My preference for flatpaks is based upon I can further lock out network access for those apps that I don’t want having network access. Just gives me another layer of network access prevention using flatseal. For the paranoid side of me :)
Have a couple apps can only use appimages, using with gear lever is just great & easy
Both work great though
hard disagree I much prefer appimages over flatpaks.
Long time linux user and I have a hard time keeping track of the differences between these 3 tech. This comparison did not help much. I can only imagine how lost people with less experience must feel.
Turns out I can here to say the same thing as everyone.
AppImages are not in the same competition.
They have different uses and you would mostly not find out how many people are using them due to their nature of being very useful offline.All three are ridiculous. In what world should every application take two gigabytes of disk?
In a world where two gigabytes are cheap and software and dependencies complicated
No. Apt won.
Doesn’t Ubuntu still ship with Snap? I don’t think Flatpak trumps that yet. It’s hard to say one of the other formats won when Canonical (or Fedora derivatives in the case of Flatpak) still mainline something else.
Canonical made Snap, so would be weird if they didn’t ship with it in Ubuntu.
As a professional nix shill, I can proudly tell you every flatpak I ever wanted to use is packaged in nixpkgs
I use Docker and apt instead. The definition of an application lives in a single text file and you don’t give it anymore resources or permissions than it needs.
So much so, that I wrote a bunch of scripts to make life easier, without ever needing to go anywhere near appimage, flatpak or snap.
cool but isn’t the whole point of flatpaks to provide an alternative for when the “apt” version doesn’t exist?
I use flatpak and app images for different uses.
App images are like portable exe files for onetime use apps. Like Rufus
Flatpaks are like installable exes from the devs website. Used for apps I want to used and use again on my machine.
i dont believe a single person in this post
Good for you?
Yeah Flatpacks aren’t really “competing” with Appimages the way they are with Snaps.
Flatpaks are only “competing” with a small portion of what snaps do.
Oh ok I didn’t realize that. I’ve personally never encountered a situation where I needed a Snap because a Flatpak lacked functionality.
Snaps are more comparable to nix, really. They can provide system services and even your kernel. Flatpaks and AppImages are only really about distributing desktop apps, but the rest of the system still needs to be provided another way.
AppImages are completely different thing versus Flatpak and Snap.
I use Appimage and flatpack, but not snaps.
I’m not sure why you reply this to me directly.
He is not using Snaps, though.
Sure (myself neither). I just don’t understand why he replies that to me, as if it is an argument to make a point for or against my reply. And seeing that some people downvoted me confuses me even more. I just said I don’t understand why he replied to me. Why would anyone downvote without explaining?? What is the reason people got it the wrong way? Really I’m just confused.
Do tell… genuine question, what would you consider 2 significant differeces?
Flatpak is a central repository where an application is installed in a sandbox and cached. It can be updated from that central repository.
Snap is a mounted filesystem containing a repository and is stored locally. It is not sandboxed. It cannot be updated in part but is overwritten in whole. It is distributed by individual app maintainers, not a centralized repository.
Sure. Streaming and DVDs are also completely different things but both deliver media to your TV. The consumer chooses what the consumer wants.
The comparison does not hold up, because for watching films it does not matter on what medium it is. But for applications it has huge implications for maintaining versions, updates, creating packages with or without runtimes and dependencies and a repository and so on, that work differently on operating systems and so on. This goes way beyond just the user choosing the format.
I don’t think I’ve made my point very well.
From the user perspective, all they want is an app.
They choose the minimal effort way to get that app. If flatpaks are what is distribute in that icon that says App Store, that’s what they go with.
If we ever want to actually increase Linux usage in the mainstream that is the attitude we will have to take.
You’re right, but you’re right in the wrong way. Everything you say is true, but try explaining that to the average user of Windows.
We heavily prefer flat earthers aks but app images aren’t that bad, like someone else said they’re like portable programs
I just run every app in its own manjaro based distrobox.
app images need to not be called app images. first time seeing it it sounds like some macos thing. but even still I don’t see why they get compared so much to flatpak and snap when they are completely different.
They serve the same purpose: Install software, that’s not in your distro‘s repository.
I prefer appimages, it feels much more “open” than flatpak ever will.
Flatpak: install flatpost and flatseal.
Appimage: Download appimaged appimage to ~\Applications and run once.
then
Flatpak: Go to site for cool software I heard of, see it’s flatpak with a link on the page. Click link, wait for flatpost to open, wait for flatpost to update repos, get cool software and possibly another copy of mesa and gnome compat stuff, then head to flatseal to fix drive/device permissions as needed.
Appimage: Go to site for cool software I heard of, see it’s an appimage, download said appimage to ~\Applications, appimaged automatically loads in a desktop entry and we’re done.
As far as updates, all the appimages that are in active development that I use, offer auto-updating when I open them, plus I’m not reliant on a centrally-controlled repo of the packages (which if it dies, takes all updates with it).
I feel appimage would be an easier adoption for people fresh to linux, as it follows the same model as windows or macos (download executable, install app), even for the initial setup of appimaged.
And either way, there’s no “winner” here, if we’re playing that game, native installs still win. Every distro supports (and uses) those by default, except for ubuntu, who has money on pushing snaps.
They aren’t really in competition, also AppImages don’t update as easily.
