I’m a technically savvy but new to Linux user who installed Mint as my primary OS about a month ago. So far I’ve used Flatpaks and AppImages without any issue and haven’t come across snaps. Would you explain the differences and why I would care about one over another?
At the end of the day, they’re just different ways of reaching the same goal: universal packages for Linux. I personally use them interchangeably depending on the application and use case.
There are some packages that definitely work better and are intended to be used and installed via your native package manager (if they rely on system libraries and whatnot). But using either a Flatpak or AppImage results in the same experience - in my experience. It’s a personal preference.
IMO flatpaks are the future of installing linux apps. The comment you replied to lives in the past. System package manager should be for system binaries, not for applications.
I see the appeal for the package manager for a lot of things, but space got so incredibly cheap and fast that duplication is way less of a deal than the effort to make stuff work the traditional way. But im not a real linux user. I don’t like tinkering, I want to download something and it works. And the amazing thing is we can have both. If people like spending time to package something be my guest.
The funniest interaction I had recently. I downloaded a program that isn’t in my package manager or had any sort of flatpack/appimage so I downloaded it as a deb and it didn’t run because of some dependency. So I could clone the git and build it from source which might have worked, but I was too lazy to. So I just downloaded the windows exe and ran it through wine, which worked flawlessly.
I don’t like tinkering, I want to download something and it works.
And this is what’s keeping Linux at bay. Normies are that to the extreme. They want something that is as simple and resilient as possible, they couldn’t care less about the dependencies or even know what they are. They want a program an app and just install it from an “app store” if possible.
Native package manager > Native binaries > AppImage > Flatpak.
Yes, snap isn’t even on the scale.
App images are a very Windows way to do things. They bundle everything so they are big
They are windows, but the linux version of dll-hell across distros and distro versions makes windows dll hell look quaint.
If someone had addressed that better it would be one thing, but binary interoperability is infinitely broken, so app image is actually an improvement.
Isn’t the gnome runtime alone 2GiB? You know how many appimages that is?
Not to mention you are unlikely to only use one runtime.
I’m a technically savvy but new to Linux user who installed Mint as my primary OS about a month ago. So far I’ve used Flatpaks and AppImages without any issue and haven’t come across snaps. Would you explain the differences and why I would care about one over another?
At the end of the day, they’re just different ways of reaching the same goal: universal packages for Linux. I personally use them interchangeably depending on the application and use case.
There are some packages that definitely work better and are intended to be used and installed via your native package manager (if they rely on system libraries and whatnot). But using either a Flatpak or AppImage results in the same experience - in my experience. It’s a personal preference.
IMO flatpaks are the future of installing linux apps. The comment you replied to lives in the past. System package manager should be for system binaries, not for applications.
But I like my applications years out of date and I think its good that every distro has to spend manhours on packaging it individually.
lmao you joke but half this thread is exactly that opinion
I see the appeal for the package manager for a lot of things, but space got so incredibly cheap and fast that duplication is way less of a deal than the effort to make stuff work the traditional way. But im not a real linux user. I don’t like tinkering, I want to download something and it works. And the amazing thing is we can have both. If people like spending time to package something be my guest.
The funniest interaction I had recently. I downloaded a program that isn’t in my package manager or had any sort of flatpack/appimage so I downloaded it as a deb and it didn’t run because of some dependency. So I could clone the git and build it from source which might have worked, but I was too lazy to. So I just downloaded the windows exe and ran it through wine, which worked flawlessly.
And this is what’s keeping Linux at bay. Normies are that to the extreme. They want something that is as simple and resilient as possible, they couldn’t care less about the dependencies or even know what they are. They want
a programan app and just install it from an “app store” if possible.you are a real linux user don’t let some neckbeard tell you otherwise :P