It depends. Kind of prefer Flatpaks as they are always working as expected on any distro, but some of them are giving me just too much struggle.
For example, dealing with sandboxing, or especially VSS code app. Yes, there are instructions, but then I install Golang SDK via Flatpaks the hard way (using CLI) for Go development, then having a nightmare trying to setup everything in vss code. Then how tf should I access go binary within my host terminal?
On Arch Linux I just tend to install from official repos, while the rest of apps - from Flatpaks.
Personally I don’t like the way they are sandboxed, bit as long as it works I am fine.
That seems to be the running theme, the defaults for the sandbox seem to be wrong for some people and there is no easy way to change them.
Also, I am sure I would like Arch, my problem is that I was using Manjaro, which is the distro I originally fell in love with and basically converted me to using it full time, but a long time ago. Now it sucks.
I use flatpak first for everything, but VSCode was one that I absolutely installed the old fashioned way. It just needs to much system integration and I couldn’t figure out how to let it out of the sandbox enough to make it work reliably. But it is the exception.
Simple example when I wanted to install the latest version of Okular, which came as flatpak. Owing to sandboxing it couldn’t do the inverse search from a pdf, calling Emacs to open the tex file that generated the pdf. My workflow was broken. After spending half a day in forums trying to understand how to give more permissions to the flatpak, I finally ditched it and am using the older version from apt. Works seamlessly.
Seriously, there might be a debate of what printer company is better, but there is no debate which one is worst. It’s HP. 😅 They are so bad that they have no competitors of the worst fucking printer company. xD
Myself I got Brother printer. Works like a charm, no bullshits. People on Reddit also highly recommend this brand too. Totally agree.
I had a Brother printer, the costs were prohibitive. For over a decade now buy discarded office laserjet printers, chunky as hell, but for 100€ you get tens of thousands of pages out of them. And for those 100€, often a duplex unit is included. Am currently on my 2nd printer over 15 years.
I think the whole point of this is Brother being least annoying. You might save some buck with old HP printers, but i would prefer saving my sanity over bucks. 😅
Not at all, the old, chunky office printers you get for cheap work even without any special driver or so, just postscript. (You might get better quality for pictures with the original driver, but for simple letters it just works.)
Edit: Where HP really sucks is the consumer market.
I get it that they need to find a way to fund their R&D team.
I get that there is also some people willing to pay top-dollar for some specific features which can not be had on commodity phones Linux-based, fully assembled in the US, etc. Which is going to be impossible to fulfill at scale.
What I don’t get is: why can’t they offer something that makes this explicit? I for one have no interest in a $2k phone, but I would gladly give them $50 per month and in exchange I’d get the right to participate in some periodic (monthly, quarterly, yearly?) dutch-style auction when they had a new update to their phone. Perhaps a percentage of the money that I had given could be used to pay for the device, etc.
Flatpak sandboxes too, but it at least is fully Open source, you can create your own Flatpak Repository and add it to your flatpak to grab and install new packages you made yourself. For Snap… it implements not that good into the desktop I heard but may have changed, you can’t create your own repository nor see the servers code as there is only 1 single server for Snap, and its canonicals Closed Source Snap Server. But hey, it at least got the super cool Hologram Open Source Sticker on it, because the client is at least Open Source… No thanks
I use PrismLauncher (Minecraft Launcher) inside Flatpak for example because it sandboxes the app so no stupid mod can infect me that easy now, haha! But generally its kinda comfy to use Flatpak because it has less dependency issues compared to Native Packages because Flatpak has its own Packages which Flatpak Apps can share to each other. Snap on the other hand can’t have dependencies shared between Snap Apps so they all have duplicate dependencies.
I’m quite the gamer and run into very few issues gaming on linux these days. Proton is a game changer. The only real issues are if you’re trying to run the latest AAA game at peak performance, or games with certain anti-cheat. But I would say more than half of the anti-cheat games still just work for me.
Interesting, I guess there’s licensing issues for steam/proton to distribute the proprietary codecs? Seems like there should still be a way via unofficial means.
I guess there’s licensing issues for steam/proton to distribute the proprietary codecs?
Bingo. Theyve been making great strides on that front, but since KH isnt released on steam, Valve efforts have been only indirectly helpful to fix it.
It has been baby steps for now: Cutscenes used to crash the game, then they played but without video nor audio, just black screen until the game resumes. Now we can hear its audio. At one point video will work. No idea when, but it will.
I appreciate your help, though that tutorial is more geared towards teaching how to use Lutris in order to play the game. In that same guide you can see my issue:
Also, (…) rename every EPIC folder into EPIC.bak. You’ll be able to avoid the unplayable cutscenes that way.
The EPIC folder is where the FMVs are. Deleting the folder grants the same result: you can play the game without FMV cutscenes. It does the job, but i want the full experience.
I could emulate some of the original games for ps2, but i prefer to wait until the pc ports work. Because they will at some point.
Ahhh, whoops, missed that line. Well damn. At least there’s some hope, sounds like someone is at least able to emulate their codec to some degree. Yeah, probably just a matter of time.
Snaps are disliked because the store is closed-source and run by Canonical. Snaps are also disliked simply because Canonical is pushing them so hard, forcibly replacing native packages that exist and work fine. For example, there was a debacle a while back where running apt install firefox still installed the Snap version instead of the native version.
Flatpaks are disliked because they sometimes struggle to integrate into a system well. For example, Discord Rich Presence doesn’t work for the Flatpak version of Discord unless the thing you want Discord to detect is also a Flatpak, and even that detection is shaky.
Snaps and Flatpaks are both disliked because they contain frameworks and runtimes that some users consider bloat.
To further explain, when you use a native package, it and its dependencies get installed on your system. If any other package in the future requires one of those dependencies, awesome, it’s already there. But for Flatpaks and Snaps, each app has to bundle its own dependencies. Sometimes they can be shared with other Flatpaks/Snaps, depending on the dependency, but they still require at least a little extra storage space.
There are probably details I’m forgetting, but those are the main arguments. My advice is if you’re happy with the way your system is running, don’t worry about it. My personal preference is Flatpak first, native second, Snap never. I don’t have anything against native packages, but some software I use is exclusively distributed as Flatpak, so I switched most things over for consolidation.
Afaik snaps can’t share depending packages, making it store the same dependency multiple times. Flatpak can share the depending package+version, sharing it to every app it needs and store it once.
The Golden advantage I see is not having issues installing multiple versions of the same dependency, which would be kinda hard for a native system depending on the type of package an app is depending on. Like Python and Java could easy have multiple same versions on a native system, but other things may be too difficult to realize except you use Flatpak
I don’t think the current Red Hat controversy will have much impact on Fedora. There are the three reasons why I think so:
While Fedora is not a fully independent distribution, the Fedora Council has both members from Red Hat and members from the community. It may be wishful thinking, but I believe that, if Red Hat tried something iffy with Fedora, the community (including people in leading positions) would protest.
Fedora is upstream from RHEL, so it doesn’t directly profit from RHEL source codes being fully open. Instead, it’s the other way around; Fedora’s sources are the basis of CentOS and then RHEL, so any bugs fixed in Fedora benefit RHEL.
Fedora is also Red Hat’s tool for influencing the Linux ecosystem at large. When they want other people start using some technology (Flatpak, PulseAudio etc.), Fedora is a good way of disseminating it.
P.S. There might be some inaccuracies. I am just a user; I am neither a developer nor in any leadership role.
P.P.S. Please excuse any spelling and grammar mistakes. English is not my first language.
I personally finally made the fulltime switch in November 2021 after years of on again off again attempts. The one I was finally able to stick with was Endeavour OS with KDE desktop. It’s basically just an arch distro with a good installer and som QoL apps. Easy to maintain and a good community if you need assistance.
And with the creation of Bottles running windows software has been surprisingly easy. I do some home studio recording and just got EZdrummer setup as a vst in Ardour, and it just works.
This on and off again, multiple attempt path seems to be the norm. Learning something new sometimes requires developing a taste or skills, or slowly growing in confidence with each attempt, as your experiences grow. Sometimes, the comfort zone of the things you already know is too big, too tempting. Even if you want to get away from something like Windows. Really making the final jump to leave seems to be a multi-phased process of discovery and easing into something new.
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