions will also greatly enhance stability.
Alternatives?
AppImages don't need an installation, so they are nice to see what the program is about. But for other uses, they are garbage-tier. Somehow they manage both not to integrate with the system and not be sandboxed, you need manual intervention or additional tools to at least update them/add to application menu, and ultimately, they depend on one file somewhere. This is extremely unreliable and one should likely never use AppImages for anything but "use and delete".
Snaps...aside from all the controversy about Snap Store being proprietary and Ubuntu shoving snaps down people's throats, they were just never originally developed with desktop applications in mind. As a result, Snaps are commonly so much slower and bulkier that it actually starts getting very noticeable. Permissions are also way less detailed, meaning you can't set apps up with minimum permissions for your use case.
This all leaves us with one King:
And it is Flatpak.
Flatpaks, appimages, snaps, etc: why download dependencies once when you can download them every time and bloat your system? Also, heaving to list installed flatpaks and run them is dumb too, why aren't they proper executables? "flatpak run com.thisIsDumb.fuckinEh" instead of just ./fuckinEh
No thanks. I'll stick to repos and manually compiling software before I seek out a flatpak or the like.
This shit is why hobbies and things should be gatekept. Just look at how shit PC design is these days. Now they're coming after the OS.
As I said, dependencies typically don't take that much space. We're not in the '80s, I can spare some megabytes to ensure my system runs smoothly and is managed well.
As per naming, I agree, but barely anyone uses command line to install Flatpaks, as they are primarily meant for desktop use. In GUI, Flatpaks are shown as any other package, and all it takes is to push "Install" button.
If you want to enjoy your chad geeky Linux, you still can. Go for CachyOS, or anything more obscure, never to use Flatpaks again. At the same time, let others use what is good and convenient to them.
Please clarify, what option do you mean? Flatpaks are supported on any Linux system, it doesn't matter what distro or hardware. Or if you mean sparing some megabytes - typically yes as well. The smallest amount of memory I've seen on a laptop is 32gb, and typically it's no less than 250gb.
If it's not present in you distributions' app store, you can either enable it somewhere or download another app manager like Discover, GNOME Software, or pamac if you're on Arch.
If installation of some app incurs a few gbs of downloads, it is likely that your system updates packages alongside installing your app. Typical Flatpak app takes 10-150 megabytes.
I've been working on Linux for 15 years now and I perfectly remember the origin of many concepts. If you look at it through time, what would it be like:
1. We can build applications with external dependencies or a single binary, what should we choose?
2. The community is abandoning a single binary due to the increased weight of applications and memory consumption and libraries problems
3. Dependency hell is coming
...
4. Snap, flatpack, appimage and other strange solutions are inventing something, which are essentially a single binary, but with an overlay (if the developer has hands from the right place, which is often not the case)
5. Someone on lemmy says that he literally doesn't care if the application is built in a single binary, consumes extra memory and have libraries problems. Just close all permissions for that application...
Well, all I can say about this is just assemble a single binary for all applications, stop doing nonsense with a flatpack/snap/etc.
UPD: or if you really want to break all the conventions, just use nixos. You don't need snap/flatpack/etc.
I don't mind other solutions, as long as they have the key features Flatpak offers, namely:
* Being open-source
* Having app permission system
* Having bundled dependencies
* Integrating decently with the system
Times are changing, and memory constraints for most programs are generally not relevant anymore.
The few things I don't like about flatpaks (which become a problem on atomic distros that use almost all flatpak by design):
- Some types of embedded development is essentially impossible with flatpaks. Try getting the J-link software connected with nrftools and then everything linked to VScodium/codeoss
- Digital signing simply doesn't work, won't work for the foreseeable future, and is not planned to get working,
- Flatpaks sometimes have bugs for no reasons when their package-manager counterparts don't (e.g. in KiCAD 8.0, the upper 20% or so of dialog boxes were unclickable with the mouse, but I could select and modify them with the keyboard, only the flatpak version)
- The status on whether it is still being actively developed or not (at least I hear a fair amount of drama surrounding it)
But besides those small things, it seem great to me.
It would take 1,01gb
Dependencies typically take 5-80 megabytes of space.
Huh?
Either it did something it shouldn't, or the system updated Nvidia drivers every time for no apparent reason. I have an Nvidia GPU, running proprietary drivers, and haven't ever witnessed anything of the kind.
Wow that's actually big difference, thanks for bringing it up!
Good news, though, is that you are free to install Gimp as a native package, and use Flatpaks for the rest.
Idk how, but one time I tried installing something as a flatpak and it took like 300+MB and a very long time. I figured something was wrong, found a way to install it normally and it took like 10MB and installed quickly. Idk what went wrong, but I'll never touch this garbage again
Edit: oh they're not for arch. Maybe they should have told me before the 300mb slog
Honestly, I am a little scarred from snap.
Otherwise I'm agnostic on flatpaks - I've used a couple and they're ok? They just remind me of old windows games that dump all their libraries in a folder with them.
On a modern system the extra space and loss of optimisation is ok, but on older hardware or when you're really trying to push your system to run something it technically shouldn't, I can see it being an issue.
I've heard Flatpaks aren't great at CLI tools, is that true ?
As a Nix user, I'm glad Flatpaks exist for other people, but I only ever use them when a package is not available from Nix directly. Seeing as Nix is literally the biggest package manager out there, it's a pretty rare occurrence.
I posted this in another thread, but reposting here because a lot of people, including myself up until very recently, were under that impression:
I've packaged a CLI that I made as a flatpak. It works just fine. Nothing weird was required to make it work.
The only thing is that if you want to use a CLI flatpak, you probably want to set an alias in your shell to make running it easier.
I'm not sure why more CLIs aren't offered as flatpaks. Maybe because static linking them is so easy? I know people focus on flatpak sandboxing as a primary benefit, but I can't help but think that if static linking was easier for bigger applications, it wouldn't be needed as much.
I am definitely a fan. A lot of people say that flatpaks are bad because of sandboxing but I haven't seemed to have any issues with it.
Although I do try to use dnf when a dnf package is available (I use fedora)
iit: nerds unable to comprehend that building a piece of software from source in not something every person can do.
EDIT: or doesn’t want to do
one of my least favorite things about arch and other rolling distros is that yay/pacman will try and recompile shit like electron/chromium from source every few days unless you give it very specific instructions not to - which is annoying as shit bc compiling the entirety of chrome from source takes hours even with decent hardware.
granted, i fucking hate google products too but if you’re doing any web dev it’s necessary sometimes.
idk im definitely willing to admit i might be the idiot here. managing your packages with pacman might just be routine to some people. to me arch is the epitome of classic bad UX in an open source project. it’s like they got too focused on being cmatrix-style terminal nerds and forgot to make their software efficiently useable outside of 5 very specific people’s workflows. it’s not even the terminal usage that is bad about arch. plenty of things are focused on that and… don’t do it shittily? idk…
edit: yes to all the arch fanboy’s points in response to me. i used to be super into arch and am aware of the fact that this isn’t explicit behavior but to act like it doesn’t happen in a typical arch user experience is disingenuous. i also disagree with the take that arch doesn’t endorse this outright with its design philosophy, bc it does. the comparison of the AUR to other, similar things like PPAs doesn’t land for me bc PPAs aren’t integrated into the ecosystem nearly as much as AUR is with arch. you can’t tell people to just grab the binaries or not use AUR whenever it’s convenient to blame the user, when arch explicitly endorses a philosophy amicable to self-compilation and also heavily uses the AUR even in their own arch-wiki tutorials for fairly basic use cases. arch wants to have its cake and eat it too and be a great DIY build it yourself toolkit while also catering to daily driver use and more generalist users. don’t get me wrong, it’s the best attempt at such a thing i’ve seen - but at a certain point you have to ask if the premise makes sense anymore. in the case of arch, it doesn’t and it causes several facets of the ecosystem to flounder from a user perspective. the arch community’s habit of shouting “skill issue” at people when they point out legitimate issues with the design philosophy bugs the fuck out of me. this whole OS is a camel.
is garuda like endeavorOS or manjaro where it’s technically still an arch-based rolling release distro but the OS maintainers hold packages from upstream mainline arch?
i don’t hate that model, it’s more fun to use as an end user for sure, but i feel like it kind of defeats the point of arch’s entire ethos lmao.
sometimes you’re working with particular releases or builds that don’t, but like i said i might be the idiot lol.
i like the concept of arch. i don’t like the way i need to come up with a new solution for how im managing my packages virtually every few days that often requires novel information. shit, half the time you boot up an arch system if you have sufficient # of packages there is 9/10 times a conflict when trying to just update things naively. like i said it’s cool on paper and im sure once you use it as a daily driver for awhile it just becomes routine but it’s more the principle of the user experience and its design philosophy that i think might be poor.
arch is for techies in the middle of the bell curve imo… people on the left and the right, when it comes to something as simple as managing all my packages and versions, want something that just works^TM^ - unless i specifically want to fuck with the minutiae.
conflict when trying to just update things naively
Sounds like AUR problems. IMO using AUR helpers that tie AUR packages to your full system update command is a trap. AUR never professed to be a stable repository (in fact it's the opposite). AUR has a place, but it should be used sparingly and thoughtfully.
The wiki article :
- specifically says that packages are not thoroughly vetted
- does not recommend using yay or another AUR helper (which is the primary thing I recommend against)
- has a frequently asked question section that is fairly technical and should indicate that it is not for the faint of heart
The aur helper wiki has a fun red disclaimer at the top that no one reads
you (rhetorical you, not you) can recommend not using the AUR officially all you want. it doesn’t mean anything if a large number of tasks the average user is going to do require AUR packages. i’m kind of drunk rn but i’ll go find specific pages of the wiki that demonstrate what i’m talking about, i stg this isn’t nothing. the core system itself can entirely be managed with pacman, yes, but the average user is going to be doing a lot more than just that. there is a certain discord in the messaging of arch as a whole.
this is exactly my point. arch can either be a nuts and bolts distro or it can be made for normies. it can’t be both.
it doesn’t mean anything if a large number of tasks the average user is going to do require AUR packages
You keep saying this but can you give any concrete examples? I don't recall coming across anything like this.
All of the normal Arch packages are pre-built, so the only way you'd be compiling things that often is if you installed a large amount of things from the AUR. Make sure you get the bin versions instead of git versions.
The google-chrome and chromium packages are already a binaries so my guess is you need ungoogled-chromium-bin. You can also use the Chaotic AUR repo to get pre-built binaries of a lot of the most common AUR packages. But ideally you should avoid using the AUR when it's not necessary.
While using the AUR is common, it's a bit frustrating you are blaming Arch for your experience. If you only use pacman you would never compile anything, or have very many conflicts. It's like if you added 20 different PPAs on Ubuntu and then complained about the problems that arose from that.
one of my least favorite things about arch and other rolling distros is that yay/pacman will try and recompile shit like electron/chromium from source every few days unless you give it very specific instructions not to
My understanding is that constantly triggering compiling like that shouldn't be happening in any typical arch + pacman situation. But it can happen in AUR. If it does, I think it's a special case where you should be squinting and figuring out what's going on and stopping the behavior; it's by no means philosophically endorsed as the usual case scenario for packages on arch.
There's certainly stuff about Arch that's Different(TM) but nothing about the package manager process is especially different from, say, apt-get or rpm in most cases.
saying it can happen in the AUR feels disingenuous to me when you consider how integrated the AUR is to the arch ecosystem. this is a genuine complaint from a user perspective and is an issue with the design philosophy imo. it is a special case but it’s so frequent as to be annoying, is my point.
not sure why everyone is replying like i’m unaware and totally ignoring the actual grievance i have. im very well aware of pacman and yay’s intended behaviors, i just think they’re shit in some cases. idk if people who say this have never tried to daily drive arch before or something but the AUR is absolutely not optional unless you want to constantly hand roll your own shit. see my edit to the original comment.
Feyd did a pretty good job of outlining the AUR disclaimers in a different comment so I won't do that here. It's true that Arch won't stop you from shooting yourself in the foot, but again it's nuts to claim that routine compiling is the usual case for all rolling distros and belies your claim that you're familiar with usual case experience. There's absolutely no routine experience where you're regularly compiling.
I've used debian and apt-get most of my life, I've used arch on a pinetab 2 for about 6 months, regularly playing with pacman and yay and someone who's never met me is saying I'm a fanboy for being familiar with linux package management. 🤷♂️
iit: nerds unable to comprehend that building a piece of software from source in not something every person can do
huh? Using package managers almost never involves compiling. It's there as a capability, but the point is to distribute pre-compiled packages and skip that step in the vast majority of cases.
Sunsetting Cursed Terminal Emulation
This is the final part concluding the long journey on how to migrate away from terminal emulation as the main building block for command-lines, text-dominant shells and user interfaces in general. …Arcan
I have used rpms, AppImages, Flatpaks, and source. I have even used a snap or two when I had no other choice.
If you can't work with them all, can you even say you Linux Bro?
i agree ubuntu is corpo drivel now but flatpaks are actually quite useful for some applications.
the sandboxing is nice to not have to setup manually for every little thing, and i say that as someone who avoids flatpaks generally.
sometimes you just wanna get things up and running, not everything needs to be a unix circlejerk.
never tried flatpak, snaps were so bad as to never consider non-native installs or just use docker instances when I need to run something weird. so dunno.
whats the use case for a flatpak exactly? maybe im not the target audience???
Flatpaks are great for situations where installing software is unnecessary complex or complicated.
I have Steam installed for some games, and since this is a 32 bits application it would install a metric shit-don of 32 bit dependencies I do not use for anything else except Steam, so I use the Flatpak version.
Or Kdenlive for video editing. Kdenlive is the only KDE software I use but when installing it, it feels like due to dependencies I also get pretty much all of the KDE desktop’s applications I do not need nor use nor want on my machine. So Flatpak it is.
And then there is software like OBS, which is known for being borderline unusable when not using the only officially supported way to use it on Linux outside of Ubuntu – which is Flatpak.
This is the main benefit. However, i'm finding the software I use requires less dependencies and libraries these days.
I barely even use flatpaks anymore. Almost everything is in official repos. I couldn't tell you the last time I had a dependency conflict.
Flatpaks are great for situations where installing software is unnecessary complex or complicated.
That's my main use for flatpaks too. Add to that any and all closed source software, because you can't trust that without a sandbox around it.
Recently I've moved from using flatpak for electron apps and instead have a single flatpak ungoogled chromium instance I use for PWAs.
And then there is software like OBS, which is known for being borderline unusable when not using the only officially supported way to use it on Linux outside of Ubuntu – which is Flatpak.
But why is that? I mean just because it is packaged by someone else does not mean its unusable. So its not the package formats issue, but your distribution packaging it wrong. Right? In installed the Flatpak version, because they developers recommended it to me. I'm not sure why the Archlinux package should be unusable (and I don't want to mess around with it, because I don't know what part is unusable).
But why is that?
Because the OBS developers say so.
And since I’m not on Ubuntu, I use the Flatpak version to get OBS as intended bey the OBS developers.
So its not the package formats issue, but your distribution packaging it wrong. Right?
Exactly. Most distributions fail hard when it comes to packaging OBS correctly. The OBS devs even threatened to sue Fedora over this.
gitlab.com/fedora/sigs/flatpak…
Broken OBS Studio Flatpak presented as official package (#39) · Issues · Fedora / Special Interest Groups (SIGs) / Fedora Flatpak SIG / Fedora Flatpaks · GitLab
The unofficial OBS Studio Flatpak on Fedora Flatpaks is, seemingly, poorly packaged and broken, leading to users complaining upstream thinking they are...GitLab
The quoted image does not say so, they do not say the native packaging from your distribution is borderline unusable. That judgement was added by YOU. The devs just state the package on Archlinux is not officially supported, without making a judgement (at least in the quoted image).
As for the Fedora issue, that is a completely different thing. That is also Flatpak, so its not the package format itself the issue. Fedora did package the application in Flatpak their own way and presented it as the official product. That is a complete different issue! That has nothing to do with Archlinux packaging their own native format. Archlinux never said or presented it as the official package either and it does not look like the official Flatpak version.
So where does the developers say that anything that is not their official Flatpak package is "borderline unusable"?
The quoted image does not say so
It does exactly say so. Flatpak is the only supported and official method of installation when you’re not using Ubuntu.
As for the Fedora issue, that is a completely different thing. That is also Flatpak, so its not the package format itself the issue.
Exactly. And the Flatpak version from Fedora was unusable.
So where does the developers say that anything that is not their official Flatpak package is “borderline unusable”?
They don’t. It’s just unsupported.
I spent my time fighting AppImages until Canonical started to force Snap on me. I hated Snap so bad it forced me to switch distros. Now I appreciate Flatpak as a result and I don't find AppImages all that bad, either. Also, I haven't found myself in dependency-hell nor have I crashed my distro from unofficial Repos in well over a decade.
-It's a long way of saying It works for me and it's not Snap.
Appimages are ok, bloated but ok. Unless a library inside is old and won't work.
Flatpak is annoying and I don't like it at all, so I don't use it. Easy solution.
Fuck snap though.
About the image: The joke's on you, I install my flatpaks via the terminal.
I've started using flatpaks more after starting using Bazzite and I liked them more than I expected. As a dev, I still need my work tools to be native, but most of my other needs are well covered by flatpaks.
Tip: Flatseal is a great config manager for flatpaks' permissions.
It is mostly trial and error. I use it mostly to set envvars.
As an example, I add the ~/.themes folder and the GTK_THEME to allow some apps to get the themes I downloaded.
Oh, so flatpaks cannot automatically get system themes?
If it is trial and error, is it really useful for a normal user?
System themes, probably most of them work. But most of them don't bother watching the user themes or icons folder.
I don't think Flatseal is that useful for the majority of users, no. But it is a good tool to have in mind when the need arises.
Why do you think it is not useful?
I replaced Firefox system package with Flatpak because I think browser is the most used and vulnerable thing in my system. And the size seemed reasonable.
I did not replace Thunderbird because its size is almost 10 times.
Installing them is not difficult. It's the same as any other flatpak.
The problem is when running them (actually, when running any flatpak, not just CLI tools) you need to type out the whole backwards domain thingy that flatpaks use as identifier, instead of having a proper typical and simple executable name like they would have if they were installed normally.
I end up adding either symlinks or aliases for all my flatpaks because of this reason. After doing that it's ok.. but it's just an extra step that's annoying and that the flatpak devs have no interest on fixing apparently.
I like the idea of them because I don't like dealing with dependencies changing and breaking stuff and I don't really care too much about disk space in the context of non-game desktop apps, as I don't tend to install lots of them.
That being said I absolutely hate that permissions are all over the place and flatpak doesn't ship a GUI to manage them by default, nor do you get any indication as to what permissions a program has until you try some functionality (like filesystem or camera access) only to find out it doesn't work out of the box.
I've never heard anyone say that Flatpaks could result in losing access to the terminal.
My only problem with Flatpaks are the lack of digital signature, neither from the repository nor the uploader. Other major package managers do use digital signatures, and Flatpaks should too.
Nah, it's the same as with systemd, docker, immutable distros etc. Some people just don't appreciate the added complexity for features they don't need/use and prefer to opt out. Then the advocates come, take not using their favorite software as a personal insult and make up straw-men to ridicule and argue against. Then the less enlightened of those opting out will get defensive and let themselves get dragged into the argument. 90% that's the way these flame wars get started and not the other way around.
For the record, I use flatpak on all my desktops, it's great, and all of the other mentioned things in some capacity, but I get why someone might want to not use them. Let's not make software choice a tribalism thing please. Love thy neighbor as thyself, unless they use Windows, in which case, kill the bastard. /s
Can someone explain why flatpak isn't necessary for distros that have proper OS dependency management like Arch-based distros or Nix?
Seems like flatpak is solving a problem for OS's that don't have proper dependency management.
Also pretty much everywhere you're using flatpaks (or snaps or...), you are doing it on top of a Linux system that's still getting its core system updates via traditional dependency management. And flatpaks, despite trying not to, make assumptions about your kernel, your glibc version, architecture, ability to access parts of your filesystem or your devices, that can break things, and doesn't bother to track it.
And the closer you get you tracking that stuff (like Snap tries to), you hilariously just get back to where you started, with traditional dependency management that already exists and has existed for decades.
main selling points are isolation and having the latest version directly from developers without having to wait for your distro to package/update it.
both are debatable since they are not as good as promoted (isolation doesn't always work correctly and it's a mess to configure it once you use anything different than the more mainstream distros) or goes against the historical preference (using bundled everything instead of cooperating with your distro packages and trusting every individual over trusting your distro as a whole) but having the latest version on any distro without having to wait is a popular need so they gained traction quite fast. this might make little sense for rolling release distros (arch, nix) but it's helpful if you have a stable base (years old debian) but need the latest feature on an specific application or have to use very specific libraries that are not packaged on the main distro and would require complex upgrades
I'm not a huge fan of Flatpaks, they're a lot harder to distribute offline versus something like AppImage. Seriously, you have to like create an offline repository, then create a bundle, and it's like 6 or 7 steps, it's honestly kind of ridiculous lol but other than that they seem fine, and they're easy enough to update (but so are apt packages)
I know some people may say "oh why do you need that", but Linux has taught me that my computer is my own, and I should be able to use it the way I want to. I shouldn't have to fight with my package manager to get it to do what I want. So I guess you could say, no I'm not really a fan of Flatpaks.
Personally, I didn't mind Snaps, but I'm getting kind of really fed up with especially for-profit companies etc so I don't like Snap that much now either.
Apt packages are nice, but the more of them you have installed, especially if you're using Ubuntu-based distros and have lots of PPAs, the more annoying upgrading your distro version can be because of all the dependencies and cross-dependencies.
AppImage tends to just work for me, as long as it's not compiled with a newer libc-bin version than the distro I'm currently using has, and I really enjoy that it's just one file I can copy and run pretty much anywhere.
Yes, Flatpak is overall a better approach when compared to AppImages, since being dependent on a known runtime ensures the program will run whenever the runtime is available.
What I wish they would add is a way to run the flatpak in a portable way. Because as it stands, AppImages is the only option for that. Flatpak doesn't really allow to have a portable installation in a pendrive, for example. At the moment there's no replacement for AppImage in such use cases, which is a pity.
But there's no fundamental technical design roadblock in flatpak that would prevent it from supporting this in the future, imho. theoretically one could create a program that mounts the flatpak file into a ramfs layered with the runtime and run it.
I don't actually know if it is a Wayland issue - most of those forum posts are like 3 years old... And I have definitely used these same AppImages in the past on Wayland without issue. I think the AppImages are expecting some specific dependency to be installed on my system that is no longer installed due to updates. (which I thought was counter to the entire point of an AppImage? I thought it was supposed to be kinda like Flatpak where it has it's dependencies in the image? Maybe I just misunderstood AppImage...)
To give you some hope, my Distro switched to Wayland as default a little over a year ago (i think) and I have not been running into problems (outside this AppImage problem, if it is indeed a Wayland issue, which I cannot confirm or deny).
All of this is true and precisely zero normies care about any of it.
The fact that I can put my ~~idiots~~ family on any modern distro and tell them to use the app store alone makes flatpaks king of the app management
I view the delays during launch and the extra time spent during updates as a "load on the system."
Also, it entirely depends on your deployment environment. I develop system images that go out on thousands of devices deployed in "Cybersecuity Sensitive" environments, meaning: we have to document what's on the system and justify when anything in the SBOM (list of every software package installed on the machine) is identified as having any applicable CVEs... soooo.... keeping old versions of software anywhere on the machine is a problem (significant additional documentation load) for those security audits. Don't argue with logic, these are our customers and they have established their own procedures, so if we want their money, we will provide them with the documentation they demand, and that documentation is simplest when EVERYTHING on the system has ALL the latest patches.
The most secure systems are those that don't do anything at all. You can't hack a brick.
i mostly use them for proprietary stuff or for software that is incredible painful to package (mostly electron apps). i will probably never use them for anything that actually matters but i also use rolling release distros everywhere so latest release is never too far. for testing latest version of any software i prefer appimages since they are simpler and don't need a messy setup as flatpak, but i also won't use them pass the testing phase and i prefer packaging the software if possible.
snaps, on the other hand, will never go near any of my systems. not even by accident
Personally I am okay with them actually. I use several on my system and having each app allowed to have different permissions is super useful.
But also I like things that are directly installed cause they seem just a tad faster performance wise.
There was a few years where I pretty much only used Flatpaks because I was scared of the terminal. But now that I've learned how to use the terminal, it's so much more convenient because I can quickly update all my applications all in one place without having to open a separate app. Plus, some Flatpaks can fall really behind on software updates.
There might be a Linux userbase someday where no one other than developers actually knows how to use the terminal, because users can run everything they want without a command line, but maybe that's actually a good thing because it'll drive up how many people use a Linux distro.
With Windows and Mac, there's a shareholder incentive to enshittify. With Linux, if a distro goes bad and gets commercialized, there's always another distro people can move to, not to mention there's no financial incentive. The more people get on Linux, the less power these tech companies have. Personally, that and privacy are what drew me to Linux much more so than being able to tinker or fine-tune my experience.
There might be a Linux userbase someday where no one other than developers actually knows how to use the terminal, because users can run everything they want without a command line
Ideally, all the essential terminal commands could be replicated in a user-friendly GUI-applicable manner. Don’t ever have to remove the terminal for those that enjoy it, but if we could have a magic world where even the failure states could be navigated with little to no prior knowledge required and it gets everyone away from Windows and Mac for good, I’m all for it.
Flatpaks aim to be a middle ground between dependency hell and "let's pull in the universe" bloat.
Applications packaged as Flatpaks can reference runtimes to share "bases" with other applications, and then provide their own libraries if they need anything bespoke on top of that.
And they are still, in my experience, slow to load, a cumbersome addition to the update process, and often un-necessary.
Don't get me wrong, if you're in a tight spot and can't make two significant software packages work in a distribution due to conflicting library version requirements... some kind of lightweight container solution is attractive, expedient, and better than just not supporting one of the packages. But, my impression is that a lot of stuff has been moved into flatpak / snap / etc. just because they can. I don't think it's the best, or even preferred, way to maintain software - for the desktop environment.
(Returns to checking on his Docker containers full of server apps on the R-Pi farm...)
I'm running an immutable distro at the moment (GNOME OS), and I felt no loss of performance due to Flatpaks. Snaps, on the other hand, do have a perceivably longer launch time.
Given that it's an immutable distro, everything I need needs to be either a Flatpak, a Snap, an Appimage or an extracted tarball, otherwise it runs in a container. The advantage of this system is stability and making the host incorruptible, as well as the ability to very easily roll back updates or failed systemd-sysext layers.
Not everything can run in a Flatpak at the moment, but we're hoping the evolution in Flatpak, XDG portals as well as encouraging developers to use the available XDG portals can make this a possibility someday. Namely, IDEs don't run that well in a Flatpak, but GNOME Builder has proven that it's 100% possible with the currently available XDG portals as well as connecting your IDE or editor to a container.
Not mocking: can you share any good guides to practical immutable systems?
What I observed of Ubuntu Core made a strong "not ready for prime time, and even if it was I don't want it" impression on me.
Ubuntu Core, based on Snaps, is very much not ready for prime time IMO. It's kind of a mess outside of server use.
Look instead at Fedora Silverblue, Vanilla OS, and for the bleeding edge of immutable systems, GNOME OS.
KDE is about to launch their analogue to GNOME OS relatively shortly, named "Project Banana". These two are not exactly distros as they do not distribute the kernel, they are simply platforms that layer a bunch of images together to create a stable, reproducible system. There's also OpenSuSE Aeon, but I don't like its style of immutability as it's immutable by rootfs lock-out rather than immutable by image.
As for advice, learn how to use Distrobox / Toolbx containers. If you're a developer, this is where you will be working.
Immutable Linux is still young, and a lot of software isn't written with it in mind, so expect some growing pains.
Thanks. In the past I have worked in Slackware, and even had Gentoo on my home system for a couple of years, but otherwise I've been fully saturated in Debian and its children - so that's my "comfort zone." I used to like KDE, but drifted away from it when I got a 4K screen notebook and KDE hadn't figured out resolution scaling yet, while Ubuntu/Unity had. I never quite warmed up to GNOME, but definitely have done my time with it. XFCE has matured enough for me to daily drive it without too much pain now, and I love the ways it can be de-featured (don't want a launcher bar? Don't run it, nothing else breaks.)
Server-side, I have been filling my Raspberry Pis with Docker containers for a while now... it's not completely alien, but I do kind of tend to "set it and forget it" when it comes to container deployments.
I'm happy to use Flatpaks but the annoyances I've had are like when one application says to use you'll need to point to the binary of another application that it depends on but very understandably doesn't package together, figuring that out to me can be annoying so I'll switch to a regular installation and it all just works together no fuss, no flatseal, no thinking about it really. Also some applications where it's really nice to launch from the terminal especially with arguments or just like the current working directory and with Flatpaks instead of just right off the bat it's application name and hit enter, Flatpak hope you remember the whole package name
org.wilson.spalding.runner.knife.ApplicationName ...
Ya alias but got to remember to do that. So far anything I'd ever want to run from terminal, no Flatpak
As long as software is available in the Software Manager to be installed that way... I don't care what format it's in.
But don't make normies go to the terminal. It's inhumane, and really does not help the masses get away from big tech - which is a worthier goal than keeping your software terminal-only.
While I wouldn't want flakpak going deep into the OS I think the advantage of using them on the desktop is obvious. Developers can release to multiple dists from a single build and end users get updates and versions immediately rather than waiting for the dist to update its packages. Plus the ability to lock the software down with sandboxes.
The tradeoff is disk consumption but it's not really that big of a deal. Flatpaks are layered so apps can share dependencies. e.g. if the app is GNOME it can share the GNOME runtime with other apps and doesn't need to ship with its own.
Perhaps ironically, this is mocking a strawman. Flatpacks can be installed and managed using the terminal! Not only that but Linux-Distros have had graphical package managers for decades.
The primary reason that distros have embraced flatpack / snap / appimage is that they promise to lower the burden of managing software repositories. The primary reason that some users are mad is that these often don't provide a good experience:
- they are often slower to install/start/run
- they have trouble integrating with the rest of the system (ignoring gtk/qt themes for example)
- they take a lot more space and bandwidth
Theoretically they are also more secure... But reality of that has also been questioned. Fine grained permissions are nice, but bundling libraries makes it hard to know what outdated libraries are running on the systems.
org.mozilla.firefox instead of just firefox), which is a very terminal-specific issue, LOL!
I need OBS on this new computer!
Let's install the flatpack!
V4l problems
Plugins Problems
Wayland Problems
I'm just going back to the .deb, thanks.
Not a fan for a few reasons. Flathub (as far as I know) works on the app store model where developers offer their own builds to users, which is probably appealing to people coming from the Windows world who view distros as unnecessary middlemen, but in the GNU/Linux world the distro serves an important role as a sort of union of users; they make sure the software works in the distro environment, resolve breakages, and remove any anti-features placed in there by the upstream developers.
The sandboxing is annoying too, but understandable.
Despite this I will resort to a flatpak if I'm too lazy to figure out how to package something myself.
Enter the calm and quiet room
Pass out torches and pitchforks, guns and knives
“Snaps exist”
War erupts.
War with who? I'm posting this from Kubuntu and I'd happily agree with you that Snap should fuck off and die. (In particular, the backend being controlled by Canonical makes it objectively bad compared to Flatpak.) Even among people like me who tolerate Snap (for now...), I really don't think you're gonna find anybody who actually likes it, let alone enough to champion it.
Can't start a war when there's a consensus!
I "grew up" with Slackware, so I definitely understand the dependency issue.
I like flatpaks (and similar) for certain "atomic" pieces of software, like makemkv. For more "basic" software, like, say, KDE, I want it installed natively.
like this
Carlos Solís likes this.
The other winner in New York’s mayoral contest: ranked-choice voting
The other winner in New York’s mayoral contest: ranked-choice voting
Voters want more choice at the polls and more issue-driven campaigns. In the Democratic primary, they got bothDavid Daley (The Guardian)
Missile fired from Gaza hits Israel's Kibbutz Nirim
Missile fired from Gaza hits Israel's Kibbutz Nirim
TEHRAN, Jul. 07 (MNA) – A missile launched from Gaza struck the occupied Nirim area on Sunday, dealing material damage and landing in a neighborhood still recovering from the 2023 Al-Aqsa Flood operation, Israeli media reported.Mehr News Agency
geneva_convenience likes this.
Israel launches extensive airstrikes on Lebanon
Israel launches extensive airstrikes on Lebanon
TEHRAN, Jul. 07 (MNA) – Israeli warplanes pounded several regions across Lebanon in a wave of intense airstrikes on Monday, targeting areas from southern Sidon to eastern Baalbek, Lebanese media reported.Mehr News Agency
TikTok’s ‘ban’ problem could end soon with a new app and a sale
TikTok’s ‘ban’ problem could end soon with a new app and a sale
The TikTok app could reportedly get replaced by a new one for iPhone, Android and other platforms in the US on September 5th to satisfy the divest-or-ban law.Richard Lawler (The Verge)
War Now Indefinitely Sustainable, as New Reports Prove Russian Armor Production Has Finally Reached Equilibrium
First, on the team that did the research: it was done by Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), which is a kind of open-source think tank formed by Russian dissident Ruslan Leviev back in the early part of the Donbass conflict and Syrian war of the 2014-2015 era. He is wanted by Russian authorities, and as such his team’s findings are obviously done through a pro-Western and pro-Ukrainian slant—which is what makes them all-the-more interesting, given the conclusions made.
How Many Т-90M Tanks does Russia Produce? CIT Research
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Il retrofuturismo visionario del centro conferenze creato sul confine acquatico della vecchia Kyoto - Il blog di Jacopo Ranieri
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“I made a digital legacy prompt vault — and it might outlive me.”
Hey everyone,
I've been building a concept for digital afterlife tools. This is a personal, creative, and AI-driven legacy builder.
Includes:
– 600 prompts
– PDF + TXT
– AI twin design
– Voice preservation
– Digital memory kit
Would love to hear what you think. It’s here: misbah4.gumroad.com/l/vkeznd?l…
Do you think this idea has a future?
600 Prompt to Preserve Your Voice Beyond Time
🕯️ 600 AI-crafted prompts to preserve your voice, values, and memories — even after you're gone.Not just a prompt pack. A digital legacy vault. Create messages for the future, build your AI twin, and echo forever.Gumroad
Windows 11 finally overtakes Windows 10
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Texas lawmakers failed to pass a bill to improve local flood warning systems this year
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sad_detective_man
in reply to TinyTimmyTokyo • • •YourNetworkIsHaunted
in reply to TinyTimmyTokyo • • •Okay but now I need to once again do a brief rant about the framing of that initial post.
You're not wrong about these guys being both morally reprehensible and also deeply pathetic. Please don't take this as any kind of defense on their behalf.
However, the whole "good times breed weak men" meme is itself fascist propaganda about decadence breeding degeneracy originally written by a mediocre science fiction author and has never been a serious theory of History. It's rooted in the same kind of masculinity-through-violence-as-primary-virtue that leads to those dreams of conquest. I sympathize with the desire to show how pathetic these people are by their own standards but it's also critical to not reify the standards themselves in the process.