Flatpak & Flathub Changed The Linux Desktop

[@BrodieRobertson]

> KZbinr mentions Brazil > Commenters from Brazil > "It's my time to shine"

[@luizansounds]

As a Brazilian I can confirm, we may or may not dominate chats whenever mentioned

[@rawrrrer]

Brazil™️

[@rockyamethyst]

Brazil mentioned, assemble the armies!

[@softwarelivre2389]

So you discovered the free hack for boosting the comments. Indeed

[@tarcisiosurdi]

OMG Brazil mentioned!!! 🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷

[@vberz4778]

Germans value privacy a lot. There was time when Google StreetView didn't existed for Germany quite many years, because laws forbidden any filming of any private land without permission from each owner; while it existed in all neighboring countries. Germany has Linux desktop in some government institutions now. I like Germany.

[@Yeugeo]

As a German I am very proud to read this thanks :)

[@Butterscotch_96]

Damn I might move to Germany when I’m older

[@seanthiar]

You can still request from google that your home isn't shown on Street View in Germany and hey have to do this.

[@szaszm_]

@@Butterscotch_96 This is a plus, but there are many negatives too. I guess the eastern states had enough of the Stasi.

[@Rac3r4Life]

I doubt it has anything to do with that. Just like the US has a lot of installs because it's the economic center of the planet, Germany has a lot of installs because it's the economic center of the EU.

[@piekay7285]

Germany always had a strong Linux community. Microsoft even tried to stop the sale of Linux distributions in the early 2000s. We always were very privacy focused here, so probably that’s the reason

[@TremereTT]

I think (no scientific data just feels) It's the mix of several things: -Even regular Germans are very privacy aware. If you want to spy or record us your are in for a beating! We don't need a stasi here. -Germany had for a long time a culture that goes against the ways intellectual property is perceived today! Napster for example was a legal place to exchange your private music! And we had the right to create private copies of anything we liked and spread it to up to 5 friends or relatives. This copyability and non-existence of a pay-me-for-each-copy-licence in Linux (Suse aka Slackware) is the cultural appeal of that OS. -Linux and free-software appeals even to the more "I just followed orders" type of German, as it has a clear image of an enemy (unfree closed source software and mostly Microsoft) and a big support group to hate and fight that enemy . -Germans love Clubs/Associatons if there is a thing that could get organized it will be organized. And Free Software delivers so many excuses to open a new club or get membership in a new association. Just look at the Chaos Computer Club. Even those "we are oh so free and unrestricted" mother fuckers couldn't hold back the German urge to get their hobby horse organized into a club.

[@olliestudio45]

Per capita the number for Germany must be much higher than for the US (if I am not very much mistaken). It would also be interesting to compare the US and Europe.

[@mysticknight487]

Don't forget the Munich government mandated Linux on government computers for a while before the latest change in government switched them back to Windows. They've switched back and forth many times 2014, 2017, 2020 and I'm sure other times.

[@vincentschult1725]

​@@mysticknight487Iirc Schleswig-Holstein recently switched to Linux too!

[@atomfriedfallout5503]

I'm from Germany and when I started with Linux a few years back my English wasn't as good as it is now but you would still find a lot of information, documentation and most important a helpful community in German which I think helps a lot.

[@mrnadra6843]

Looks like we finally found the one standard most people can agree on. Hopefully this encourages app developers to find the courage to throw their apps on there

[@someguy9175]

Everyone unless you are on canonical's payroll

[@flarebear5346]

Everyone unless you do something that has to interact with the system like a cli tool

[@no_name4796]

@someguy9175 yeah canonical had to force ubuntu flavors to use snap, otherwise a single distro would come with snap instead of flatpaks

[@AndrewMorris-wz1vq]

@@flarebear5346 Just need some way to use distroboxes tools automatically with flatpak and we might just have it all figured out for the first time in a minute

[@WyvernDotRed]

@@flarebear5346 which is completely doable with flatpaks, using aliases for decent intergration. Additionally, the -command= syntax and I stdin can be used normally. The underlying bubblewrap tool also is fully CLI operated. This usecase simply is underdeveloped, though the MPV flatpak is an example.

[@gnuplusmatt]

Google Chrome being so high could be a litmus test of the number of "normies" actually using linux

[@stevethepocket]

Or the number of Linux users needing a way to access stuff that doesn't work in Firefox. Which, for a good couple of weeks, included all of KZbin.

[@blasiankxng]

​@@stevethepocketthere's so many better chromium based browsers tho, so definitely could show "normie" usage lol

[@flickeringscreens]

@@stevethepocket I just use ungoogled chromium for that stuff.

[@G0A7]

@@blasiankxng Linux is normie

[@obsidianrazor]

It's more likely that many companies use google docs as their office suite and thus you need Chrome to use them effectively. This is why I use it on my work computer.

[@wearegeek]

About the Open Source / Germany thing: Suse is a German distribution. It was one of the first major distributions tailored to desktop/workstation usage. And probably the very first distro that sold installation CD's (like 7 CD's loaded with thousands of packages) along with installation and usage manuals on a large scale, in retail stores. Also there was a pretty strong movement at the start of the 00's to move all government software to open source (back when Open Office was still owned by Sun Microsystems and SuSe Linux by Novell). It has been reverted to Microsoft later on, but I believe since a few years there is a strong resurgence to promote and prioritize FLOSS in government/public sectors again.

[@JackTheOwl]

Wooow Started Linux with these Suse Linux box (and books that comes with) ... without internet initially!

[@wearegeek]

@@JackTheOwl Yeah, back then it was the only viable way to install a Linux desktop environment. No way you were going to download Gnome/KDE and related software with a 56k6 modem. 😅

[@MegaManNeo]

@@JackTheOwl I remember seeing these in Karstadt all the time when I was still a kid. Great stuff indeed.

[@mstarOnYT]

there have been multiple attempts of moving government stuff over to Linux, but all failed so far. Mainly because they always set way too big of a scope (iirc one time the scope was to make their own distro even). Another attempt is now going on the highest level. Previous ones were mostly cities trying their hands

[@MegaManNeo]

@@mstarOnYT Funniest thing is still how the EU wants to be independent yet they stick with Microsoft Office.

[@HaniiPuppy]

9:51 - The Steam Deck may not have accounted for as many downloads as that, but it *did* demonstrate to a mainstream audience that a relatively user-friendly and stable Linux system _can_ run with only being able to install Flatpak apps, and that it benefits from this.

[@MechanicaMenace]

I've been using Linux since the late 90s and using my Steam Deck convinced me I could switch over to an "immutable"/atomic distro on my main laptop. I've seen quite a few Windows diehards find it a good argument for at least trying a dual boot setup. Honestly while I can't see a general release of SteamOS3 bringing on "the year of Linux on the Desktop" I can see it being a tipping point in how people perceive Linux.

[@whiskytangofoxtrot_]

@@MechanicaMenace I think that if valve releases a desktop steamos3 it may hurt more than help in the short term.

[@MiodragSimke]

​@@whiskytangofoxtrot_Why?

[@vendetta.02]

@@whiskytangofoxtrot_ a desktop steamos3 would help way more than hurt lmao

[@Henry-sv3wv]

The Big costly steam deck does only have 1 TB of SSD and then we have to use bloatpak to lose even more disk space ...

[@telotawa]

"back then no one used mastodon" me, using mastodon in 2017:

[@Doctor_Glados]

Yes Brodie was way out of line. How could he ignore all 4 of you...

[@_Lumiere_]

​@Doctor_Glados hey! That's not an insignificant portion of the linux community

[@BrodieRobertson]

@@Doctor_Glados I was one of those 4 lol

[@4nyNoob]

as brodie said, you didn't exist back then, I'm sorry, but someone had to tell this to you :(

[@tui3264]

actually add 5th

[@JeoshuaCollins]

Re: Chrome Flatpak It's literally the only flatpak I have installed on my wife's laptop when I helped her switch over to Linux. I couldn't stand the idea of just letting Chrome run rampant, and figured that even tho Flatpak offers a fairly weak sandbox, it was better than nothing, since she insisted she absolutely needed Chrome.

[@knghtbrd]

Install Chromium and change the icon. 😈

[@tablettablete186]

Just would like to warn you that flatpaks chrome has a "broken" namespace sandbox.

[@akosv96]

​@@tablettablete186and every other browser for that matter. Tried firefox and had the same problem when trying to connect KeePass to it. Got me frustrated after trying multiple browsers. SteamOS is kinda annoying for this.

[@razzeeee]

@@tablettablete186 please raise an issue, if you really think/can prove this - we recently had this for brave and it turned into a non issue

[@tablettablete186]

I think YT deleted some comments here

[@MrNyagasu]

🇧🇷 Brazil Mentioned! 🇧🇷 We are the reason that "free as in free beer" is also important for software. My work requires a lot of image editing but I cannot afford an Adobe subscription.

[@Tentri]

To be fair libre means the same in spanish

[@UnderEu]

Tamo junto :P

[@JacksonNick-j6i]

What is this Brazil mentioned trend? Why everyone get exited when Brazil is mentioned?

[@Tentri]

@@JacksonNick-j6i people get excited when their country gets mentioned, even more if their country isn't usually mentioned, for example my country Costa Rica, when someone mentions it, even if it is for something bad I react like "oh wow they know we exist"

[@SnowyRVulpix]

For every single thing Adobe does, there are powerful alternatives that are much cheaper. Some free, some not free, all of them cheaper and often better... Including cross platform... Than adobe. None of them demand money to STOP using them.

[@SrWorfwood]

Valve needs to take control of the Steam flatpak. The deb made sense at first when Ubuntu was the clearly better option but that's not the case anymore, hasn't been in a long time, and a distro agnostic package makes more sense these days. I also think it would be funny to see how Canonical would handle that situation.

[@MyAmazingUsername]

They don't want to. Their cited reasons are difficult maintenance, lots of broken features, VR CAN'T work, gamepads don't work without special device rules, Proton game performance is 1-20% worse than the non-sandboxed app, and Nvidia loses driver overnight, and frequent issues with things like multiple instances of Steam running by accident. And much more...

[@hecate6834]

@@MyAmazingUsername What do you mean VR can't work? Same as with gamepads you set up some udev rules (and give the vrcompositor one extra capabilities) and you are good to go, possibly an argument for something Flatpak can't do yet I guess. Where did you get the performance numbers from? Not my experience, I did see the "multiple instances" thing before though

[@tablettablete186]

​@@hecate6834The performance numbers should probably be related to CPU bound games. They take a hit on performance because of the SECCOMP filters used.

[@SrWorfwood]

@@MyAmazingUsername Where did they say that? Because that isn't my experience with the unofficial flatpak at all. Gamepads seem to work just fine and I can't notice any real difference in performance in games. Maybe I was just lucky, but I find that very unlikely. The only time I remember seeing a Valve employee criticize flatpak his issue was lack of decent documentation but he didn't mention anything else.

[@unknown_-ed2rs]

Been saying this since i tried fedora and rpmfusion just didn't feel like working on my wifi

[@razzeeee]

I do think the hacker community of the chaos computer club in germany plays a role in why floss is so big here, but it's probably just one factor of many.

[@orbatos]

They were influential, but far moreso in Europe than the US of course.

[@razzeeee]

@@orbatos we were specifically talking about germany

[@roninnder]

That’s probably it. I’m in a FOSS club in America, but there’s only 6 of us. That’s probably why FOSS isn’t so popular here. Sorry, all.

[@hammerheadcorvette4]

Didn't the German Govt, use Linux for a while, and will use it going forward ?

[@razzeeee]

@@hammerheadcorvette4 munich used it and moved back, a state is moving to Linux. Tax department is also using Linux but I'm unsure of the scope.

[@taotie86]

North Korea with modest 316 downloads: insert "I'm doing my part!" meme

[@obsidianrazor]

The answer to the Germany question is SuSe :p Everyone always forgets the lizard

[@MrJosch700]

Also in general germany had a really promising tech sector. A lot of it died but it's slowly getting better again

[@vitasomething]

one of the very first distros (pre-slackware) was also german, called "Deutsche Linux Distrobition"

[@MegaManNeo]

My distro of choice by now. Moin Moin an dieser Stelle.

[@citywitt3202]

Runs on all my servers :)

[@michaelwright2986]

And the first distribution of Linux I ever tried was Knoppix--which, I think, pioneered the live CD format.

[@seeibe]

I just got recommended the video earlier today where Linus complains about the lack of a standard for distributing apps on the Linux desktop and now this gem drops

[@ImDelphox]

Linus Torvalds or Linus tech tips

[@p0xygen]

​@@ImDelphoxltt

[@CaC-br3uc]

​​@@p0xygen Linus Torvalds tips

[@theworldoffun8997]

Since Linux distros have modern display server, Wayland, sound server, Pipewire, accessibility framework, Pipewire and sandboxed apps distribution system that can be packaged by developers themselves instead of someone else, Flatpak, I think Linux can really become popular among both users and developers.

[@WyvernDotRed]

Pretty much. I like to compare the current state of Linux to Android. Perhaps Wayland can be compared to Android 5 and up, X11 to 4.2 and below given the technical change there. But with how rough things can still be, the early days would be more appropriate. It is amazing to see how the Linux app and desktop ecosystem are developing. Here's hoping COSMIC helps to somewhat remedy GNOME's standards breaking snowflake syndrome. This as KDE Plasma will really stay the system for the tinkerers and power users, despite my significant preference for it.

[@Ihwaz13]

​@@WyvernDotRedAndroid is by far the most commonly used Linux distro. It is a very unusual one but it still is one

[@gljames24]

Pipewire is even better. It's a AV media stream server!

[@f25key57]

At this pace next year it will be 100% the year of the Linux desktop

[@MikePerreman]

To be fair, accessibility on Wayland is hot garbage right now. Like there are just no on-screen keyboards available if you're not interested in running gnome.

[@AdamS-lo9mr]

The free desktop group does so much good work. It's amazing to have them working on the Linux desktop.

[@hy4ri]

3:37 and 4:31 same clip.

[@aqua-bery]

Ripp

[@SomeGuyAsWell]

Ok, cool not having a stroke.

[@softwarelivre2389]

Classic KZbinr duplication. Funny because Flatpak deduplicates files lol

[@wearegeek]

Dejavu. Are we in the Matrix?

[@sleepywitches]

I thought I was having a deja vu

[@NicosLeben]

Oh yes, please. I would really like to see the history of Linux in Germany. I am from Germany and in our company we use Linux everywhere, on each laptop, all Linux servers of course. But all the customers usually use Windows.

[@gljames24]

KZbin killing off Google Play Music is the reason I use ad blockers on KZbin and don't pay for premium anymore. It was great and they killed it like everything else. Tried Spotify for a while, but now I just use a Navidrome server.

[@Grunchy005]

You use a server for mp3 files? Did you know you can just copy them onto a flash memory and access them without using internet bandwidth? I found out I don't need the "cloud" whatsoever, I can load whatever data onto cheap flash memory and take it anywhere, practically.

[@sergrojGrayFace]

I'm actually surprised FireFox is so high given the fact that it always comes bundled with the distro.

[@dexterman6361]

Just as a note, flatpak sandbox isn't a good sandbox from a security standpoint. It's more of a "works almost everywhere"-box than a sandbox.

[@michadybczak4862]

And it still provides issues... That is why I dislike such formats and use them only if I have no other choice.

[@vendetta.02]

@@michadybczak4862 they are better lol they dont have any issues which arent fixable, flatpak fundamentally is better, the issues flatpak has arent inherent issues with the format and are only implementation issues which are fixable (and are getting fixed)

[@rogo7330]

Insert text about how people constructing new ways to share files without actually trying to isolate processes so they could not affect other processes.

[@michadybczak4862]

@bengii238 Huge usage of RAM and disc space counts? Sure, downloaded dependencies and libraries can be shared between various flatpack apps, but some apps will require this version, other another one and the bloat starts to rise. Native app can use 100 MB, while flatpack is over 600MB. Additionally, flatpacks have many limitations, as to integrating well with the system (lack of global menus, lack of system theming), sometimes have problem accessing resources, etc. In many ways, such apps become similar to Windows ones. Just imagine. a developer published an app with a library that later was discovered to have a security issue in the library. Developer can not update the dependency for years, because it's not their specialty to be a security researcher... and they have no time to focus on it, since they are working on something else.

[@average_snmp_user]

We all know that the only real way to install applications on Linux is by compiling them from source

[@Rudxain]

Gentoo certified. I love slapping a "target-cpu=native" whenever I can, to get the same benefits as Android AOT/oat

[@rjawiygvozd]

it's slightly terrifying that there are still random youtube videos where people tell you to just sudo make install into /usr

[@MietoK]

I’ll go with spack

[@Rudxain]

@@rjawiygvozd💀💀☠

[@KevinVeroneau]

I'd love to watch a KZbin documentary on Linux use in Germany. I wonder how these downloads say compare to the so-called "Desktop use" metrics, where it shows Linux, Windows, and macOS usage.

[@creadisc6213]

As for the Germany question: It comes down to the mentality and culture. A lot of people here don't want to sell you something. They just like to hack, engineer and tinker. And I would say that FLOSS prioritizes the technical solution before the financial incentives. On the other hand we are just paranoid about privacy since big tech usually comes from the US and thus is hard to control. Then if you visit the Congress of the Chaos Computer Club (Chaos Communication Congress) you will find a lot of anarchist(-leaning) people there that strongly believe in their mission to help each other out by sharing ideas via code. Then there is the EU thats subsidizes Open Source with grants and EU politicians are also open to influence from hacker groups and technical experts. Lastly open source is a very (not exclusively) european thing and germany just happens to be the largest european country, by population.

[@no_name4796]

4:28 bruh. Mistake in editing?

[@aqua-bery]

I noticed that to lol I thought I was tripping 😭

[@Fuscao_Preto]

11:48 Brasil Mentioned 🐍🐆🌳🌴🇧🇷🏖️

[@xard64]

As a long time Linux user I've been mostly relying on the traditional sources for installing applications. Curiously it was the Steam Deck which introduced me to Flatpaks: on immutable distributions like the Steam Deck OS Flatpak is the expected way to install traditional desktop applications after all.

[@InfinityN]

That may be so, but Flathub really need to up their game when it comes to developer documentation as well as simplifying the process. The amount of work it took for us to distribute an electron application on flathub was ridiculous compared to every other of our many formats.

[@Jaymal10]

Electron should go away anyway, since they don’t have a standard for the versioning and applications can just use whatever they wish rather than at least being a few versions behind. Case in point is discord.

[@InfinityN]

⁠delusional take but ok.

[@xanderplayz3446]

@@Jaymal10And it’s gigantic. I made a GTK hello world webview app in Python and when compiled (using Nuitka) it was half the size as the Electron 31 runtime.

[@Jaymal10]

@@InfinityN I mean my point is discord and Wayland. They use such inferior version of electron still that it does not work fully with Wayland and at the end of the day, it’s better to tell people to use the Web version on Linux. If they do any short of video screen sharing.

[@InfinityN]

@@Jaymal10 This is not the fault of electron though.

[@DemolitionManDemolishes]

Ive been saying this for months: rpm/deb/etc is for system components only. For everything else - flatpak.

[@jasonm2477]

and by everythign else you mean graphical apps? because desktop linux is the tiniest most irrelevant blip on the radar of what linux is used for. I hate what cannonical has done with snap but flatpak is such a small niche its essentially useless to 99.9% of linux applications

[@Man-xk9rz]

A break from dependency hell was my main reason to use flatpak for GUI applications. Edit: Containerization in general is a good strategy to avoid such.

[@LostieTrekieTechie]

​@@jasonm2477 for applications not being managed by the distro maintainers, it's way more friendly than a .git or .tar.gz link.

[@kraio-sfu]

@@Man-xk9rzcontainerization will be the death of storage. So long DRY principle, I will have 35 instances of Python installed on the same distro

[@guguludugulu]

​@@jasonm2477if you count things like grep as applications that is. There's plenty of graphical apps that benefit from flatpak and a huge amount of users that benefit from being able to install flatpaks instead of relying on often unsupported versions of software in system package managers or having to bother compiling everything from source and figuring out how to install dependencies that you have to hunt for in the depths of documentation

[@FunctionGermany]

regarding germany, i think it's due to our extensive hacker history, with the CCC playing a big role too. there's also a strong sense of privacy in the population compared to most neighbours and distrust in both foreign and domestic institutions, companies, and services, e.g. big tech US (microsoft). so we have lots of hackers, selfhosters, linux users, freedom of information activists etc.

[@seahorse-b6j]

FlatPak wins, because end-users don't need to boil brains with command line (and unexpected errors) anymore 🎉🎉🎉

[@Maestrou-jb1rq]

Flatpak is not optimized and allocate massive disk space for simple small applications. In the current state i really dont like it at all

[@michaelsanchez1361]

True most disk space consumed by flatpak came from locales and repo objects

[@aaskrad]

11:40 Yay! Brazil mentioned!

[@AshnSilvercorp]

big launcher devs: "We can't figure out Linux packaging." Average Linux user: _Look at Flathub, if you need to package something with Wine, do it here and it takes the pain in the _*_***_*_ off of your back._

[@JodyBruchon]

*NO ONE SHOULD BE USING FLATPAK OR SNAP OR APPIMAGES.* This is all a garbage hack around fundamental issues with how distributions work.

[@ColtWillcox]

Agree.

[@rogo7330]

This is just another more convoluted tarball with program files inside. It's has a neat feature of sandboxing things, but I believe user should decide what they want program to have access to, not package. And it is possible to do right now on any linux system with namespaces, it just tools suck and how-to articles needed.

[@deusexaethera]

I have the perverse urge to make a Flatpak of snapd so other distros can use it. 😈

[@sproid]

I wish canonical drop the snap nonsense and start using flatpaks

[@Man-xk9rz]

I concur!

[@tui3264]

though snap is slower, it has many nice features specially channels, better cli tools support, better docs and many big companies are only using snap for long time due to ubuntu reach which is much bigger than all distro combined. I want flatpak to win but it lacks lot of things for now

[@d3stinYwOw]

Why they should use something inferior in design and harder to develop for, with lesser featureset?

[@sproid]

@@d3stinYwOw because I don't want to be dealing with many package formats and I prefer flatpak.

[@d3stinYwOw]

@@sproid then don't deal with it, your choice. I pick both :)

[@transcendtient]

I have to say I hate flatpak and snaps. I understand what it does for stability and maintenance of a working system, but it's so much bloat and I can only assume it makes tying apps into the desktop in a cohesive manner very annoying.

[@MegaManNeo]

Here in Germany, Linux is relatively popular. Sure, most people still stick with Windows and gamers are about as stubborn as Devuan hardliners but there's SUSE, Knoppix, the Linux Tage event and of course the Chaos Communication Congress among many other places where Linux use obviously is very high. Keep in mind, Germany has always been into computers even if the rest of the world goes videogame consoles and phones. As for Flatpak, I love to use it since I do no longer need to worry about what distro I install as all of them end up having the same software versions. Here at home I am running openSUSE (speaking of German products, huh?) but my workstation in the company runs Mint Debian and while both have different base packages, the user software I use on a day to day basis is equal unless I mark a package to keep its version. To me this has been one of the biggest Linux adoption issues in the past and Flatpak/Flathub fixed that for the most part.

[@Krmpfpks]

Can I ship my app on Linux and then not get complaints that their system uses a decades old glibc and won’t start it? I ship as AppImage and I need to have an ancient Linux system to build it to make sure it runs on most of the customer systems.

[@Krmpfpks]

@@giusdbThank you for your answer. The big issues I am having is the glibc. Somehow the glibc is special and there is only one lib allowed in memory, I dont know why and I dont know any way around it but building against the oldest possible glibc. I have to maintain a very old system to build for maximum compatibility. There is a redhat that is still supported with glibc 2.17, also I received complaints from tuxedo, centos and ubuntu LTS users. They too have very very old glibc versions. I doubt flatpak can solve this. Sorry for my rant. I love linux and I run it on many servers and desktops for decades now, but of my paying customers it’s only a small percentage and compatibility issues like the glibc make it very hard to financially justify supporting it. Flatpak/AppImage solve 99% of the dependency issues but not glibc and probably also not the one you pointed out (qt/kde), though I think those you could theoretically ship in the flatpak.

[@rocketguedes]

Brazil 🇧🇷 mentioned 🇧🇷

[@samupop8]

let's goooo Brazil mention!!!

[@huljaxful]

I used to favor flatpaks over official repos but nowadays because of the size i use flatpaks when i need too. Not always.

[@WyvernDotRed]

While I personally prefer the old design of the webstore, I can't deny that the new store is a significant upgrade in functionality and appeal. As I use Discover anyway, I don't mind and the new design and it's great to link to in conversation. I liken Flathub and the development of the Linux Desktop to (early) Android, which is cool to see as it's great for the non tech oriented folk. Perhaps Wayland can be compared to Android 5 and up, X11 to 4.2 and below, though it seems to resemble the early days more for now.

[@sheldonkupa9120]

I understand why flathub exists, and its awesome for that. But i find it relatively slow, of course much better than snap (eewwwwee), and feels a bit bloaty. If I just install arch and use pacman and enjoy the lightning speed to compare... What i liked most in linux, every distro had its ONE trusty "appstore" that was fast, simple and reliable.

[@GoldenGrenadier]

Flatpak is going to be a godsend when the distro versions of the software start getting out of date.

[@Rudxain]

Debian moment

[@nobodyimportant7804]

In my experience, flatpak crap has a hard time interacting with things like git credentials saved in my home directory. Call me a boomer if you must, but I hate flatpack and think that it is an awful idea. Just like actual containers, flatpack is a bloated mess and a bad idea. OSS software became irretrievably bad when trendy clowns bought into systemd and node.js. Like systemd and node.js, there is no reason to ever use it and I have banned it from all my systems. I wish I could add a flatpak exception to the GPL to keep my crap off that nonsense.

[@Amaqse]

Yeah no. Jumps and constant increases for flathub downloads are 1) result of major distros adapting flathub as official secondary software source available post install, and b) sheer luck. Yeah, luck. Its purely incidental which version of the app will be first displayed as search result in the software store of a distribution, in general the one that loads faster is displayed first. Even if it is an older version, there is no such thing as older version if u cant load the newer version yet at all. Which brings me to germany. Germany is major network hub, its European Union's network switch. Germany being center-ish of Europe, most of critical internet infrastructure and national skeletal networks connect to and through germany. Frankfurt and Berlin are basicaly server cities for entire population of EU. From steam to google to netflix, amazon services, to your tiny distribution software hosts are all based in Germany thus giving german people the best pings to most of internet services. Linux being quite crucial to the 'server thing' its only natural that ir is more common there.

[@The8BitHero]

I've mostly avoided flatpaks, I don't exactly have a reason, I just install stuff from pacman/yay. In the past when I tried things like snaps and flatpaks I ran into theme issues and stuff. I assume that's handled by now but I haven't gone back.

[@stephanhuebner4931]

This is just pure speculation, but I think one reason why Germany is so "big" in terms of downloads and/or open source may be because of the Amiga. It was extremely popular in Germany and it also (to my knowledge at least) was the first system where users spread the idea of sharing software completely for free (freeware / public domain). I remember countless disk magazines, actually delivered of Floppy Disks via a package to your door from people who collected that stuff in their free time, possibly the most well known of them the Fish-Disks from Fred Fish, who, as it seems, was a strong proponent of free software. Basically, the ideological jump to something like Linux and open source isn't that big, if you grew up with the Amiga.

[@Mr_BetaMax]

I appreciate the concept being flatpaks, snaps and whaterver else, but god, just give me a .deb. I don't care about the fancy new packaging formats

[@reality_hurtz]

Flatpaks and flathub is one of many essential ingredients to linux desktop becoming a viable alternative to windows.

[@Kingramze]

Not sure if related, but I know Germany has gone through several cycles of requiring government machines to use FOSS / Linux whenever possible, open formats, etc. It's possible this could be government use or simply a cultural thing since Linux and FOSS is so widespread.

[@HksjJkdkd]

No its about Technical "Souveränität" so goverments dont get dependent on the capitalist monopolistic Billioniars. Aka Total Freedom from being dependent on Microsoft.

[@thedeemon]

We use Skype to talk to our parents every week. As for Chrome, GeForce Now requires it and doesn't want to play in other browsers on Linux.

[@DryPaperHammerBro]

No user agent hackery to fix it?

[@lussor1]

Not even brave or vivaldi?

[@thedeemon]

@@lussor1 Didn't work in Brave for me. Haven't tried Vivaldi, and haven't tried to fool it.

[@krelsen7]

Flatpak has made it much easier for non-technical people to use Linux. People that use Windows are used to downloading random exe and msi files that then open a wizard they have to go through, so Flatpak may even seem more convenient since they're essentially a one-click install of almost any application a user might want. the only pain point i've encountered is permissions sometimes, i know that can be easily fixed in the terminal or using Flatseal, but that's not as simple to do for non-technical users.

[@fooflyz]

You got the list of highest downloads wrong. The UK has 93M downloads, slightly less than Russia. So making the 5th, not Canada.

[@BrodieRobertson]

RIP Canada

[@lemmatos]

Brazil is bigger than the US (Alaska discounted), and bigger than Western Europe. Better comparison, in terms of population. Australia is mostly a big inhospitable desert. The population is roughly the same as the biggest Brazilian city. And yes, Brazilians are all over the internet. Probably more than most people would expect.

[@slycordinator]

Flathub usage in North Korea is most likely a government worker. Perhaps a develop for their RedStar OS, which uses Linux as its base. One can reason that it's not a regular user there, based on the fact that internet there is highly filtered; many common websites blocked/banned.

[@toxithot]

all those emulators are pulled from flathub with the emudeck script (originally designed) for steam deck, which is probably what puts primehack up that far.

[@Redmage913]

It’s changed the way I use the desktop. It’s far easier to use flatpak than it is to compile, and its ability to stay up to date compared to fixed distributions makes me less concerned about using Debian for a solid subsystem and flatpak apps running on top.

[@michaelsanchez1361]

One glaring problem of Flatpak: Consumes huge disk space

[@ColtWillcox]

And memory, and startup time.

[@titouan_real]

Canada: "in fifth place" In the meanwhile: UK and France : "Are we a joke to you?"

[@BrodieRobertson]

Did I count wrong? lol

[@Qyngali]

I'm surprised Brave is now official since all chromium browsers have to use a hack maintained by a single developer to disable the Chromium sandbox, that was the reason none of them were official before. Maybe Flathub has changed their stance on devs being able /or allowed) to disable the Flatpak sandbox? I need to look this up now. :) I know there was a lot of discussion between the different browsers (Vivaldi, Brave +++) about this maybe 1 year ago... being dependent on a kludge solution made by a single guy seems like a kinda bad idea.

[@tablettablete186]

I did some investigation and Brave simply ships without namespace sandbox on flatpak 🤡 Yeah

[@LackofFaithify]

Half of anything in linux is dependent on some sort of kludge.

[@someguy9175]

Brazil mentioned

[@mritunjaymusale]

COME TO BRAZIL!!! (I don't even live there )

[@darkenblade986]

i think that spike is due to the steam deck. its been a juggernaut for linux gaming and use in general.

[@bhaveshsonar7558]

Appimages are better

[@that_leaflet]

Would be cool if Flathub showed how many users an app actually has rather than the total number of times it was installed or updated. I recently uploaded an app to the Snap Store and they give aggregate information about the app: the amount of people who have it installed (only counts people who've used their computer within the last week and have updates enabled), distro and versions, cpu architecture, and which channel they use (stable/beta).

[@mckendrick7672]

This is pretty difficult to figure out without telemetry that would make most Linux users mad.

[@Widur42]

That would require some degree of telemetry to know if someone is actually using it (even if that info is anonymized). Installs/updates works completely without it because the information is coming for the server providing the package and not the client using it.

[@that_leaflet]

@@mckendrick7672 I wish Linux users could be more reasonable. It’s funny to me that people are fine running random pieces of code packaged by random people, but as soon as telemetry, however basic, comes up people bring out the pitch forks.

[@knghtbrd]

@@mckendrick7672 Hence why Canonical does it because they're basically the Microsoft of Linux, and flathub doesn't.

[@tablettablete186]

@@that_leaflet Tbh, I dislike both things

[@lmnk]

Greetings from a Flathub contributor from Russia =)

[@julioau]

Brazil Mentioned! ❤ 🇧🇷

[@arturpaivads]

Brazil, is a little smaller than US and has a little less people. Its not that abnormal hahaha.

[@bleack8701]

You know Mozilla is ran by idiots when even on Linux Chrome is by far in first place.

[@gx1tar1er]

i'm sad to see Firefox's downfall but it's the only independent browser left without chromium.

[@Batwam0]

If we are all going to use a third party central repo with apps uploaded by random anonymous people, this is going to become a prime target for attacks. They better make sure there is a thorough check of the sources for exploits. I’d feel a lot more comfortable if it was only possible to upload sources and flathub does the code check and compiling.

[@lluchmartinez3586]

@@giusdb the pixels they are displayed on

[@Batwam0]

@@giusdb aren’t there proprietary apps on Flathub too?

[@bkahlerventer]

Big component is the distros moving to flatpak.

[@yaroslavpanych2067]

This is bs. It doesn't introduce any better or new at all solutions to existing problems. Why it exists at all

[@ThisUploaded]

It's easier to install and manage for most users. As in like the people used to windows and Mac.

[@UncleUncleRj]

I use Pop OS, and in my experience, Flatpaks have often been out of date compared to a .deb package available in the PopShop.

[@no_name4796]

I use flatpak only if distro repo doesn't have the package, and the flatpak version is the official one Otherwise i jist download the tar file or the appimage

[@weiSane]

Eww

[@no_name4796]

@weiSane no, i use waybar

[@al1234]

Love to see it Per Capita instead of total number

[@gljames24]

This is a rare moment that someone actually used the term shades correctly 🎉

[@BYROXI5000]

11:11 And at 5th place "Canada" Uk, France and Spain be like: 🤨 (Canada: 65.000.000, Uk: 93.000.000, France: 86.000.000, Spain: 72.000.000)

[@hermespymander9167]

BRAZIL MENTIONED

[@Alexander_Sannikov]

microsoft edge has more downloads on flathub than OBS. what the actual f?

[@supremesonicbrazil]

Honestly I'm only forced to use Firefox as a Flatpak because I'm on Debian Stable and I need the regular release, ESR has a couple issues with the things I work with (which honestly isn't even ESR's fault but rather the whole web industry's). If I had the choice I would still use my distro's repos, or so be it, I'm going to embrace a source-based distro like Gentoo, it's probly a point of no return for me already

[@drawerganizer785]

Flatpaks & flathub solve one of the bigger issues holding back Linux adoption which is having a developer friendly way to distribute and install third party software. Having to go through through a distro's repository means you have to time the release of your software with the release cycle of a distro so that it can be included in the repo, and you're not in charge of how that package is updated. I've seen companies distribute their software as tar archives, .deb's and .rpm's, but that's clunky, and it doesn't provide a way of providing updates without asking the user to follow a tutorial, and that's not end user friendly.

[@marcusmeaney]

i dont use flatpaks or snaps, hate the janky package managers and that they make new directories in $HOME. if i need a random program not in official or AUR it will be appimage or github

[@xXUnrulyXx]

i guess im the odd one out.. i removed flatpak from all of my linux distros and i dont run snap.. i either get my software from the AUR, compile from source, or look for a .deb file if im in my debian install..

[@ChaosAngel209]

Steam Deck Discover Store uses Flatpak. I wonder….

[@Lunix_Hardcore]

The German Flatpak numbers might be so high because most schools and universities here use Linux (usually Ubuntu) for their computers. Lately, even the The administrations of some federal states are switching to Linux for their office machines.

[@pixl_xip]

Brazil mentioned! im from canada

[@lavafroth]

Funny how I recently got rid of flatpak from my system having been daily driving NixOS for more than a year now. Flatpaks are cool and all but the startup times are blasphemous.

[@mnoxman]

I installed flatpack on my Fedora system. A few apps were good but the rest were like those CD's in the late 90s that said 1000 games and most of them were buggy old and bad knock off versions of clone of a good game. Rather than "Duck Hunt" there is "Mallard search"

[@WyvernDotRed]

To me those old knock-off games are part of the appeal though. For 'proper' games I'll use Steam, maybe GOG or Itch if unavailable on Steam. But these quirky clone games have a Flash games kind of low-barrier appeal. Making Linux as a whole quite a wonderful system for children to get their bearings on, like how Android worked for me. Assuming reasonable parental checking of course, though the store is pretty clean.

[@hnasheralneam]

Strange that India is not near the top, they have a lot of Linux users

[@Weezerfier]

Thankfully I hope Linux users in India use the official distro repos as it should be.

[@Shrapnel_Music]

Flatpak is the only thing that will or can get window users to move over. People like the program in one place, not spread. I love flatpak. All people calling it bloat, really y'all? I hate to be honest, but if you have a problem with space like that it's time to many upgrade.... People see Bloat. I see The Solution. It fixes all the cross files crashing crap. If everyone is being honest with themselves, they know that is true.

[@BUDA20]

remove the billion versions of nvidia drivers inside flatpak that keep updating 300mb each for 1GB+ installed, this is not removed by flatpak remove --unused

[@redcrafterlppa303]

About Linux use in Germany.. I don't have concrete information but rather a feeling.. As a German using Linux I think many people are using Linux here because there are many tech interested people here. But since in terms of digitalization Germany is pretty bad and there is little corporate and official support. Thus people interested in tech are more likely to choose Linux and open source since it's in many cases competitive or better than the corporate alternative here.

[@razzeeee]

On the skype topic, I can't help but laugh. Because it turned into Microsoft Teams and I think a few people were using that :)

[@DaleDix]

It's a bit depressing that after going to all the trouble of getting rid of Microsoft, the first thing most people do is sign right back into Google.

[@MompfStar]

My concern is that with looking further you will find Microsoft Edge on the 28th place as of 30/08/2024

[@SimGunther]

7:35 Have you thought about how many docker images contribute to this number? Think of how many times the same thing is downloaded. Yep, the same version of the same dependency on the SAME DOCKER IMAGE running again and again... Just laughable 😂😂😂