Flatpak is the future of Linux desktop applications for so many reasons, but among them it allows users not to be caught up in the dependancy mess that plagues Linux distributions. Some of the criticism here does not belong to Flatpak. E.g Fedora's weird duplication of repositories is exclusively a Fedora problem. Has absolutely nothing to do with Flatpak.
Applications such as VLC and GIMP which 'ship' with access to whole filesystem permission is an eternal dilemma. Would you rather the authors ship without access to this permission and break app functionality ? Or let them ship with restrictive permission and allow users to manually enable respective permissions to regain function when the software breaks? It is easy to see the feasible decision here that works for all parties here. The permission on the different accessibility store however has confusing labels on sandboxing, I agree with the point that the store should make this as clear as possible.
I think the bigger point the article misses is the ability to control these permissions at this level. Even if the software author ships 'dangerous' default permissions, the user can always revert this decision and sandbox it effectively if they so wish.
Flatpak is a crucial needed fix for the Linux package distribution problems highlighted elaborately by this article but in my humble assessment, the benefits to this solution massively outweigh the nuances such as the one the author mentioned about package sizes.
> Applications such as VLC and GIMP which 'ship' with access to whole filesystem permission is an eternal dilemma. Would you rather the authors ship without access to this permission and break app functionality ?
to give a data point, I work with a lot of artists who use Macs and none of them use mac app store apps because of endless issues when accessing the file system
Counterpoint: Flatpak doesn't really solve anything, and I have no reason to use a Flatpak'd version of a software when there's a native version in my system repos. A lot of people feel this way: they see it when Flatpak doesn't adopt their native system theme, they see it when they try opening a filepicker and it starts in some esoteric location, they see it when they want to edit files of a Flatpak'd app and need to spend the afternoon locating it's binary. There are so many papercuts, bugs, regressions and failures on Flatpak's behalf that I don't think anyone would really want to adopt it unless they were forced to.
I speak only for myself, but I will never enable Flatpak on any of my devices. A lot of other Linux users share the sentiment.
Applications such as VLC and GIMP which 'ship' with access to whole filesystem permission is an eternal dilemma. Would you rather the authors ship without access to this permission and break app functionality ? Or let them ship with restrictive permission and allow users to manually enable respective permissions to regain function when the software breaks? It is easy to see the feasible decision here that works for all parties here. The permission on the different accessibility store however has confusing labels on sandboxing, I agree with the point that the store should make this as clear as possible.
I think the bigger point the article misses is the ability to control these permissions at this level. Even if the software author ships 'dangerous' default permissions, the user can always revert this decision and sandbox it effectively if they so wish.
Flatpak is a crucial needed fix for the Linux package distribution problems highlighted elaborately by this article but in my humble assessment, the benefits to this solution massively outweigh the nuances such as the one the author mentioned about package sizes.