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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Flatpak standing the test of time: modern Flatpak apps running on Ubuntu 16.04 ESM, a 7-year-old distro (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Gradience, Flatseal, Loupe Image Viewer, and Resources running on Ubuntu 16.04

Firefox 118.0.2 running on Ubuntu 16.04

Door Knocker, Collision, and Cartridges running on Ubuntu 16.04

ASHPD Demo running on Ubuntu 16.04, showing a notification through XDG portals

According to Door Knocker, almost half of the portals are unavailable on Ubuntu 16.04, compared to only one unavailable on Fedora 39 with GNOME, which means Flatpaks running here may have more limited capabilities than usual.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As well as running on all distros, it also provides other benefits:

You can run modern software on old/stable distros
Dependencies being (mostly) included in the package means that different applications can more easily have different versions of dependencies
Finicky packages are more stable for that same reason
Distro maintainers don't need to package as many applications (https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected]/thread/46ZZ6GZ2W3G4OJYX3BIWTAW75H37TVW6/), and application maintainers don't need to worry about multiple distros and versions of dependencies

However, some applications don't work as well because of the sandbox, but I think this will change with the rising popularity of Flatpak, as more developers will use portals instead of direct access. Also, there are some bugs and missing features, like how heavy use of the org.freedesktop.Flatpak portal for dbus causes a memory leak (https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-dbus-proxy/issues/51), but it's overall pretty good. Most applications I use are Flatpaks.