The attrition is slow, but every user lost to Linux is likely lost forever. After a year or so of totally free software, who is going to build a new windows compatible PC, buy a Windows 11 license, and pay for subscription service just to do word processing, or play a few incompatible games?
Windows completely overestimates people’s willingness to throw out their laptop or PC just to get a new OS paintjob. For every person who does it, another one will leave their ecosystem forever.
It’s more painful when you have to pay more than a month’s worth salary and it’s shit (Windows 11 Pro is R$1600, minimum monthly salary is R$1412, around $280)
I think I didn’t buy a Windows license ever. Got Win 7 free from my college and always could upgrade for free to the next version. I never used MS Office, mostly did use the Google suite. Games were the only thing that kept me, especially since I got more privacy continuous over the past few years.
I’m currently dual booting Win 11 and Linux mint as a test phase. Actually just running windows for the proprietary phone client I need for work. Otherwise I’m newly exclusively using LM right now. Though I might make the switch to EndeavourOS for it’s rolling release approach and AUR.
Only thing I really hate is that there are some proprietary software like ICUE, L-Connect a proper scanning software for my printer including OCR (there is a version for Linux but it doesn’t include OCR) or shitty driver support for my graphics card. But none of those are issues coming from Linux itself but rather from the lack of support from the developers. Also, I love DLSS and Ray tracing but seriously… fuck Nvidia.
For the OCR, have you tried tesseract? For printed documents it can take image input and generate a pdf with selectable text. I don’t OCR much but it has been useful when I tried a few times.
You might be able to have a script that takes the scanner input into tesseract and output a pdf. It only works on a single image per run so I had to make script to run it on whole pdf by separating it and stitching it back together.
@Senseless I’d just like to add that there are GUI frontends to tesseract that make things a lot easier. I particularly like gImageReader, but there are plenty of different GUIs for people with different tastes!
Nice. I’d appreciate some feedback, if you like. Currently in the middle of switching to EndeavourOS as a Arch noob. Am I allowed so say “I use arch btw” now?
I know at least one person who switched back to Windows but claimed there was no choice. Maybe the people arround that person making the switch to Linux initially does matter. And if they are (still) Windows users, it can happen at the first sign of trouble; especially when they are stubborn Windows users.
Guys, there are people out there Windows is the only OS they want to use despite all the problems.
Unless its corporate, because then you are paying for windows separate from the PC, and user based licensing for server access, and subscription fees for office. and EOS W10 fees coming
Oh god. Please aim higher than that. Not saying that Blender ain’t powerful, because it clearly is, but it’s UI is just plain shit. (Unless there have been some massive improvements over the last few years.)
I might have to one of these days, but man do I doubt it’s UI is usable after being such hot garbage over so many years. Such a shame too because fuck everything about Autodesk and I know Blender has some incredibly powerful tools.
Blender used to be basically unusable for me, the UI made no sense and attempting to use it after learning 3d through maya and 3ds it just didn’t work. Then they made it good, I spent a few weeks learning it a few years ago and it’s great now. What you’re describing is exactly what they went and did
So you’re not gonna try it like everyone is telling you to. I have no idea what they’re talking about because I don’t use blender but uh…me thinks you should try it instead of being stubborn and not. Seems kinda dumb.
Blender 2.79 and earlier was super-unintuitive. 2.8 gave it a fresh coat of paint it’s easier and more featureful with each version (Now 3.6, 2.8 was years ago!)
I know right! I keep wishing all software would adopt some of it’s amazing features, like hover copy-pasting, being able to right-click any button/option to set a custom keyboard shortcut for it, being able to type maths into any numerical field, etc.
I tried learning it some time ago (months, not years) and I never cussed so much in my life… maybe I’ll just get the hang of it eventually, but let’s just say, first impression on the UI is not good.
Being intimidated and lost is completely normal given that it looks like this, and there’s probably not a single person on the world to have ever used all of Blender’s features.
Watch the whole Blender 2.8 fundamentals playlist, things get way easier once you know what to ignore and what UI conventions blender uses as well have a rough overview of the feature set – because that allows you to ignore even more stuff. Then figure out what you want to do, figure out a workflow, customise the UI to make that particular thing convenient (remapping a couple of keys when you need something often, leave other things you need twice a day in the menus, etc), and bob’s your uncle.
Last, but not least: Unless you come from another 3d program and absolutely can’t be bothered to re-train your muscle memory use right-click select. Your index finger is going to thank you, it’s also a better UI convention in general as it leads to way fewer misclicks (selecting instead of manipulating or the other way around). Personally, I use space bar for the context menu (the default is play video which I rarely use, and if then shift+space isn’t exactly awkward). There’s also plenty of extensions focussed on particular workflows, e.g. F2 is very common if you do mesh editing, I also use machin3tools, especially for mode switching.
All major general-purpose 3d packages have a feature set so large that it can’t possibly fit onto keybindings, and you can’t pick them up like picking up a word processor. At the same time it’s professional software used by professionals who want to be fast and efficient, so the optimal UI isn’t “intuitive” (as in: dumbed down) but flexible and customisable. Blender’s defaults aren’t bad for some basic work but ultimately you will find them lacking, that’s not because the defaults are bad but because they are a compromise between 10000 ways to use the program. Ask three blender users how they use blender and you’ll get fifteen answers.
I wish GIMP had a full UI redesign like Blender, it could work as a Photoshop replacement for many use cases but… Jesus it’s non intuitive, flawed and it mixes opposing design principles all the time.
There was a project that renamed it to a less controversial name and updated the UI to more closely resemble modern photo manipulation tools, but they’ve stopped working on it before a major release.
EDIT: There’s PhotoGIMP by Diolinux, a Brazilian Linux YouTube channel with a really nice host. This is a set of plugins and configuration files that try to ease the transition from Photoshop to GIMP for newcomers. It’s certainly good, but as an add-on, it can’t actually fix all issues with GIMP.
Seriously just let GIMP finally die. At this point the whole branding has become a running joke with anyone who works in graphic design. Better start a new project that hasn’t that much negative baggage.
Are there other open source projects near feature parity with GIMP, though?
There are certainly other commercial software, like Affinity, and certainly some shady Photoshop clones like Photopea (and it does work really well) but nothing like GIMP, as far as I’m aware.
No sadly not. Krita is great for digital artists but otherwise not a good gimp replacement. I personally still have my Affinity Photo 2 copy that I bought on Windows and use it in a VM. But I have the feeling that even huge parts of the Linux community have given up on GIMP. A lot of people that I talked too rather use Photopea instead. That’s why I think investing in GIMP is pointless. It has been seen as a joke for almost two decades, that the branding will never undo the negative connection. That’s why I think people should start a new project and if they have a clear vision and appear competent, rise a crowdfunding campaign in the FOSS movement.
It’s been my understanding that the general populace has been asking the developers of GIMP for years now to overhaul the UI and make it much friendlier to use, and the answer came back, “No, stop asking.”
Gimp’s problem is not so much the UI, but that it has fallen way behind Photoshop in terms of features. Fixing up the UI wouldn’t hurt, but you’d still be stuck with a graphics app that’s 20 years behind the competition. It would need a heck of a lot more work to catch up.
You’re thinking of Glimpse o believe. And yes gimp really needs a change. Krita isn’t bad but not good for more graphic design oriented tasks. It’s type tools are awful.
i honestly just wanna express my gratitude to all the people who made linux what it is today over the last decades, the experience is incomparable to the one i had when first installing debian in 2007. i wish i were more skilled in order to meaningfully give back to this community.
and to all the newbies: thanks for joining our ranks! please dont be scared by the rather elitist attitude that some users display. we secretly all love you!
If you want to give back but don’t have coding skills, you can always be nice and help onboard new users! There’s always been this attitude of ‘linux is better’ immediately followed by ‘rtfm n00b’ when users try to get started. A more sympathetic crowd would go a long way.
Probably not a recruiter, but supporting those who are trying to switch or are needing support on forums like here or other places. Help them find solutions, be kind to them when they are struggling, encourage them if another user is derisive.
I think I first installed linux some time around 2009. I’m only just now starting to contribute to libraries, unrelated to linux. Its such a cool feeling growing along side the open source movement.
My wife has a few things on YouTube she made with Godot, and she has noticed a significant increase in traffic, since Unity made their blunder.
Godot really deserves their increased popularity and donations, it’s absolutely amazing what they have achieved as a true Open Source project that is absolutely 100% free to use, and gives 100% control to game developers.
I’m not such a monkey, and I could probably contribute if I put my mind to it, but I just don’t have the time… Instead I try to contribute documentation and money when I can. Everything helps!
Once I got the steam deck and saw basically all my games could run in linux, I made the change fully on my laptops and desktop computers.
There’s not a single windows left in my house.
I’m a former IT Manager and system admin. And I am so fucking frustrated and pissed at Microsoft’s bullshit that I want nothing to do with them, and nothing of theirs in my house.
I cannot believe I’m going to say this: But from and enterprise point of view, I Miss Balmer. Nadella is a fucking useless wannabe Steve Jobs tool who has zero concept of what made Microsoft what it is. There’s horror stories of dealing with Microsoft on a corporate level that attributed to me having a mental breakdown.
I feel the same way. I’m not a pro programmer or anything, but we can still be positive members of the community and help out users and share why Linux is a better alternative, and that’s gotta count for something! :)
This is really exciting to see. Enshittification is generating increasing backlash against incumbent monopolies, and encouraging more movement toward sustainable open source software.
Steam forces developers to ask for higher prices? Ah, yes, because Activision is so eager to sell Call of Duty for just $20 but big bad Steam is just forcing their hand and they have to sell it for $70. See if you look at their own store where they can set their own prices its… also $70… hmm, that’s weird. Maybe others… nope same prices across all platforms. Almost like publishers can actually freely decide on their prices.
Steam also forces customers to buy DLCs for games on their platform. Well, how else is this going to work? I buy a game on Steam and then call up the devs to venmo them $2 and they send me a DVD in the mail? Or should I make a new account on some other website and get my DLCs seperatly from there? Most games don’t even sell you DLCs, they sell you credits so you can unlock content that’s already in the game. Often times you have to buy those credits trough the devs website and link your account to Steam. That’s already a pain it the ass.
Steam takes 30% of the cut. True, that sound like a lot. Imagine you’re a solo Dev and you’ve been working 9 years on a game. 3 of those years you’ve essentially been working just to pay off Steam. But look at what you get for those 3 years. You get a seperate store page for your product that you can essentially design however you want. You get access to high speed distribution servers all over the world, that also allow you to effortlessly push updates out, the option for regional pricing, the industries most reliable user review system, an integrated discussion and fan art forum, third party controller support (important for people with disabilities), and a refund system. Sure 30% still sounds like a lot, but would you be able to provide all this if you would’ve self publish the game, probably not.
Steam is consistently the cheapest option to buy games on sale. And even if it isn’t the cheapest, at no point in time have I thought, man Steam has this game for $7.49 but EGS has it for $6.99, I better get it on EGS. Maybe on GoG but no where else.
It’s mind boggling to think that through inflation and some shortages almost all groceries have nearly doubled in price over the last 20 years, but a AAA game is still $60, even though the cost of making a game has skyrocketed. Imagine gas prices would’ve stayed the same over the last 20 years and people would complian that gas station sandwiches would tast like shit.
I copied my own comment from a cross post on another instance, so don’t @ me.
As far as I know, regional pricing through Steam is completely controlled by the publisher/dev. It’s literally a checkbox for each region and a text field to enter an adjusted price. And Steam has made great efforts to stop regional key trading to prevent people from just buying cheaper keys from 3rd world countries and reselling them.
No, but anything can be grounds for a lawsuit as long as you have enough money to throw out. And given that they are being sued by the government, all bets are off.
That’s my whole point, none of the provided arguments are a good reason for a lawsuit. This has early 2000s “It’s those darn videogames” vibes, except this time instead of saying that their doing it to protect our children, they are openly doing it to get the money.
Literally all pricing is set by the devs and publishers. The guy you’re responding to has no idea what he’s talking about. The Steam store terms of service are public and easily available to read through. I know, I’ve done it. The only pricing requirement they have is keys sold off store can’t be significantly discounted under the store price. That’s it.
WDYM I don’t know what I was talking about? I never claimed anything about whether steam or the publishers control prices, I was just making a statement about how no matter who controls the prices it’s not in violation of any current UK laws or rights.
First argument is about a Steam forcing published to sell games at high costs and using a major publisher known for overcharging already as a counterpoint. Yes the publisher that charges $90 for a deluxe edition game and still includes a battle pass system and other garbage is going to overcharge anywhere. You know that the point here is clearly referring to smaller publishers who are probably being pushed to charge $60 for a game they’d rather charge less for, but Valve may want to keep game prices high across the board so as not to make the Activisions out there look absurdly high. Its price fixing.
Steam forces users to buy DLC on their platform. Your counterpoint is about Venmo’ing a dev cash and getting a DVD in return, which is just such a bullshit counterpoint. Did you suddenly forget Steam’s key system that enables you to purchase games on other sites and redeem the code on Steam? By keeping DLCs in Steam Valve can keep costs up on them at $1.99 each (talking cosmetics and micro DLCs) where another site might offer a bundle purchase of 10 for $5 or something since those DLCs may not sell anymore on older games.
Steam takes 30% of the cut. Yeah that’s a lot. You’re acting like these devs would fail if it weren’t for the good graces and will of Valve because they give them access to the number 1 platform or whatever. That’s a huge cut for small publishers. All Valve is doing is handling the transactions and taking a 1/3 of the ticket price at the door. Never mind these publishers also need to pay overhead, employees, bills, etc, something that’s made more difficult for small publishers selling games they don’t want to charge $60 for. The 30% take off the top goes right back to Steam forcing devs to keep their costs high. If devs want to pay the bills, they can’t charge what they expect to, they have to charge much more to compensate for that 30% loss. Plus this forces a cost increase on other platforms because the dev can’t charge one price on Steam and another on Epic, it would piss off people who primarily buy games on Steam.
Steam is consistently the lowest cost. That’s just patently false. Yes Steam does great sales regularly. What about Humbles $25 for a ton of game bundles? GoG? Epics constant take this free game? There’s tons of sites out there. I buy games on plenty of other sites than Steam, not because I just felt like trying something new, but because you can find better deals if you look.
Lastly you talk about inflation and how AAA games stay at $60, but they haven’t have they? What’s the last AAA game you bought that was just $60? These days it’s $60 for the base game, but you’re missing key parts of the game unless you get the $80 version, but hey you’re already spending another $20, so why not throw in an extra $10 and buy the deluxe edition which also gives you this cool item to get you ahead, plus some cosmetics, by the way there’s also a loot system + battle pass + you must purchase each season to play + a subscription cost. AAA games aren’t $60 anymore. Shit like that is exactly why something like Baulder’s Gate can come out at $60 for the FULL game and make such a fuss with other publishers because that’s how it should be.
Regardless if it’s copied from another instance I’ll reply anyway to your arguments.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Steam and have spent a ton of money on the platform, but I won’t pretend their gods gift to gamers and can do no wrong.
I think the DLC point is the one valid argument, although nontrivial to implement.
How do you think DLC works on DRM-free games works, like GOG? The game is just gonna check if you have the DLC installed, without any real DRM.
The main issue is, this is entirely possible right now for games to do, but it won’t be integrated with steam, and needs to be done by developers themselves. I don’t know how feasible it would be for Steam to realistically do something about it, but it’d definitely be nice if you could buy a game on steam, and later decide you want to buy DLC on another platform and install it onto your steam game.
I think DLCs are becoming a thing of the past in general. Usually the data for the DLC comes with the main game, you just buy a license to unlock it. I can’t remember the last time I bought a DLC and hat to download something additionally or update my game. I’m not a fan of it, but this is where we are going. This just means that wherever you bought the main game from, you will also have to buy the DLCs, since companies will never accept to share licenses between each other. This is not a Steam issue, this is a developer issue.
Well, some games that come to mind are Stellaris, RimWorld, Oxygen Not Included, and I think the upcoming Factorio expansion. And from those, I think it might be possible to buy RimWorld DLC off-steam and install it in a steam copy.
Fun fact, you can check - on steamdb, you can check depots for a game, and see if it has one for a DLC. If it does, then it is downloading extra files for it.
All that said, I wouldn’t say it’s 100% a developer issue. The way I see the accusation, Valve is very comfortable providing convenient libraries for various things, including working with DLC, that only work on their platform, making it hard to release the game elsewhere in the future.
I’m generally fine with that for a simple reason - Steam really does have great features that just work. However, if somebody forced Valve to make features like Steam Input available independent of Steam, it could be a great boon for gaming.
As a “theoretical hobby game dev”: steam also provides workshop, networking and matchmaking (lobby) tools. For all the stuff you get I personally find this reasonable. If I remember correctly, mobile phone app stores take a big cut too and I can’t see how they would come close.
I have to imagine he has something planned (inb4 GabeN AI Overlord) for after he’s gone.
He’s a bit crazy about prepping for disaster iirc. He lives in New Zealand now and has since the Covid outbreak. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a very long document that lays out a lot of rules for if he’s gone and Steam is to continue
At that point I’ll probably too old and have lost interest in gaming anyway, so I’ll just let the next generation of gamers figure it out themselves. Kinda like boomers leaving us to deal with high property price problem because it’s no longer their concern anymore.
Yeah but just the amount of games I own on Steam already (not to mention the Steam Deck), if all that ended up getting enshittified by Microsoft it’d be like having to start over from scratch pretty much.
EGS is really the only thing remotely close to what Steam does, though.
GOG will always be an afterthought as long as they have their DRM-free policy in place. They’re super cool, but they’re a niche and will never grow beyond that without losing what makes them cool.
Origin (or whatever EA’s calling their store now) gave up pursuing third-party sales years ago. They still do it, but they clearly have no interest in actually making a go of becoming an actual competitor to Steam.
The Windows Store is terrible for a number of different reasons, even if it’s better than Microsoft’s previous attempts at getting into this space (coughGWFLcough). EGS is more likely to overtake Steam than Windows Store is to even rival EGS.
Uplay (or, again, whatever Ubisoft is calling their store these days) is like Origin - I don’t even know for sure if Ubi is doing third-party sales, but if so, it’s very much an afterthought for them.
And then everyone else just sells Steam keys. They’re not in the same market as the others, so don’t really fit into this conversation. If you’re 100% reliant on the store you’re “competing” with, you’re not competing with them.
A lot of games on Steam are DRM-free, but not (yet) on GOG. GOG isn’t an afterthought just because of their DRM-free policy, it’s also because they’re so small.
But they did allow it, unfortunately. And MS could simply argue that it already has dominance in the PC space as 96% of PC gamers are Windows users. So owning Steam is just buying 1 out of many stores (here they tout Epic, Amazon, etc).
I mean it's a bad argument but MS made a lot of bad arguments to get their way and they seemingly worked.
Activision-Blizzard-King isn’t a dominant company in any segment. You can’t say the same for steam. Regulators would have a much easier time blocking such an acquisition.
Plus, at least from my perspective, Activision-Blizzard was already bad enough that if MS made it worse, it wouldn’t affect me because they were already bad enough that I’d swore off their games. MS owning them was an improvement or at worst more of the same.
That’s absolutely not the case for Valve. They are one of the few large companies that I respect plus they are playing a big role in breaking the windows stranglehold over OSes when you like to play games.
The level of popular opposition to MS acquiring Valve would be on a whole other level than the opposition to the blizzard acquisition. It might even rival the opposition to Nvidia acquiring ARM.
The regulatory bodies hand waved actiblizzard through. Let’s not pretend anything else happened there. Microsoft can do whatever they want and no one is gonna stop them. Same as every other big company.
The only thing stopping Ms. is that valve is a privately owned company. But everyone has a price.
Yes, that is just how the American system works. The actual body here is the doj. The ftc tried to sue and was slapped back immediately. This was the ftc trying to show claws and the actual ruling body saying no, you have no power and Microsoft can do what they want.
It was a huge loss for the ftc that has been trying, and failing to fight big tech
Yeah, now I’m concerned this might happen with Unreal Engine, even though they’ve given no indication that it will. Once Godot works out the kinks with level and texture streaming, and has a landscape editor I will be going back to Godot.
When did the term “open source” start including specifics about licensing terms? My understanding from the past few decades was that “open source” meant the source was available for people to look at and compile.
Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. from Wikipedia
The same article also talks about the difference between open source and source available:
Although the OSI definition of “open-source software” is widely accepted, a small number of people and organizations use the term to refer to software where the source is available for viewing, but which may not legally be modified or redistributed. Such software is more often referred to as source-available, or as shared source, a term coined by Microsoft in 2001
Under that strict definition, software under the GNU GPL would not be “open source” because the license stays with the code, and is not truly “for any purpose,” which is the same deal with the Epic license: you may use, study, change, and distribute the Unreal source code, but it stays under Epic’s license.
If you are talking about the FREEDOM to fork and publish and share and whatever, then you mean Free software.
You are not allowed to distribute unreal source. From their FAQ:
Unreal Engine licensees are permitted to post engine code snippets (up to 30 lines) in a public forum, but only for the purpose of discussing the content of the snippet
But the code is easily visible and you can compile it yourself. If you say “I only run software I 100% knows what it does because I can read it’s source code” then Unreal Engine fits, it’s open source.
they want it to be open source so that they can’t do a unity
That has nothing to do with open source, that has to to with licensing, which I’m pretty sure isn’t an issue anyway since I think Unreal versions are tied to specific license versions, i.e. if you download the engine under one term, thats the only one you have to use
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code,[1] design documents,[2] or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration.
Generally, open source refers to a computer program in which the source code is available to the general public for use or modification from its original design.
Unreal Engine is technically open source, because it’s source code is made available to the general public. But it is licensed under a restrictive EULA instead of any of the normal licenses you’d expect for an open source project (MIT, Apache, GPL3, etc).
This is definitely pedantic, but “open source” is a colloquial term, not a technical one. Most people mean FOSS when they say open source, but the terms aren’t exactly equivalent. The license that governs the code is really the only part that actually matters.
Long-term I think corporate tech as we know it is screwed. Their explosive growth from the pandemic making everyone terminally online is drying up as more and more people go back to touching grass, so now the bill’s coming due and it’s only a matter of time now before Unreal also does something stupid we can’t even imagine for a quick buck
People were terminally online well before 2019. It exacerbated the problem but we’re not going back. I don’t really think that’s a problem, technologically it pushed us further ahead which is always a good thing.
You’re right in that we are starting to rediscover what it means to be physically social again. I think that’s a good thing, too. People that got away with shit before aren’t getting away with it any more.
The problem is that interest rates have gone up after being extremely low ever since the 2008 crash, so investors lost their endless supply of debt-fuelled free money. They can’t pump money into companies operating at a loss anymore, so suddenly those companies have to find a way to turn a profit.
And some of them realistically can’t. Every other commercial game engine is developed for the studio first; Cry, Source, Unreal etc. These engines were made for, well, Far Cry, Half-Life 2, Unreal Tournament. The studio saw returns for engine development in the sales of games, then they said “We could probably further monetize the work we’ve already done if we license the engine and SDK out to third parties.”
Unity on the other hand is trying to have the Autodesk/Adobe business model of “We have a free student or hobbyist tier, and then a commercial license that’s $100,000 per minute per seat.” The thing is, Autodesk and Adobe really don’t have realistic competitors in their market sectors. Unity very much does. Unity competes directly with GameMaker Studio, Godot, Unreal, Source 2 among others, the development of which are either directly supported by the sales of first party titles (or are outright FOSS projects in the case of Godot). So Unity has to set their prices to compete in that market, without the support of first party game sales.
I really hope Valve doesn’t start making small incremental changes to the Steam Deck like devices in the emulation handheld scene (Powkiddy, Anbernic, etc.) do.
I’d feel a lot less incentivised to buy one if I felt like my device was going to immediately age out. I imagine less developers would make system settings specifically for the Steam Deck like Cyberpunk 2077 did or design third party peripherals.
That makes me happy to hear. I just want the steam deck as is so it can grow its roots deeper and allow more developers to become more comfortable with the platform. I would happily wait 5+ years for a new one to be released. Lets just keep things simple for now. Like having more supported multiplayer games, expanding access to new countries, reaching 10 million units sold, new features, 50k games verified, 5% Linux desktop market share, bug fixes, more community documentation/mods.
I’m using Mint and new to it. Does the Mint app store have more security or scrutiny? I’m cautious as most things are lucky to have one or two reviews listen. Many are zero though and it’s not quite clear to me yet how to tell if things are from an official source or if they had review.
Packages are usually not official but maintained by your distro, so there are pretty strict controls, especially on Linux Mint Debian edition. Flatpaks on the other hand come from flathub and are less controlled, but since they’re sandboxed the security is still good. If you open the website you can see which apps are verified (official) and which aren’t. Flatpaks also have more user reviews in the most cases
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