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uis , (edited )

Meanwhile almost everything I ever wanted is either in main Gentoo repo or in there is overlay with it.

Illecors ,

Honestly, main + guru has not made feel like anything’s missing at all.

uis ,

Main + kdab + steam

Ephera ,

I am inclined to write “Main +” and then just some random words, to see if you guys could tell they’re not repos. 🙃

uis ,

Guru is Project:GURU, kdab is KDAB overlay for hotspot profiler and steam is steam-overlay

Ephera ,

Sure, but through your link, I found the list of projects. In hopes that a project always has a repo associated, here comes the quiz: Can you guess which 2 of these projects I made up? 🙃

Main + Artwork + Astronomy + Biology + Chemistry + Electronics + Geosciences + Mathematics + Physics + Psychology + Science + Retirement + Emacs + GNU Emacs + Spacemacs + XEmacs

I did expect there to be lots of random words, but man, I seriously had to think for a moment to find a field of science that isn’t covered…

uis ,

I seriously had to think for a moment to find a field of science that isn’t covered…

And you choose phsycology… Medicine would be less obvious.

For my second guess I was choosing between retirement and spacemacs. As it turns out, Project:Retirement is a thing.

Also Project:Main doesn’t exist. So you made up 3 projects.

That list I and person I replied to posted was list of overlays.

Ephera ,

Welp. I didn’t want to make it too difficult either, especially with how funky some of the real projects are. Would be cool, though, if more psychology software existed. Surely, there’s a lot you could do with video games / simulations.

Ephera ,

I just distribute it as a self-contained executable/archive. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

ms_lane ,

AppImage for the win!

RmDebArc_5 ,
@RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works avatar

Valid solution, but I miss unified updates with appimages and such

Ephera ,

Yeah, that’s the fun part. Hooking into some auto-update mechanism would be useful to me.

But my stuff is mostly in the scratching-my-own-itch stage, so setting up a FlatHub account, Flatpak metadata, sandbox rules, probably an icon and screenshots and whatnot, and automating the build+releases, just to get auto-updates, yeah… no.

I could code a whole nother project in the time that would take.

ace ,
@ace@lemmy.ananace.dev avatar

Well, if you have any form of build script, makefile, or CI, then you can easily shove that into a flatpak-builder manifest and push the build repo anywhere you want. The default OSTree repository format can be served from any old webserver or S3 bucket after all.

I’ve done this for personal projects many times, since it’s a ridiculously easy way to get scalable distribution and automatic updates in place.

Ephera ,

Hmm, okay, that doesn’t sound too bad.
Does the sandboxing get into the way much? Can a user tell it to poke a hole into the sandbox, to use some specific folder, for example?

I think, my real problem is that I don’t actually use Flatpak for any software I have installed. 😅
I’m not opposed to using Flatpak, but I disabled Flathub pretty quickly on my distro’s software store thingamabob, when I accidentally installed some proprietary software from it. Fuck that shit, no matter how much sandboxing I get.

ace ,
@ace@lemmy.ananace.dev avatar

In regards to sandboxing, it only gets as far in the way as you ask it to. For applications that you’re not planning on putting on FlatHub anyway you can be just as open as you want to be, i.e. just adding / - or host as it’s called - as read-write to the app. (OpenMW still does that as we had some issues with the data extraction for original Morrowind install media)

If you do want to sandbox though, users are able to poke just as many holes as they want - or add their own restrictions atop whatever sandboxing you set up for the application. Flatpak itself has the flatpak override tool for this, or there’s graphical UIs like flatseal and the KDE control center module…

ace ,
@ace@lemmy.ananace.dev avatar

As long as your application is statically linked, I don’t see any issue with that.

Ephera ,

So, like, dumb question. People here assumed that I mean AppImages, whereas I actually meant just a statically linked binary. Is that really the only reason why AppImage exists? So, that dynamically linked applications can be distributed like statically linked ones?

ryannathans ,

You cannot statically link everything. Take graphics libraries and APIs for example, do you statically link against nvidia’s or mesa’s opengl?

ryannathans ,

You cannot statically link everything. Take graphics libraries and APIs for example, do you statically link against nvidia’s or mesa’s opengl?

Ephera ,

Sure, but presumably AppImage/Flatpak/Docker cannot help with that either…?

henfredemars ,

This is the problem those tools try to solve. They package everything else upon which software might depend that can’t simply be linked into a single binary.

ryannathans ,

Flatpak solves the problem with targetable platform versions, you just update the manifest for your app every like 6-12 months to target the new one

Ephera ,

Ah, interesting. So, it’s different from just statically linking against the latest driver lib every 6-12 months, because the Flatpak runtime gives you a bit of a guarantee that there won’t be breaking changes in the meantime.

ryannathans ,

Bingo, and if the latest mesa breaks your app for example, you can target an older one until it’s fixed instead of end users having to fuck around downgrading system packages

ace ,
@ace@lemmy.ananace.dev avatar

The majority of AppImages I’ve seen have been dynamically linked, yes. But it’s also used for packaging assets.

Ephera ,

Yeah, alright, packaging assets makes sense. I’ve always been fine with just a .tar.gz, but having it be a singular file without compression is cool.

I guess, since AppImage emulates a filesystem, you can also have your application logic load the assets from the same path as if the assets were installed on the OS, so that’s also cool.

DmMacniel ,
@DmMacniel@feddit.org avatar

Flatpak is nice but I really would like to see a way to run flatpakked application transparently e.g. don’t have to


<span style="color:#323232;">    flatpak run org.gnome.Lollypop
</span>

and can just run the app via


<span style="color:#323232;">    Lollypop
</span>
grue ,

You could make aliases for each program, but I agree, there should be a way to set it up so they resolve automatically.

mutter9355 ,

You could possibly also make a shell script that does this automatically. I believe most flatpak ids follow a pattern such as com.github.user.package, for github projects for example. So you could loop through all installed flatpaks, extract the name, and then add the alias.

grue ,

Agreed, but I also feel like such a thing should be included with Flatpak by default instead of leaving it to the users to solve.

Qkall ,
@Qkall@lemmy.ml avatar

I just run them raw, like just

org.gnome.Lollypop

Not ideal, but it’s what I do

DmMacniel ,
@DmMacniel@feddit.org avatar

It’s fecking raw!

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

[Honk Honk]

Sewer Count: 999

DmMacniel ,
@DmMacniel@feddit.org avatar

Nice fucking model!

d_k_bo ,

You can symlink /var/lib/flatpak/exports/bin/org.gnome.Lollypop (if you are using a system installation) or ~/.local/share/flatpak/exports/bin/org.gnome.Lollypop (if you are using a uset installation) to ~/.local/bin/lollypop and run it as lollypop.

ace , (edited )
@ace@lemmy.ananace.dev avatar

Well, Flatpak installs aliases, so as long as your distribution - or yourself - add the <installation>/exports/bin path to $PATH, then you’ll be able to use the application IDs to launch them.

And if you want to have the Flatpak available under a different name than its ID, you can always symlink the exported bin to whatever name you’d personally prefer.
I’ve got Blender set up that way myself, with the org.blender.Blender bin symlinked to /usr/local/bin/blender, so that some older applications that expect to be able to simply interop with it are able to.

gh0stcassette ,
@gh0stcassette@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Is there some way to set an install hook that automatically makes those symlinks when you install a flatpak?

ace ,
@ace@lemmy.ananace.dev avatar

Well, Flatpak always builds the aliases, so as long as the <installation>/exports/bin folder is in $PATH there’s no need to symlink.

If you’re talking specifically about having symlinks with some arbitrary name that you prefer, then that’s something you’ll have to do yourself, the Flatpak applications only provide their canonical name after all.
You could probably do something like that with inotify and a simple script though, just point it at the exports/bin folders for the installations that you care about, and set up your own mapping between canonical names and whatever names you prefer.

Vilian ,

put flatpak in your PATH and you can youse the app name like normal

56_ ,
@56_@lemmy.ml avatar

They do? I’ve always seen that as being up to distro maintainers, and out of control of the devs.

programmer_belch ,
@programmer_belch@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Just compile from source?

Norgur ,
@Norgur@fedia.io avatar

Back in the day, when I installed my very first Linux OS, I had a wireless stick from Netgear. Wireless Drivers back then were abysmal, so I had to compile them from source (literally 15 mins after seeing a TTY for the first time). After I had found out how build-dependencies and such worked somehow and ./configure completed successfully for the first time, the script ended with the epic line:

configure done. Now type 'make' and pray

ace ,
@ace@lemmy.ananace.dev avatar

Ah, I had one of those wireless sticks from Netgear as well, probably a different model but still a royal pain to get it working.
Luckily ndiswrapper has become a thing of the past nowadays.

possiblylinux127 ,

Not optimal

programmer_belch ,
@programmer_belch@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Yes, it would depend on your flatpack usage. For me I only have like 5 programs compiled from source and one flatpack (bottles) because of the sandboxing

possiblylinux127 ,

That’s not good. It breaks the system as there isn’t any change control with that unless your using something like Gentoo. Get your packages from the package manager.

programmer_belch ,
@programmer_belch@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

None of the packages I compile from source are essential to my working system. I have a private chatbot to test, some emulators and dsda-doom.

Every one of those programs can be one or two versions obsolete and it won’t make a difference.

Zacryon ,

Because it’s always so easy to compile everything you need from source! Just make sure to download, compile and install the dependencies first as well. Oh, and the dependencies’ dependencies. And the ones from them. And so on. Unless you’re lucky enough that there are already packaged dependencies available for you. Don’t know how to compile? No problem, just read the documentation. You can be absolutely 1000000% dead serious sure that everything you need to know is documented and extremely super duper easy to understand if you don’t know the source code or barely know how to code at all. And if not, maybe you can find the bits of information on the respective Discord server. It will probably be also very intuitive to know which build options you have to set in which way and which ones even exist. And that without causing conflicts with other packages you need to compile. Still got got problems with compiling? EZ, just open a bunch of issues on the respective GitHub pages. (If present. Otherwise, try to find another way to contact devs and get support, Discord for example.) Maybe, about six months later you’re lucky to get a response. And if not, don’t worry. Some will tell you, you should RTFM or are an idiot. Some will just close the issue because your platform isn’t supported anyway. Then you know, what you did wrong. Also don’t mind if your issue gets ignored.
If you finally managed to compile everything from source, congratulations! Now run the program and test if everything is working. If it’s not or if it is crashing, don’t worry! In developed and civilised countries you can just buy a shotgun and blast your own head away to end this suffering.

EZ! Just compile from source!

programmer_belch ,
@programmer_belch@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I just complie from source some lightweight programs that are too niche for repositories. I am in no way advocating for full source compilation of every program in your system, that’s a security and usage nightmare. Flatpack does have its use for sandboxing an environment. I personally use it for windows applications in bottles.

henfredemars ,

My workflow always definitely includes multiple weeks to debug random issues with building the tools I need to use. Totally a scalable and good solution to dump this work on the end user.

uis ,

You have rediscovered LFS

henfredemars ,

This doesn’t scale. If I have a bug and my package has about two dozen dependencies which can all be different versions, and the developer can’t reproduce my bug, I’m just screwed. Developers don’t have the time and resources to chase down a bug that depends on build time variables.

Ask me how I know this happens.

Liz ,

I know nothing about how flatpak works other than that it’s containerized. But this meme tells me it’s the OS’s responsibility to create the flatpak, and not the developer’s? Is that right?

fruitycoder ,

No the most common way is for devs to package their own software as a flatpak since you can typically choose your preferred packaging tool to use inside of the flatpak.

Traditional package management typically is done by the distro maintainers.

Liz ,

Oh I see, I’ve got it backwards.

AstralPath ,

I’m new to Linux. Every time I’ve had a major issue with an application it turned out to be due to a flatpak. I’ll stick with other options for the time being.

Kyatto ,
@Kyatto@leminal.space avatar

Also at least let me compile it myself if not in a repo 😩

Wofls ,

I don’t wanna be that guy, but someone has to say it: Nix Flakes

renzev OP ,

I have both nix and flatpak lol. Different usecases: flatpak for stuff that I would rather have sandboxed (browsers, games), nix for stuff that I would rather be integrated into the system (command line tools, etc). Tho I still have to learn about flakes, right now I’m just using nix-env for everything like a caveman lol

2xsaiko ,
@2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Are those flatpak haters that say that in the room with us right now? The main difference with distro repos is that packages in it are packaged by the distro packagers and everyone who has an opinion on flatpak should know that this is how it works.

renzev OP ,

The main difference with distro repos is that packages in it are packaged by the distro

Uh… Yes? That’s what the meme says?

Hubi ,
@Hubi@feddit.org avatar

I like Flatpak just because it isn’t Snap

Norgur ,
@Norgur@fedia.io avatar

The enemy of my enemy, eh?

MalReynolds ,
@MalReynolds@slrpnk.net avatar

…is my enemy’s enemy, no more, no less. (Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries )

cley_faye ,

Fair. Also, flatpak does not try to break everything by default, which is a plus.

pewgar_seemsimandroid ,

laughs in appimage.

jj4211 ,

You don’t need the distro to package your sodtware through their package management systems though. Apt and dnf repositories are extensible, anyone can publish. If you go to copr or ppa you can have a little extra help too, without distro maintainers.

The headache comes up when multiple third party repositories start conflicting with each other when you add enough of them, despite they’re best efforts. This scenario starts needing flatpack, which can, for example concurrently provide multiple distinct library versions installed that traditionally would conflict with each other. This doesn’t mean application has to bundle the dependency, that dependency can still be external to the package and independently updated, it just means conflicts can be gracefully handled.

breakingcups ,

The headache comes up when multiple third party repositories start conflicting with each other

Which is traditionally why you needed the distro to package your software…

jj4211 ,

Depends on if you stick to distro provided dependencies, then you are generally good, unless a third party repo decided to supersede that dependency.

I have spent a long time carefully packaging as a third party repository and it’s generally doable. Just sometimes another repository isn’t as careful and blows away the distribution provided libraries.

TheDemonBuer ,
@TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world avatar

Flatpaks aren’t perfect, but I think it’s a good solution to the fragmentation problem that is inherent to Linux.

henfredemars , (edited )

Precisely. Flatpaks solve an important problem. Perfect should not be the enemy of good.

Binary compatibility is a sad story on Linux, and we cannot expect developers — many of whom work for free — to package, test, debug, and maintain releases for multiple distributions. If we want a sustainable ecosystem with diverse distributions, we must answer the compatibility question. This is a working option that solves the problem, and it comes with minor security benefits because it isolates applications not just from the system but from each other.

It’s fair to criticize a solution, but I think it’s not fair to ignore the problem and expect volunteers to just work harder.

nexussapphire ,

Also companies are lazy and if we don’t want to be stuck on Ubuntu for proprietary app stability. We should probably embrace something like flatpak. Also when companies neglect their apps, it’ll have a better chance of working down the road thanks to support for multiple dependency versions on the same install.

henfredemars ,

Great point! At the end of the day, the apps I want to use will decide which distro I main. Many FOSS fanatics are quick to critique Ubuntu, So they should support solutions that allow our distro to be diverse and use all the killer apps.

kenkenken ,
@kenkenken@sh.itjust.works avatar

Flatpak haters hate new apps anyway.

Norgur ,
@Norgur@fedia.io avatar

glibc 2.36 is all you'll ever need, okay? Go away with those goddamn backports!

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