Flatpaks for Fedora 27

Posted Aug 7, 2017 9:17 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
In reply to: Flatpaks for Fedora 27 by omgold
Parent article: Flatpaks for Fedora 27

You mean, installing applications in one click without having to worry about dependency hell with many years of backwards compatibility? Yeah, that's crazy talk.

Flatpaks for Fedora 27

Posted Aug 8, 2017 7:13 UTC (Tue) by omgold (guest, #109541) [Link] (6 responses)

Well, of course it is a nice idea in principle to get rid of dependency hell (except for the problems already mentioned here). But the issue I mean is that - as this is a much larger problem for proprietary software - that this will boost their popularity under Linux.

Soon someone will create an appstore where they can easily fetched from. Then we will be flooded with apps to be known to be adware, spyware, and other nasty stuff, but you can't reasonably get around using them, too, as everyone else is using them. Think e.g. about certain instant messengers under Android.

Wonder why there is so little free software (as in speech, not in beer) under Android? This is the reason.

Flatpaks for Fedora 27

Posted Aug 8, 2017 8:07 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (5 responses)

> But the issue I mean is that - as this is a much larger problem for proprietary software - that this will boost their popularity under Linux.
And this is bad exactly how?

> Soon someone will create an appstore where they can easily fetched from. Then we will be flooded with apps to be known to be adware, spyware, and other nasty stuff, but you can't reasonably get around using them, too, as everyone else is using them. Think e.g. about certain instant messengers under Android.
The instant messenger I'm using has permission to use the Internet and that's pretty much it. It can't get my phone's GPS position or access its camera. And I'm perfectly fine with that.

And to put it this way, most open source Linux messengers suck. If I had to chose between Pidgin and WeChat with root access to my computer and a direct link to Chine then I'd choose it any time.

Flatpaks for Fedora 27

Posted Aug 9, 2017 9:23 UTC (Wed) by omgold (guest, #109541) [Link] (4 responses)

> And this is bad exactly how?

This is bad because it prevents (to a certain degree) high-quality open source software with the same purpose to be developed. Most people don't care much whether the software they use is proprietary 'freeware' or actual free software. As a result there will be less interest in development of such.

Don't believe that? Look at the situation under Windows or phone OSes. Isn't that exactly the case there? For all I know under Windows most free software there was developed under free OSes and then ported using cygwin, mingw and/or the win versions of GTK/Qt. On Android, look at the F-Droid repo and grieve.

>The instant messenger I'm using has permission to use the Internet and that's pretty much it.

And how many people you know you can communicate with it? For me it is the way that pretty much everyone I know uses Whatsapp only. I hate it and would like to get rid of it, but no way I could convince these people to switch to something free. It is either using it too, or be left out completely.

> And to put it this way, most open source Linux messengers suck.

On that I agree. It is certainly true, that this is a field where proprietary solutions have been driving progress forward. But are you really satisfied with using proprietary?

I see that in a few areas open source is behind (e.g. office suite, image manipulation, games, symbolic math, engineering software), but what should we do? Give up on developing free alternatives?

Flatpaks for Fedora 27

Posted Aug 9, 2017 9:48 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (3 responses)

> This is bad because it prevents (to a certain degree) high-quality open source software with the same purpose to be developed. Most people don't care much whether the software they use is proprietary 'freeware' or actual free software. As a result there will be less interest in development of such.
And this is bad exactly how?

I don't care about ideological purity. I care that users are able to get their needs met, and if this means freeware or proprietary software then what is the problem?

If free software movement can't produce high-quality software for users then I don't see why proprietary software should be hampered.

> Don't believe that? Look at the situation under Windows or phone OSes.
Let's look at Windows - it totally dominates the desktop space, with more than 90% of usage (and the other ~5% are Mac OS). I call that "success".

> And how many people you know you can communicate with it?
Around 30 in my contact list. It's Slack, btw. Why?

> On that I agree. It is certainly true, that this is a field where proprietary solutions have been driving progress forward. But are you really satisfied with using proprietary?
Mostly.

> I see that in a few areas open source is behind (e.g. office suite, image manipulation, games, symbolic math, engineering software), but what should we do? Give up on developing free alternatives?
LibreOffice is ok-ish these days and symbolic math might eventually get there.

Flatpaks for Fedora 27

Posted Aug 10, 2017 6:33 UTC (Thu) by omgold (guest, #109541) [Link] (2 responses)

> And this is bad exactly how?

I think I already answered that. It has nothing to do with ideology:

> Then we will be flooded with apps to be known to be adware, spyware, and other nasty stuff, but you can't reasonably get around using them, too, as everyone else is using them.

For me alone the fact that most proprietary apps annoy me with advertisements is enough of a reason for not using them when there is a free software alternative. If you add to that that it has been proven again and again that you cannot trust them to respect your privacy it turns it almost into a no-go. And don't get me started on the problem of developers abandoning their software completely or removing features you value.

To me all of these are serious real-world problems.

Flatpaks for Fedora 27

Posted Aug 10, 2017 6:39 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

> For me alone the fact that most proprietary apps annoy me with advertisements is enough of a reason for not using them when there is a free software alternative. If you add to that that it has been proven again and again that you cannot trust them to respect your privacy it turns it almost into a no-go.
I don't use apps with ads. And I have quite a bit of paid apps that respect my privacy.

Besides, these days both Android and iOS can limit apps into fairly tight sandboxes anyway. And this is the CORRECT way to deal with bad applications rather than sabotaging non-ideologically-compliant vendors.

If you compulsively install every ad-sponsored app you see in stores, then you have a big problem.

Flatpaks for Fedora 27

Posted Aug 11, 2017 8:37 UTC (Fri) by omgold (guest, #109541) [Link]

> I don't use apps with ads.

I don't either. But for a lot of purposes I can't find any without. And there the issue I'm talking about becomes very visible. Under desktop Linux this isn't much of a problem - currently.

> Besides, these days both Android and iOS can limit apps into fairly tight sandboxes anyway.

Good luck trying to limit Whatapp to read only the contacts you want it to read. And if you don't you might run into problems like this:

http://splinternews.com/facebook-recommended-that-this-ps...