As a user of arch btw for many years, does anyone have any link to anything that fully goes into why a lot of distros such as arch don’t have this problem? Packages, runtimes, and dependencies have been a non-issue on arch (and I’m sure other distros with proper package managers) for a long time.
Dependencies can absolutely be a problem. Let’s say you have a Python program that relies on an older version of a package due to a breaking change. With Arch those packages are installed in a per-Python interpreter global namespace. So if two applications have conflicting version requirements for a package, you’re kind of screwed. Yes, there are ways around the issue, but it’s not customarily used in Arch.
This is just not a problem with Flatpak. The dependencies can be installed directly with no fears about causing a conflict. Even if the Flatpak itself uses a runtime, that runtime allows the Flatpak to add its Python dependencies as a simple layer on top. This happens independently of any other Flatpaks.
If you use your distro’s up-to-date built and packaged from source applications it’s unlikely you’ll have a problem. Those start when you want to use old packages or packages from a different distro (with different or patched libs) with your system.
Flatpak, AppImage etc. packaged apps will run on (almost) any system and you only need to build them for different processor architectures. So it’s the ovious choice for lazy or profit oriented developers.
No distribution has problems on its own: the problem is interop. From a user perspective, all is fine as long as you use only distro packages or release tarballs, but the latter is not really user-friendly (no desktop menu integration). From a developer’s perspective who maintains software that hasn’t reached critical mass, it’s inconceivable to maintain themself packages for all distros in existence, and asking users to extract an archive to double click a program is not the most user-friendly experience.
Flatpak/Snap is really dev-oriented, not user-oriented. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, although i find some arguments from 0install/AppImage very compelling.
As a user of arch btw for many years, does anyone have any link to anything that fully goes into why a lot of distros such as arch don’t have this problem? Packages, runtimes, and dependencies have been a non-issue on arch (and I’m sure other distros with proper package managers) for a long time.
Dependencies can absolutely be a problem. Let’s say you have a Python program that relies on an older version of a package due to a breaking change. With Arch those packages are installed in a per-Python interpreter global namespace. So if two applications have conflicting version requirements for a package, you’re kind of screwed. Yes, there are ways around the issue, but it’s not customarily used in Arch.
This is just not a problem with Flatpak. The dependencies can be installed directly with no fears about causing a conflict. Even if the Flatpak itself uses a runtime, that runtime allows the Flatpak to add its Python dependencies as a simple layer on top. This happens independently of any other Flatpaks.
If you use your distro’s up-to-date built and packaged from source applications it’s unlikely you’ll have a problem. Those start when you want to use old packages or packages from a different distro (with different or patched libs) with your system.
Flatpak, AppImage etc. packaged apps will run on (almost) any system and you only need to build them for different processor architectures. So it’s the ovious choice for lazy or profit oriented developers.
No distribution has problems on its own: the problem is interop. From a user perspective, all is fine as long as you use only distro packages or release tarballs, but the latter is not really user-friendly (no desktop menu integration). From a developer’s perspective who maintains software that hasn’t reached critical mass, it’s inconceivable to maintain themself packages for all distros in existence, and asking users to extract an archive to double click a program is not the most user-friendly experience.
Flatpak/Snap is really dev-oriented, not user-oriented. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, although i find some arguments from 0install/AppImage very compelling.