I don’t really consider myself a power user, so I’ll use flatpak if it’s easy to use and doesn’t block certain features. Otherwise I’ll just look for an appimage or debian package because I already know how to use those.
The biggest issue I see is big labels like “potentially unsafe” and “proprietary” on flathub that scare people away from popular, well trusted non-FOSS software like Discord. At the same time, FOSS-friendlyness is one of the selling points for many people. How can it appease both camps?
Plus, casual users aren’t going to flathub to download programs, they’re downloading from the software site. Since most of the most popular flattpak images are not officially verified by the software owners, nothing is linking to them to increase their popularity.
Yeah, I agree, I don’t like that aspect of flatpak development either. The idea that the containerization is supposed to provide some kind of resistant form of a sandbox that prevents malicious programs from breaking into your system; I don’t buy it.
Look, you need to trust your application sources, there is no way around that. The idea that this is supposed to be a “safer” way to install software than any other package manager is silly.
I still like that flatpak apps are separated from your system and locked to their own dependencies because it makes these apps more portable to different distros. But not for security reasons.
I don’t really consider myself a power user, so I’ll use flatpak if it’s easy to use and doesn’t block certain features. Otherwise I’ll just look for an appimage or debian package because I already know how to use those.
The biggest issue I see is big labels like “potentially unsafe” and “proprietary” on flathub that scare people away from popular, well trusted non-FOSS software like Discord. At the same time, FOSS-friendlyness is one of the selling points for many people. How can it appease both camps?
Plus, casual users aren’t going to flathub to download programs, they’re downloading from the software site. Since most of the most popular flattpak images are not officially verified by the software owners, nothing is linking to them to increase their popularity.
Yeah, I agree, I don’t like that aspect of flatpak development either. The idea that the containerization is supposed to provide some kind of resistant form of a sandbox that prevents malicious programs from breaking into your system; I don’t buy it.
Look, you need to trust your application sources, there is no way around that. The idea that this is supposed to be a “safer” way to install software than any other package manager is silly.
I still like that flatpak apps are separated from your system and locked to their own dependencies because it makes these apps more portable to different distros. But not for security reasons.