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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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173

Is there a downside to Flatpak? (lemmy.world)

submitted 9 months ago by 0485919158191@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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Basically title.

I’m wondering if a package manager like flatpak comes with any drawback or negatives. Since it just works on basically any distro. Why isn’t this just the default? It seems very convenient.

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[–] twoshoes@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

Yes, of course. But afaik the idea of flatpak is, that every program has a list of libraries and versions of them that it wants. So when program X was built with libfoo version 1 and program Y needs libfoo version 2, you basically download the library twice.

When you go through the package manager, you just download the current version that's in the repository. This can lead to problems when a program expects some functionality that has since been deprecated, but I never actually had issues with that.

Also, a lot of the libraries a flatpak downloads are already installed on the system, just in a different version, I noticed.

I'm on a home computer that I use by myself, mind you. So if something breaks, it's just my own problem. If I were to use software in production or even just administer the computer of a tech-unsavy relative, I'd likely use flatpaks or similar for stability and security reasons.