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Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: bolokanarA little too late.

What makes you say that? What about it makes it too late?

It's been years...

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Quoting: AsciiWolf

Quoting: RedjeAnd I don’t really get the hype for flatpak.

and actually makes desktop Linux usable even for regular, non-technical users.

Flatpak has uses, some of the stuff you said is true, but this is ridiculous. I am a regular, non-technical user. I use Mint, it's the most user-friendly distro around. It is possible to install Flatpaks in Mint, and I have installed a couple, but not enough to make a noticeable difference to how usable my desktop is. Flatpaks are some icing on one or two slices of the cake for "regular, non-technical users".

Being non-technical does not mean I can't recognize a statement that completely contradicts the reality of my experience when I see one.

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Quoting: _wojtek

Quoting: dpanterSnap? Uh, no. No thanks.

Cannonical is just annoying… What's more - it's not like they created something exceptionally new, they just want to ride the hype wave on something that mostly other created…

I strongly disagree with that statement, but whatever... 😅

From the enduser perspective, I'm very satisfied with snaps and with the 3rd party content it brings.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: Tethys84Except nobody will be able to afford the Steam Machine. I would be surprised if Valve didn't indefinitely delay or even eventually cancel it because of the skyrocketing prices on RAM alone.

It depends. If they made a fixed price contract early enough, they might be able to offer their boxes cheap.

Yeah. After all, this is not a cost of production problem, it is a "what the traffic will bear" supply and demand problem. So if some manufacturer has a contract to deliver hardware for $X, they will still make money doing that, just not as much money as they think they can bilk us for.

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Quoting: LinuxerSteam snap works greatt including all the goodies inside fo gamer by default too but the flatpak of Steam is still a mess cos of access restrictions etc and cant be recommended just sayin

My distro packages Steam, so it's kind of a non-issue. IMO Flatpak is for things the distro isn't already packaging and for commercial things the distro can't package. And Snap is, um, for if you're using Ubuntu I guess.

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Quoting: fabertawe

Quoting: dannielloAnd in the near future - Steam Pocket. The first true Linux phone with decent performance! (of course advertised as only for gaming, so Google should be OK with it... In the same sense like Steam Machine is just Linux PC so Sony and Microsoft also should be OK with it;)

That's already available, it's called the FuriPhone <https://furilabs.com/>.

The . . . Furry Phone?

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Quoting: tfkI've ordered the FLX1s bundle. Let's see if this phone will set me free of Google's claws.

Can we see too, when you do?
Documenting your experience in a forum post or something can really help others.

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I've ordered the FLX1s bundle. Let's see if this phone will set me free of Google's claws.

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I think this is great news.
Canonical might unnecessarily cling to snap, but at least they're doing research in a known and reported problem.
Steam's compatibility with containerized package formats and repo policies.

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I wonder what will be left once the AI bubble bursts. I sincerely hope this "we need to put AI into *everything*" trend is one of the things that goes away...

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I like Schnapps better than snaps.

Prost!

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Quoting: dziadulewiczPackaging for Linux is important to be easy and efficient. Flatpak and Snap are both great for creating a universal package distribution.

For Flatpak I agree, that's one of its use cases.
Snap takes the federalization of standard package managers away, meaning that it's only compatible with a single centrally managed repo, this makes it way too sensitive to squables, rifts and manpower problems.

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Quoting: fabertawe

Quoting: Jarmer^ Interesting! Unfortunately I'm on Verizon in the US and it's unsupported. I could do tmobile and it'd work though. I wager that's not specifically this phone though, I bet all the linux options are this way. Verizon is horrible for stuff like this. But they're the best network. Oh well.

Some US carriers do seem to be the most problematic. This could also be down to a whitelist, where if your phone make is not on the list, then you're barred. Personally I'd boycott any such carriers and vote with my wallet.

That's exactly right. Verizon is the worst with this stuff too. BUT they have by far the best tower coverage, and my wife travels for work ... soooooo ... she would be frustrated if I switched us to tmobile. In a few years when she travels less, I'll most likely do it then though.

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Steam snap works greatt including all the goodies inside fo gamer by default too but the flatpak of Steam is still a mess cos of access restrictions etc and cant be recommended just sayin

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Using Snap so any time I launch a program, it hang for 5 seconds as if it is on a 5200 rpm spinning HDD. No thanks.

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Quoting: Stellamy problem with Canonical is that they actively harm the Flatpak ecosystem. Kubuntu used to ship the flatpak backend, but Canonical got really angry at that and it got ripped out in favor of snaps. Requiring users to do an extra steps to install flatpaks is not user friendly at all

They didn't get angry LOL. Oh please. Ubuntu is concentrating on one packaging officially, their own, that they can audit and control. It's only wise. It's also a wish for their corporate customers.

Flatpak can be installed on Ubuntu in a whiff and they are not angry about that 😂

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Quoting: Stellamy problem with Canonical is that they actively harm the Flatpak ecosystem. Kubuntu used to ship the flatpak backend, but Canonical got really angry at that and it got ripped out in favor of snaps. Requiring users to do an extra steps to install flatpaks is not user friendly at all

Kubuntu has never shipped with the flatpak backend already installed. It's trivial to install it if you want it, but it's never been installed by default.

You're thinking of Xubuntu, who also never shipped with flatpak enabled. When they floated plans to have a third install method by default - deb and snap already being necessary for the default distro packages - Canonical said no since that's gratuitously confusing for new users. Just like with Kubuntu and Ubuntu it's trivial to install flatpak support on Xubuntu for those that want it.

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my problem with Canonical is that they actively harm the Flatpak ecosystem. Kubuntu used to ship the flatpak backend, but Canonical got really angry at that and it got ripped out in favor of snaps. Requiring users to do an extra steps to install flatpaks is not user friendly at all

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Quoting: _wojtek

Quoting: dpanterSnap? Uh, no. No thanks.

Cannonical is just annoying… What's more - it's not like they created something exceptionally new, they just want to ride the hype wave on something that mostly other created…

That's a weird argument. Building on the work of others is like the whole stick of open-source.

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Quoting: scratchiregardless of how they package it, if they can win a few more users over from Windows and increase overall Linux marketshare

Exactly. Sometimes it feels like some of these ppl think more about themselves, their choices being keen to push others to what THEY prefer and not the good of Linux overall 🤔

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Packaging for Linux is important to be easy and efficient. Flatpak and Snap are both great for creating a universal package distribution.

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Quoting: _wojtek

Quoting: dpanterSnap? Uh, no. No thanks.

Cannonical is just annoying… What's more - it's not like they created something exceptionally new, they just want to ride the hype wave on something that mostly other created…

I agree; but at the same time, Ubuntu is still Linux. So regardless of how they package it, if they can win a few more users over from Windows and increase overall Linux marketshare, I won't complain :)

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What are you ppl up there talking about? Nothing needs to die, snap and flatpak are also very different. Both have their place and more. This is important. Everything is important to get to work correctly and well on Linux and we should support Canonical on this effort!

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Quoting: dpanterSnap? Uh, no. No thanks.

Cannonical is just annoying… What's more - it's not like they created something exceptionally new, they just want to ride the hype wave on something that mostly other created…

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Huh, I wonder how well will it run on my Android tablet
Xiaomi Pad 5, it will be an interesting test

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: LoudTechie

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: LoudTechieIt creates a problem for you, because your distribution doesn't have enough manpower to maintain all packages.

It does. It's Debian.

Quoting: LoudTechieEdit: On the different versions support: yeah probably, Debian, Red Hat and Canonical do that too. Backwards compatibility and usability sometimes require work. This time though each of these versions need only to be maintained once for all distros.

Except for some special cases with two major versions (which both are security fixed) - nope, this doesn't happen. Version 2.17 and version 2.18 of whatever uses the same places for the files, so they cannot coexist.

As a Debian user myself I just happen to directly be in a position to point you to a package that they don't maintain in their repo and I myself use happily with an already existing deb version and is fully dpkg compliant AppimageLauncher.

You've silently changed topic here. We were talking about every package being maintained security-wise, not every program in the world being packaged. See what we've referenced:

Quoting: LoudTechie

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: Liam DaweI firmly disagree. That is chaos. Every distribution has a different set of packages and versions, with security problems having to go through each distro for each package.

How does this create a problem for me? My distribution cares for it.

And doesn't Flatpak support different versions of the same package as the same time? So, you can have one without the security flaw - and at the same time one with the security flaw?

It creates a problem for you, because your distribution doesn't have enough manpower to maintain all packages.

So, yes, quite obviously, no distribution can package everything you might want. But this no argument against deb, rpm or whatever. The question at hand was if using deb is creating security issues due to missing manpower.

Quoting: LoudTechieAlso on versions. For every library I encounter in my development work apt offers like 8 different versions. For example gtk library: 2.0, 3 and 4 and the mosquitto library in several different implementations.

First, and I already mentioned this, this is not a problem if several different major library versions are packaged as long as they are all security maintained.

Second, I can name you 20 libraries that do not have different versions in Debian that you can install next to each other for any that you give me that does. Try me.

Quoting: LoudTechieDebian also this year published a desperate request for help, because of a lasting 100% manpower shortage for the debian data protection team.

This has nothing to do with security, it is about looking for GDPR issues.

First my excuses. It was not my goal to change the topic. A. We have a definition difference. Maintenance is in my eyes less to not even about security. Maintenance is in my eyes the first place keeping something functional and compatible within your distro, B. In my logic every program can be critical for someone's workflow, since I and distros don't have the data to reliably determine that it's not. This is the explanation for my topic change. Not a counterpoint.

Further on your second point. I'm not actually arguing that distro specific packages should disappear.
As I said before somewhere in this thread, they should as they were designed to apply to everything that requires root, such as drivers and other virus scanners. Things that don't, like games, applications and production software need a different system, than "distro approved". This isn't only, because it's less work, but also because "centrally approved" is a model ripe for abuse when Linux compatibility starts to matter to the market. Flatpak couldn't if it wanted, since as a containerized package format it can't run in ring0 and can thus not update things like the kernel itself.

On your third point. Truly, I thought that when you said that maintaining two package versions one with and without security flaw it was a counterpoint to the part you quoted, which stated that making a package distro independent was less work. This seems to be the same miscommunication as the past one. I was talking about how reduced developer effort had the potential of flowing over in better support. You were talking about how you disliked Flathub's policies.
In that sense the best argument in that direction is a rant of the developer of the default login of screen of if I remember correctly Gnome about how Debian's slowness in updating was keeping DOS(denial of service) patches at bay. Yet, I'm more inclined to agree with you than disagree in this sense. I use debian and avoid flathub(fedora's flatpak repo receives some leeway), because I agree with many of debians repo policies. I personally, also very much disagree with flathub's easy going attitude towards proprietary software.
I simply think the tech and movement show promise.

(Also on the argument I mentioned that dude was totally making a mountain about a mole hole. He was considering a technically advanced attacker who couldn't do a DMA attack, but still had physical access.)

On your final point. If you violate the law and don't handle it in time the government will take away your availability. The gdpr specifically is about ensuring confidentiality for the most personal data someone has. Availability and confidentiality are totally security. They're two thirds of the CIA triad.

Edit: Also my original point about manpower still stands, because there was nobody the project leader had to spring in. This takes away their time from other functions. One of the primary functions of any open source project leader is handling high profile responsible disclosure cases and negotiating about vendor support(vendor support is a functionality thing I admit, so you can from your definition of maintenance skip that one.

On the security comparison in this thread I actually mentioned another point. Against falthub's security policies..
Flathub fully relies on the security benefits of the containerization of flatpack to correct for all kinds of policy shortcomings.
Distro maintainers on the other hand rely on policy to avoid containerization.
For very needy programs like kernels, virus scanners and drivers containerization offers little benefit, since "the principle of least privilege" still means essentially full system access. As such containerization can't really do anything to help, while policy does help.
Yet for more limited programs like applications and games "the principle of least privilege" offers more protection. Flathub uses this to provide convenience instead of security, so if your favorite distro's, distro specific repos in their package manager and potentially a well curated flatpack repo with strict policies, such as the fedora repo. If you seek convenience flathub offers quite good value. It still by the offers bad value in the needy program category(see the local Steam complaints), but that's already well filled with distro specific packages.
In both cases Flatpak can offer value, but it needs to be used very differently.

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Snap needs to just die imo. Flatpak is the future! 😇

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There have been these leaks from a random site that all of the YouTubers are referencing regarding the leaked Steam Machine price. Some are saying $950 for the 512 GB model and up to $1100 for the 2 TB model. Of course these are not official, but we are in a RAM crisis.

What I never liked about Valve was their distribution method of only selling the hardware on Steam. No Amazon, no Best Buy, and no Walmart. It would be awesome if I could see a Steam Machine (Steam Deck too!) kiosk at Target so people know it exits. Heck, maybe the boxes for the Steam Machine could advertise that you can play thousands and thousands of games and the latest titles that come out next to Xbox and Playstation.

But they won't. They will instead tailor to the Gen-X/Millennial Steam user with a huge library and disposable income instead of bringing in new blood. This forces a user to randomly create a Steam account and THEN buy a Steam Machine vs buying a Steam Machine on Amazon or Best Buy and then they get the Steam account.

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Snap? Uh, no. No thanks.

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Quoting: LoudTechie

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: LoudTechieIt creates a problem for you, because your distribution doesn't have enough manpower to maintain all packages.

It does. It's Debian.

Quoting: LoudTechieEdit: On the different versions support: yeah probably, Debian, Red Hat and Canonical do that too. Backwards compatibility and usability sometimes require work. This time though each of these versions need only to be maintained once for all distros.

Except for some special cases with two major versions (which both are security fixed) - nope, this doesn't happen. Version 2.17 and version 2.18 of whatever uses the same places for the files, so they cannot coexist.

As a Debian user myself I just happen to directly be in a position to point you to a package that they don't maintain in their repo and I myself use happily with an already existing deb version and is fully dpkg compliant AppimageLauncher.

You've silently changed topic here. We were talking about every package being maintained security-wise, not every program in the world being packaged. See what we've referenced:

Quoting: LoudTechie

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: Liam DaweI firmly disagree. That is chaos. Every distribution has a different set of packages and versions, with security problems having to go through each distro for each package.

How does this create a problem for me? My distribution cares for it.

And doesn't Flatpak support different versions of the same package as the same time? So, you can have one without the security flaw - and at the same time one with the security flaw?

It creates a problem for you, because your distribution doesn't have enough manpower to maintain all packages.

So, yes, quite obviously, no distribution can package everything you might want. But this no argument against deb, rpm or whatever. The question at hand was if using deb is creating security issues due to missing manpower.

Quoting: LoudTechieAlso on versions. For every library I encounter in my development work apt offers like 8 different versions. For example gtk library: 2.0, 3 and 4 and the mosquitto library in several different implementations.

First, and I already mentioned this, this is not a problem if several different major library versions are packaged as long as they are all security maintained.

Second, I can name you 20 libraries that do not have different versions in Debian that you can install next to each other for any that you give me that does. Try me.

Quoting: LoudTechieDebian also this year published a desperate request for help, because of a lasting 100% manpower shortage for the debian data protection team.

This has nothing to do with security, it is about looking for GDPR issues.

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