this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2024
197 points (94.6% liked)

Linux

48067 readers
773 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

How does it stack up against traditional package management and others like AUR and Nix?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 85 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Best of the three major agnostic package formats. If it brings more focus to Linux development, I don't see how it can be a bad thing. A bit more space needed but for most setups this is a non-issue

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

Plus, being able to sandbox user space applications, which previously had free reign, is nice.

Sandboxing isn’t 100% there yet, but it’s come along way.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Yeah duplication of running libraries is also a RAM/CPU resource issue but for modern well resourced machines probably not noticable. It is an issue when scaling down to low powered / old devices though. Like, running a web browser which runs in it's own sandbox with duplicate libraries running is going to have noticable performance differences compared to a non-sandboxed program running native libraries on a low RAM or low CPU system.

That's not to say Flatpak isn't a good solution; and all the agnostic package formats have the same issue compared to non-sandboxed apps. Plus the added security issues and stability on bleeding edge systems is good.