People dislike #flatpak for the fact that it uses more disk space than native applications. I don’t think it is that big of an issue. But couldn’t it be solved be letting the base system, the DE (like #GNOME and #KDE) use the flatpak runtimes from outside. I mean you can’t break out of a container, but can’t you break into it?
Could for example #GNOME use #GTK which comes packaged in the flatpak GNOME runtime?
Why would that be a silly idea?
Emmanuele Bassi
in reply to user8e8f87e • • •it would only work if:
- the whole OS is stored inside the ostree repository also used by Flatpak
- you built both the OS and the run time from the same sources, producing the same artifacts
We did that early on in Endless OS, to save space and reduce the update sizes when dealing with connectivity with high latency/small bandwidth.
Turns out that it's not worth the complexity, and does not save you when you have multiple run times installed anyway.
user8e8f87e
in reply to Emmanuele Bassi • • •Okki
in reply to Emmanuele Bassi • • •@ebassi
Some apps are not yet available as Flatpak (Disks, Files, Software, System Monitor, Settings…)
So they can't use a Flatpak runtime, and need their dependencies to be available at the system level, right? 🤔
Besides, why don't we have a Flatpak of the stable version of Files, when it seems that the development version has already been available for several years? (even KDE Dolphin is available in Flatpak) 🙁
Emmanuele Bassi
in reply to Okki • • •Okki
in reply to Emmanuele Bassi • • •The advantages of Flatpak are not limited to its enhanced security. It also means we can enjoy the latest versions of our applications on a system that doesn't normally have access to them (Debian stable, Ubuntu LTS... or even the month-long wait on Fedora, which seems interminable to me) 😁
Emmanuele Bassi
in reply to Okki • • •@gnomelibre of course it's not just about security, but security is a big part of it, and it wouldn't do anybody good to just wave away that aspect just because you want new and shiny stuff.
Some components are system components: file manager and settings interact with a lot of underlying system functionality—network, admin, removable volumes. They don't lend themselves to sandboxing.