this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2024
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Linux

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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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[–] theshatterstone54@feddit.uk 35 points 5 months ago (2 children)

North Korea: 316 downloads

Interesting...

In all seriousness, in both my home country and the country I live in, the number of downloads surpasses the population numbers which is kinda insane.

[–] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 31 points 5 months ago

I think they count every download of every package, every version, every time. It's not the number of unique users or even packages.

If you install 3 apps you might need to download 3 versions of graphics driver, 3 versions of desktop environment libraries and so on, It won't count as one user installing 3 apps, it will show up as 10 -20 downloads. And that's just the initial install, every time you update them it counts another 10-20.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 7 points 5 months ago

It is per download not per person.

[–] lemmynparty@lemmings.world 32 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Lol, what a pointless map.
It’s impossible to tell at a glance which countries have more or less downloads, other than a couple of countries with a slightly lighter colour.

[–] jsomae@lemmy.ml 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, they could have applied a logarithm or something.

[–] lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 9 points 5 months ago

And included a legend, such as a colour bar

[–] jsomae@lemmy.ml 27 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I'd prefer to see downloads per country per capita.

[–] luciferofastora@lemmy.zip 23 points 5 months ago

Right? "Oh look, country with huge population has more downloads than country with small population!"

[–] eveninghere 25 points 5 months ago

As a professor I have to say... the site admin skipped the class that taught them to include always the color bar.

[–] biribiri11@lemmy.ml 24 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (7 children)

To everyone saying you can’t mirror a flatpak repo… you’re absolutely right. There should be a far easier way to set up your own mirror without needing to build everything from scratch. That being said, if you wanted to try to make your own repo with every one of flathub’s apps, here you go:

https://github.com/flathub

https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/hosting-a-repository.html

Edit: Some did get a flathub mirror working. The issue is that a. Fastly works good enough and b. There is no concept of “packages” on the server side. It’s just one big addressed content store because of ostree, and syncing is apparently difficult? Idk, not being able to sync the state of content is like the entire point of ostree…

https://github.com/flathub/flathub/issues/813

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[–] lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 23 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Oh wow, a lot of people use it in countries with a lot of people!

[–] Jolteon@lemmy.zip 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

looks at India and China

I'm not seeing it.

[–] JRaccoon@discuss.tchncs.de 17 points 5 months ago (6 children)

Sorry to ask, I'm not really familiar with Linux desktop nowadays: I've seen Flatpak and Flathub talked about a lot lately and it seems to be kinda a controversial topic. Anyone wanna fill me in what's all the noice about? It's some kind of cross-distro "app store" thingy?

[–] Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml 47 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Flatpak is a universal application packaging standard for Linux. It allows devs to create a single application that gets bundled with all necessary dependencies including versioning.

These apps run in their own semi-isolated "container" which makes immutable distros possible. (Distros like Fedora Silverblue that are effectively impossible to break by installing or removing critical system files.)

This means that a Linux app doesn't have to have a .deb version, an .rpm version, or be pre-compiled for any other distros. A user can simply go to Flathub, (the main repository for Flatpak apps), download the flatpak, and install it on their distro of choice.

It's quickly becoming the most popular way for users to install apps on Linux because it's so easy and quick. But there are a few downsides like size on disk, first party verification, per-distro optimizations, and the centralization of application sources. That's why some users aren't fully endorsing or embracing how popular they are becoming.

[–] JRaccoon@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Cool, thanks for the explanation.

a single application that gets bundled with all necessary dependencies including versioning

Does that mean that if I were to install Application A and Application B that both have dependency to package C version 1.2.3 I then would have package C (and all of its possible sub dependencies) twice on my disk? I don't know how much external dependencies applications on Linux usually have but doesn't that have the potential to waste huge amounts of disk space?

[–] Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml 21 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Essentially yes, if you start using lots if older applications or mixing applications that use many different dependency versions, you will start to use lots of extra disk space because the different apps have to use their own separate dependency trees and so forth.

This doesn't mean it will be like 2x-3x the size as traditional packages, but from what I've seen, it could definitely be 10-20% larger on disk. Not a huge deal for most people, but if you have limited disk space for one reason or another, it could be a problem.

[–] brachypelmasmithi@lemm.ee 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

It CAN get pretty wild sometimes, though. For example, Flameshot (screenshotting utility) is only ~560KB as a system package, while its flatpak version is ~1.4GB (almost 2.5k times as big)

[–] j0rge@lemmy.ml 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Flameshot is 3.6MB on disk according to flatpak info org.flameshot.Flameshot

[–] brachypelmasmithi@lemm.ee 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Weird, the software manager (using LM 21.3) reports 1.1GB dl, 2.4GB installed (which is different from when i checked yesterday for some reason?). flatpak install reports around 2.1GB of dependencies and the package itself at just 1.3MB

EDIT: nvm im stupid, the other reply explains the discrepancy

[–] Vilian@lemmy.ca 4 points 5 months ago

no, that number don't reflect the shared runtimes and deduplication

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 4 points 5 months ago

Flatpak as a dependency system that allows use of specially packaged library type flatpaks. This significantly reduces the needed disk space.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 11 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Was controversial when it was new and full of problems. Now it is mostly the standard for apps.

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[–] shapis@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Most of the issue is that they're unreliable. Sometimes the app will work. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you have to fiddle blindly with flatseal settings, which ones? Who knows? Guessing is part of the fun.

It'd be a great thing if it just worked.

[–] shekau@lemmy.today 2 points 5 months ago

Flatpak is the best - thats all you need to know!!!!

But seriously, apart from obvious things other people have said, I would like to add that the HUGE advantage of flatpak is that each app is using its own dependencies, this way you can avoid dependency hell, which is mostly time-consuming and hard to fix.

[–] Vilian@lemmy.ca 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

yes it's cross distro, it's controversial becaune some people don't want to install apps with their own libraries or dependecies, and some apps are not oficial so they break with the flatpak sandbox

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[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Crazy, how our "free world" is centralized

[–] thingsiplay 20 points 5 months ago

Flathub is not the entirety of Free World, just a little small slice of the pie. You can say Flathub is quite centralized. But our Free World have so much more. Every country will have a certain focus of what is freely available. It's an optional server and package format. You are free to install it or use another free package. Nothing crazy here.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 months ago

i hope it does 20 billion

FOSS keeps winning it's Insane!

[–] starman@programming.dev 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Still not as good as native package

[–] LemmyHead@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 months ago

Good is relative tbf. I've had issues installing something natively while installing flatpak just worked

Sure yeah but its what we have. I'm personally rooting for nixpkgs but they might be too complicated to setup for the average Joe.

[–] fireshell@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

It is noteworthy that builds of Chrome, VLC, Dolphin, Steam and Spotify are created by third-party enthusiasts not associated with the main projects.

What great news, that's why there is no trust in Flathub.

[–] nexussapphire@lemm.ee 3 points 5 months ago

Why don't you open an feature request on their git if you have an issue with volunteer work.

It's funny thinking this guy uses a distro package manager potentially with unofficial patches applied to the package.

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[–] delirious_owl@discuss.online 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Great opportunity to inject malware to so many vulnerable peeps then

[–] lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You could say that with any program distribution. At least flatpaks are containerised.

[–] delirious_owl@discuss.online 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Nah. Most distro package managers verify their packages authenticity with cryptography since the early noughts

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