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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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What are your thoughts on Flatpak/Flathub? (flathub.org)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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How does it stack up against traditional package management and others like AUR and Nix?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

How exactly do you update the github of a flathub package with no one actively maintaining it? Not sarcastic. That is an actual question.

And I'm not worried about big officially supported apps. A better example of the kind of thing I'm talking about is older open source games. Flatpak could be great for games. No distro out there is maintaining a current version of every open source game that has ever been released, but Flathub can, and it could be great. Unfortunately anything that's not being actively maintained is rapidly going to become a 200MB download that whines about security every time you update your flatpaks, even if it doesn't connect to the internet at all. Even if it's possible for any random person to update it, who will?

Of course, this doesn't just have to be about games. There are lots of open source programs out there that just kind of get completed and abandoned. And that's not even bringing up all the closed source software on flathub that definitely won't be updated eventually. These aren't unsolvable problems, of course, but I don't even think anybody working on flatpak even cares.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

I dont know who manages "who can maintain", if its only a single person thats bad of course. Good point that should be addressed to the flathub people. There should always be administrative access to some form of elected bunch of people that can then merge PRs or make new people admins.

True about the EOL runtime error messages, I mean they are important but should be possible to mute per app, especially when its offline. This will then just consume more disk space, which is probably fine.