The short answer is "yes, but only as much as it needs to". Flatpak had to make a decision between "do we guarantee the app will work, even with system upgrades" or "do we minimize space" and they chose the former. The minimum necessary dependencies will be installed (and shared) amongst flatpaks.
Have you had the unfortunate experience of a utility or program losing its packaged status? It's happened to me before--for example fslint. I don't think this can happen with flatpak.
It's funny, I do almost the exact opposite--whenever there is a flatpak version, I prefer it over a built-in apt package. The flatpak is almost always more up-to-date and often has the features and bug fixes I need.
Examples:
Vorta (0.8.12 flatpak; 0.8.3 apt)
Pinta (2.1.1 flatpak; 1.6 apt)
Minder (1.15.6 flatpak; 1.13.1 apt)
Xournal++ (1.2.1 flatpak; 1.1.1 apt)
.
I don't think it's fair to expect the distro maintainers to be up to date with every software out there--the universe of software has grown and grown, and we just can't expect them to wrap/manage/test every new release and version bump.
The System76 engineers are culturally very aligned with the core values of freedom of choice, customization, etc. They build software with the larger ecosystem in mind, and in fact, I've never seen them build something only for their own hardware (even things that could have been just for their own hardware, like the system76 power management system, has extensibility built in).
That said, they also balance this freedom with a set of "opinionated" good choices that they test and support. If you care a lot about stability, it's easy to go along with the "happy path" and get a solid, up-to-date system delivered frequently. Every time they upgrade new features or kernel, they go through a systematic quality assurance process on multiple machines--including machines not of their own brand. (I've contributed software/PRs to their codebase, and they've always sent it through a code review and QA process).
Snaps are basically Ubuntu's private app store, and flatpaks (the supported method of app distribution by almost every other distro) are not supported; there's no tiling WM built-in for large monitors; the kernel is not kept up to date (i.e. improved hardware coverage and support); some things like streaming with OBS studio and Steam don't work out of the box (this may have changed, but it was the case for me about a year ago).
When you're just trying to get work done: pick a solid, well-tested high-profile distribution like Fedora, Pop!_OS, or Debian (or Ubuntu). Don't look for the most beautiful, or most up-to-date, or most light-weight (e.g. low CPU usage, RAM, etc.). Don't distro hop just to see what you're missing.
Of course, do those things if you want to mess around, have fun, or learn! But not when you're trying to get work done.
I'm very excited for COSMIC, but I'll probably wait until 2024 before giving it a spin. Parts of it already look good, but it will take some time to give it the polish it needs for a good professional work environment experience.
canadaduane @ canadaduane @lemmy.ca Posts 15Comments 92Joined 2 yr. ago
The short answer is "yes, but only as much as it needs to". Flatpak had to make a decision between "do we guarantee the app will work, even with system upgrades" or "do we minimize space" and they chose the former. The minimum necessary dependencies will be installed (and shared) amongst flatpaks.
Have you had the unfortunate experience of a utility or program losing its packaged status? It's happened to me before--for example fslint. I don't think this can happen with flatpak.