Flatpak, Snap, Steam Are Not the Future
upstart writes:
Deploying apps for the Linux desktop is hard. A major problem has historically been library compatibility. Different Linux distributions, and even different versions of the same distribution, have had incompatible libraries. Unfortunately, there hasn't always been a culture of backwards compatibility on the Linux desktop.
This is finally changing. The stability of the Linux desktop has dramatically improved in recent years. Core library developers are finally seeing the benefits of maintaining compatibility. Despite this, many developers are not interested in depending on a stable base of libraries for binary software. Instead, they have decided to ignore and override almost all libraries pre-installed on the user's system.
The current solutions involve packaging entire alternate runtimes in containerized environments. Flatpak, Snap, AppImage, Docker, and Steam: these all provide an app packaging mechanism that replaces most or all of the system's runtime libraries, and they now all use containerization to accomplish this.
Flatpak calls itself "the future of application distribution". I am not a fan. I'm going to outline here some of the technical, security and usability problems with Flatpak and others. I'll try to avoid addressing "fixable" problems (like theming) and instead focus on fundamental problems inherent in their design. I aim to convince you that these are not the future of desktop Linux apps.
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