Flatpak haters seem to believe that if an app isn't on their distro's repos, it's the developers' fault.

programmer_belch , 13 days ago

Just compile from source?

Norgur , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago

Not optimal

programmer_belch , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago

You have rediscovered LFS

henfredemars , 13 days ago

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.

Hubi , 13 days ago

I like Flatpak just because it isn’t Snap

Norgur , 13 days ago

The enemy of my enemy, eh?

MalReynolds , 13 days ago

…is my enemy’s enemy, no more, no less. (Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries #29)

cley_faye , 13 days ago

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

kenkenken , 13 days ago

Flatpak haters hate new apps anyway.

Norgur , 13 days ago

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

Ephera , 13 days ago

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

ms_lane , 13 days ago

AppImage for the win!

RmDebArc_5 , 13 days ago

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

Ephera , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago

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

Ephera , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago

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

ryannathans , 13 days ago

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

Ephera , 13 days ago

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

henfredemars , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago

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

Ephera , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago

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

mutter9355 , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago

I just run them raw, like just

org.gnome.Lollypop

Not ideal, but it’s what I do

DmMacniel , 13 days ago

It’s fecking raw!

dual_sport_dork , 13 days ago

[Honk Honk]

Sewer Count: 999

DmMacniel , 13 days ago

Nice fucking model! #FreeCivvie11

d_k_bo , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago (edited 13 days ago)

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 , 13 days ago

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

ace , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago

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

NaibofTabr , 13 days ago

If you’re separating your application from the core system package manager and shared libraries, there had better be a good and specific reason for it (e.g. the app needs to be containerized for stability/security/weird dependency). If an app can’t be centrally managed I don’t want it on my system, with grudging exceptions.

Chocolatey has even made this possible in Windows, and lately for my Windows environments if I can’t install an application through chocolatey then I’ll try to find an alternative that I can. Package managers are absolutely superior to independent application installs.

AnyOldName3 , 13 days ago

Typically Windows applications bundle all their dependencies, so Chocolatey, WinGet and Scoop are all more like installing a Flatpak or AppImage than a package from a distro’s system package manager. They’re all listed in one place, yes, but so’s everything on FlatHub.

NaibofTabr , 13 days ago

This is true, the only shared libraries are usually the .NET versions, but so many apps depend on specific .NET versions that frequently the modularity doesn’t matter.

Kusimulkku , 13 days ago

I think stability is a pretty good reason

If an app can’t be centrally managed

Open Discover, Gnome Software etc -> Click update?

BuboScandiacus , 13 days ago

<span style="color:#323232;">flatpak upgrade
</span>

Kusimulkku , 13 days ago

I’m now confused if they’re saying that flatpak is centrally managed or not. To me it seems centrally managed, both the flatpak ecosystem but your whole machine (repo packages, firmware, flatpak) if you use those app stores. I might’ve misunderstood what they said.

BuboScandiacus , 13 days ago

We’re both saying that it’s centrally managed

Kusimulkku , 13 days ago

Fuck, I took both the wrong way. Sorry about that

Vittelius , 13 days ago

And with topgrade you can even upgrade flatpaks and your distros repos in one go

NaibofTabr , 13 days ago

Oh no, no GUI nonsense. Single, simple shell command update for the whole system so that it can be properly remotely managed, please. Something equivalent to sudo apt upgrade

Kusimulkku , 13 days ago

I’ve written a small script that does all the updates (repo, flatpak, docker), verified the packages, does cleanup and shows if stuff needs rebooted. Handy. That way I can do everything from one short command

pennomi , 13 days ago

I think containerization for security is a damn good reason for virtually all software.

gaylord_fartmaster , 13 days ago

Definitely. I’d rather have a “good and specific reason” why your application needs to use my shared libraries or have acess to my entire filesystem by default.

cadekat , 13 days ago

Using your shared libraries is always a good thing, no? Like your distro’s packages should always have the latest security fixes and such, while flatpaks require a separate upgrade path.

Access to your entire filesystem, however, I agree with you on.

gaylord_fartmaster , 13 days ago

I only use rolling releases on my desktop and have ran into enough issues with apps not working because of changes made in library updates that I’d rather they just include whatever version they’re targeting at this point. Sure, that might mean they’re using a less secure version, and they’re less incentivized to stay on the latest version and fix those issues as they arise, but I’m also not as concerned about the security implications of that because everything is running as my unprivileged user and confined to the flatpak.

I’d rather have a less secure flatpak then need to downgrade a library to make one app I need work and then have a less secure system overall.

uis , 13 days ago

emerge sec-policy/selinux-*

jj4211 , 13 days ago

Flatpack can be centrally managed, it’s just like a parallel distribution scheme, where apps have dependencies and are centrally updated. If a flatpack is made reasonably, then it gets library updates independent of the app developer doing it.

“App image” and " install from tarball" violate those principles, but not snap or flatpack.

NaibofTabr , 13 days ago (edited 13 days ago)

Um, if it’s “parallel” (e.g. separate from the OS package manager) then it’s not centrally managed. The OS package manager is the central management.

There might be specific use cases where this makes sense, but frankly if segregating an app from the OS is a requirement then it should be fully containerized with something like Docker, or run in an independent VM.

If a flatpack is made reasonably, then it gets library updates independent of the app developer doing it.

That feels like a load-bearing “if”. I never have to worry about this with the package manager.

jj4211 , 12 days ago

Define “the OS package manager”. If the distro comes with flatpack and dnf equally, and both are invoked by the generic “get updates” tooling, then both could count as “the” update manager. They both check all apps for updates.

Odd to advocate for docker containers, they always have the app provider also on the hook for all dependencies because they always are inherently bundled. If a library has a critical bug fix, then your docker like containers will be stuck without the fix until the app provider gets around to fixing it, and app providers are highly unreliable on docker hub. Besides, update discipline among docker/podman users is generally atrocious, and given the relatively tedious nature of following updates with that ecosystem, I am not surprised. Even best case, docker style uses more disk space and more memory than any other option, apart from VM.

With respect to never having to worry about bundled dependencies with rpm/deb, third party packages bundle or statically link all the time. If they don’t, then they sometimes overwrite the OS provided dependency with an incompatible one that breaks OS packages, if the dependency is obscure enough for them not to notice other usage.

laurelraven , 13 days ago

I’m not sure where you’re getting the idea that Flatpak aren’t centrally managed…

NaibofTabr , 13 days ago

Can I sudo apt upgrade my installed flatpak apps?

laurelraven , 12 days ago

No, because they’re not apt packages. You can, however, flatpak update them, and you don’t even need sudo since they’re installed in the user context rather than system.

2xsaiko , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago

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

Uh… Yes? That’s what the meme says?

TheDemonBuer , 13 days ago

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

henfredemars , 13 days ago (edited 13 days ago)

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 , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago

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.

BeigeAgenda , 13 days ago

If I can choose between flatpack and distro package, distro wins hands down.

If the choice then is flatpack vs compile your own, I think I’ll generally compile it, but it depends on the circumstances.

ryannathans , 13 days ago

Why?

4am , 13 days ago

Stubbornness

fossphi , 13 days ago

Based

BeigeAgenda , 13 days ago

Because it’s easier to use the version that’s in the distro, and why do I need an extra set of libraries filling up my disk.

I see flatpack as a last resort, where I trade disk space for convenience, because you end up with a whole OS worth of flatpack dependencies (10+ GB) on your disk after a few upgrade cycles.

F04118F , 13 days ago

Is compiling it yourself with the time and effort that it costs worth more than a few GB of disk space?

Then your disk is very expensive and your labor very cheap.

ReveredOxygen , 13 days ago (edited 13 days ago)

They didn’t say anything about compiling it themselves, just that they prefer native packages to flatpak

edit: I can’t read

Batbro , 13 days ago

2 comments up they said

If the choice then is flatpack vs compile your own, I think I’ll generally compile it, but it depends on the circumstances.

BeigeAgenda , 13 days ago

I should have noted that I’ll compile myself when we are talking about something that should run as a service on a server.

cley_faye , 13 days ago

For a lot of project “compiling yourself”, while obviously more involved than running some magic install command, is really not that tedious. Good projects have decent documentation in that regard and usually streamline everything down to a few things to configure and be done with it.

What’s aggravating is projects that explicitly go out of their way to make building them difficult, removing existing documentation and helper tools and replacing them with “use whatever we decided to use”. I hate these.

recarsion , 13 days ago

99% of the time it’s just “make && sudo make install” or something like that. Anything bigger or more complicated typically has a native package anyway.

TimeSquirrel , 13 days ago (edited 13 days ago)

I mean it's 2024. I regularly download archives that are several tens or even over 100 GB and then completely forget they're sitting on my drive, because I don't notice it when the drive is 4TB. Last time I cared about 10GB here and there was in the late-2000s.

BeigeAgenda , 13 days ago

Great that you have 4tb on your root partition then by all means use flatpack.

I have 256Gb on my laptop, as I recall I provisioned about 40-50gigs to root.

TimeSquirrel , 13 days ago (edited 13 days ago)

I'm sorry. I didn't realize people were still regularly using such constrained systems. Honest. I've homebuilt my PCs for the last 15 years.

tgxn , 13 days ago

🤣

uranibaba , 13 days ago

Why not upgrade your hdd?

soloner , 13 days ago

TEN WHOLE GIGABYTES!! OMG WHAT ARE WE TO DO??

BeigeAgenda , 13 days ago

10 out of 40 is 25%

10 out of 4000 is 0.25%

azenyr , 13 days ago

I don’t know what dependencies he has but my 3 year old system that is constantly being updated is full of flatpaks and all of the dependencies combined are only around 3GB. People see 1GB of dependencies and lose their mind.

Vilian , 13 days ago

flatpak has dedub, so no

BeigeAgenda , 13 days ago

Yep that’s all well and good, but what flatpack doesn’t do automatically is clean up unused libs/dependencies, over time you end up with several versions of the same libs. When the apps are upgraded they get the latest version of their dependency and leave the old behind.

dis_honestfamiliar , 13 days ago

I’m 100% on this camp.

azenyr , 13 days ago

I change my opinion depending on which app it is. I use KDE, so any KDE app will be installed natively for sure for perfect integration. Stuff like grub costumizer etc all native. Steam, Lutris, GIMP, Discord, chrome, firefox, telegram? Flatpak, all of those. They don’t need perfect integration and I prefer the stability, easy upgrades and ease of uninstall of flatpak. Native is used when OS integration is a must. Flatpak for everything else. Especially since sometimes the distro’s package is months/years old… prefering distro packages for everything should be a thing of the past.

Wofls , 13 days ago

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

renzev OP , 13 days ago

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

jj4211 , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago

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 , 13 days ago

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.

Thcdenton , 13 days ago

Lol who the fuck is blaming app devs? Also something something arch

neidu2 , 13 days ago

…btw

olutukko , 13 days ago

aur is the only thing I miss. I do like fedora with i3 very much but rpm can be pain in the ass sometimes

Ajzak , 13 days ago

could you perhaps run them with Distrobox? i was always wondering that.

olutukko , 13 days ago

most likely but I’m super lazy with my pc unless I’m having hyperfocus going, so I don’t know

T0RB1T , 13 days ago

Yes! This is something I do on 3 of my machines. My ArchLinux Distrobox with paru works like a charm. (so far)

Ajzak , 13 days ago

that’s very good to hear, I’ll probably try out silverblue with distrobox and that’ll be my end of distrohopping

MalReynolds , 13 days ago

It was for me, check out ublue for simpler setup.

Vilian , 13 days ago

distrobox?, i also installed nix and works perfectly

The2b , 13 days ago

Laughs in AUR

nexussapphire , 13 days ago

I like the aur too but a proprietary app that isn’t updated to support newer dependencies, it most likely won’t run anyway. At that point it’s either broken app, broken system, or you don’t have anything else installed using that library(yet).

iopq , 13 days ago

Not an issue on NixOS, you can ship old deps with it

nexussapphire , 13 days ago

Sounds neat! Don’t really care much for messing with config files for hours. This is from someone who uses arch on all his systems. I’ve been in config hell for a while, I use kde now.

smiletolerantly , 13 days ago

Laughs in nixpkgs

the_post_of_tom_joad , 13 days ago

Laughs in confusion

(I dont know how i got here)

BurningTurtle , 13 days ago

Laughs in support

uis , 13 days ago

Support laughs in you

uis , 13 days ago

Cracks up in ebuilds

joyjoy , 13 days ago

Snickers in pipx

ian , 13 days ago

Not great to laugh at the mess Linux is in, due to people paddling in different, incompatible, directions. Users can’t choose the package format. They have to take what they are given. Good or bad. I don’t care which format. As long as it works. But this is a good way to scare more people off of Linux.

oo1 , 12 days ago

laughs at people scared of choice and “mess” . . .

If they’re switcing to linux they should first come to know about open source forking around - arguably - one of the most important features of the whole thing.

If they don’t wan’t that choice and all that inevitable open source forkery, they probably should go for an apple mac or windows or something like that. And maybe they will have to pay for some software for the privilege because it takes work to do those things. They can of course try plain old ubuntu and do stuff the way canonical wants, that removes quite a bit of choice if it is otherwise too terrifying for them.

But in general, I don’t think its a good idea to to try to sell pig-carcasses to vegans by painting them the colours of broccoli.

pewgar_seemsimandroid , 13 days ago

laughs in appimage.

e8d79 , 13 days ago

Haters aren’t worth listening to. Doesn’t matter if it is flatpak, systemd, wayland, or whatever else. These people have no interest in a discussion about merits and drawbacks of a given solution. They just want to be angry about something.

renzev OP , 13 days ago

I know, right!? Add gimp to that list as well. I can go on and on about shortcomings of gimp despite being a happy user. The average gimp hater, on the other hand, doesn’t have anything to say besides “the UI is dumb and I can’t figure out how to draw a circle”

Feathercrown , 13 days ago

“The UI is unintuitive” is a legitimate complaint

uis , 13 days ago

“Intuitive UI” results in Gnome.

gh0stcassette , 13 days ago

Is it really intuitive if I have to open dconf-editor to change the system font?

uis , 13 days ago

They call it “intuitive UI”, Linus calls it “‘users are idiots, and are confused by functionality’ mentality of Gnome”

Feathercrown , 13 days ago

It’s not always a zero-sum game.

uis , 13 days ago

Elaborate? Most of good UI comes from KDE.

Feathercrown , 13 days ago

What I mean is, makingg a UI more intuitive does not necessarily make it more… Gnome-ey? It can still be effective, customizable, etc.

uis , 13 days ago

“Intuitive UI” crowd usually means Gnome-ey/Apple-ey design.

In reality customizable design is more intuitive, because you can customize it to your intuition.

raspberriesareyummy , 12 days ago

kate editor would like to have a word… They did my lady kate dirty with the latest updates :( The top level File menu was so much better and now I don’t know where to find the configuration to get that back, and have on my work computer a stupid single button in the top right corner which opens the “menu bar”, except vertically…

someacnt_ , 13 days ago

Wayland gets the hate because compositors are authoritative so you cannot e.g. install your own window manager, taskbar, etc. It would be good if there were specifications governing these, but there isn’t.