Don't use Appimages (a writeup about all the reasons they are a pain for users)

Appimages totally suck, because many developers think they were a real packaging format and support them exclusively.

Their use case is tiny, and in 99% of cases Flatpak is just better.

I could not find a single post or article about all the problems they have, so I wrote this.

This is not about shaming open source contributors. But Appimages are obviously broken, pretty badly maintained, while organizations/companies like Balena, Nextcloud etc. don’t seem to get that.

nintendiator,

Eh, I’ve always felt these solutions are complementary, or supplementary, rather than a “versus”. Each one, in particular cases, covers gaps the others can’t cover. The only one that’s unneeded is Snap.

For example, I like Flatpak. I like that I can get software from an authorized hub, much like with a package manager. I like that the releases of the apps in the hub are mostly well documented.

But no matter how nice Flatpak seems to be, its overreliance on “portals” and “buses” and “seals” comes associated with trying to over-engineerize my system too much for its own good. Every app I have ever tried on Flatpak, for example, doesn’t support audio, apparently because I have the godly, eternal, battle-tested ALSA and not the manchild’s crap that is PulseAudio. But since apparently PulseAudio is the GNome / Microsoft approved way to do audio on Linux, I’m supposed expected to have it. What’s next? systemd-flatpakd?

OTOH, I picked up the AppImage for Freetube and not only do I get audio but it loads and runs noticeably faster than the Flatpak version. And since it’s an official release I know where can I trustably get an update from. Literally no downsides!

But I sure as hell am not going to go for an AppImage for an app from which I expect more integration with my desktop activity, such as say a code editor or an advanced image / model viewer. Not if I can help it. Because I am going to be expecting to be able to stuff like drag and drop, have a correct tray icon, etc.

So that means I have to keep an eye on both solutions.

Hey, at least I’m avoiding Snap!

Now if there’s an AppImage for Steam somewhere… maybe…

Pantherina,

You got me in the first part XD

No joking, apart from that

But since apparently PulseAudio is the GNome / Microsoft approved way

I think I understand your point.

Pulseaudio is outdated, Pipewire AND Pulseaudio are now needed. Maybe also just Pipewire, and you can somehow fake Pulseaudio?

I never used a system without Pulseaudio, and Fedora has both (?) Or just Pipewire.

Pulseaudio is the old stuff that apps want to use, pipewire is the new cool stuff (I recommend qpwgraph) which allows like everything.

Aaand it is not overcomplicated, it isolated apps and introduces a permission system. Privileged programs that channel the requests and permissions, and sometimes need user interaction. Its actually less chaotic, the problem simply is that Flatpak ALSO tries to run all apps everywhere. And apps are mostly not up to date, so Flatpaks have randomly poked holes everywhere.

Today I worked on hardening configs for my apps. I maintain a list of recommended ones here. I will just put my overrides in my (currently still private) dotfiles, will upload them some day.

I am for example now Wayland only. Not all apps want to, but with the correct env vars (which I just globally set for all flatpaks, hoping it will not mess with anything), all apps use it.

This makes the system way faster, and applying different vars on the apps is very easy with Flatpak.

Literally no downsides!

Not true. It still has no updating mechanism, the binary may be official, but the rest are random libraries that may not be well versioned or controlled, etc etc.

The post is specifically about upstream supported Appimages, while Flathub is mainly maintained by the same 4 peolple (it is crazy). The request is for upstream devs to maintain Flatpaks.

But for sure not everything is nice. Runtimes are too huge, outdated apps cause huge library garbage, downloads are inefficient, …

theshatterstone54,

Now I WILL get judged for this but hear me out… AppImages are useful for apps that will not get on Flathub. If you have an app that cannot get on Flathub (like a pirated Minecraft Launcher), you will be thankful developers are using AppImages for them. In this case, they’re unlikely to use snaps (alt repos for snap are possible but difficult from what I’ve heard) and maintaining a flatpak repo just seems like overkill for a single program. So for cases like these, I’m glad to see these packaged as appimages

Pantherina,

Okay fair point. Piracy, illegal content etc. will all get removed from Flathub.

Similar to another comment about archiving software that may get removed

joel_feila,
@joel_feila@lemmy.world avatar

Well you can just put a flatpac on a website and let download it from their right?

BoneALisa,
@BoneALisa@lemm.ee avatar

Yea im pretty sure flatpak suports bundles that you can install directly, just like an appimage

Pantherina,

You can, but it seems to be not documented how to get a .flatpak from an installed app.

what,

As far as I know flatpak applications can be distributed as a file without the need for a repository, just like .deb or .rpm files

theshatterstone54,

Can they? I’ll be honest, I’m not that familiar with how flatpak works on a more technical level.

brax,

I hate them both, give me a .Deb (or equivalent) if you’re gonna package it. And get off my lawn! 🤣

Pantherina,

Installing .deb files from random sources is also very insecure and not reliable for updates.

brax,

Less secure than blindly installing flatpaks or appimages?

Pantherina,

Appimages work “everywhere” so they are better for distributing malware.

Flatpaks are normally not installed from random sources and I hope it stays like that.

So yes and no.

brax,

Ah, got it.

VinesNFluff,
@VinesNFluff@pawb.social avatar

(Also Flatpaks are, at least in theory, sandboxed and can’t mess with your system stuff unless you allow them to)

Pantherina,

Not yet.

The permissions are too comlicated (unlike “allow documents access” on Mac for example)

And there is no Desktop GUI integration for opt-in to permissions. So install, open Flatseal / KDEs settings, harden, then run.

darkphotonstudio,

Oh look, another Linux user whining about a binary distribution method they don’t like. If you don’t like Appimages, don’t use them.

Pantherina,

Developers of often proprietary software think its a good format and only support that. This is a problem

VinesNFluff,
@VinesNFluff@pawb.social avatar

On the one hand I am entirely sick of how people will keep wasting keystrokes on this kind of discourse when the whole point of Linux is that you can choose which one you like best.

On the other, someone on a different community said it best: “Hey, if Linux users didn’t fight about what thing they want to make standard, what ELSE would we meme about?”

darkphotonstudio,

How Windows is shit? How Manjaro didn’t renew their web certificate that time years ago? Whether or not it’s Gnu/Linux or just Linux? There are so many “issues” to obsess over!

octopus_ink, (edited )

Why not the death of IRC and xmpp? Or are only other folks’ complaints a problem? (Not stalking, just wanted to see what you were even doing here aside from complaining about Linux users’ complaining. Turns out it’s complaining.)

Update - Eh, sorry for being so damn grumpy.

darkphotonstudio,

Np, I’m pretty damn grumpy lately as well. I also apologize.

ian,
@ian@feddit.uk avatar

Can the user choose? Not if there is only an appimage. Some devs don’t realise the problems they are causing doing that. So it is very important to enlighten them.

ian,
@ian@feddit.uk avatar

As a user, I can’t choose, if a dev only releases an appimage. Then it’s a real pain or I skip the app.

FriendBesto,

Well then, what text editor do you use then?

/s

darkphotonstudio,

Geany. Why?

avidamoeba,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

AppImage is great at what it does - provide an ultra-low effort packaging solution for ad-hoc app distribution that enables a developer who won’t spend the time to do rpm/deb/flatpak packaging. There are obvious problems, security and otherwise, that arise if you try using it for a large software collection. But then again some people use things like Homebrew and pacstall unironically so …

iopq,

Great, now tell me why your appimage is complaining about not having some .so file on my system

avidamoeba,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

The developer made extra low effort and missed a lib. 😅

iopq,

No, the problem is more subtle, the developer assumed I have the same libs in the same locations as a mainstream distro like Ubuntu, but I do not

I actually have several versions of each library in different hashed folders (my distro does this) and I just steam-run normal Linux executables

Except I can’t do that when using this appimage thing so it doesn’t directly work on my system

avidamoeba,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

Well, theoretically if the developer had bundled the libs they assumed would be present on Ubuntu into the AppImage, maybe it would have worked. Would it be larger? Sure. 😂

Throwaway1234,

But then again some people use things like Homebrew and pacstall unironically so …

Thank you for mentioning this! Unfortunately a quick search on the internet didn’t yield any pointers. Would you mind elaborating upon the security problems of Homebrew(/Linuxbrew)? Thanks in advance 😊!

Pantherina,

Post about homebrew by Jorge Castro

I am not sure how secure it is.

Throwaway1234,

I am aware that Homebrew has become the go-to solution for installing CLI applications on Bluefin. Which is exactly why I feel compelled to ask the question in my previous comment.

Btw, I don’t really understand why you felt the need to share Jorge Castro’s blog post on Homebrew? AFAIK it doesn’t go over any security implications. Sharing the article would only make sense if Jorge Castro is regarded as some authority that’s known to be non-conforming when security is concerned. While I haven’t seen any security related major mishaps from him or the projects he works on, the search for the CLI-counterpart to Flatpak seemed to be primarily motivated by facilitating (what I’d refer to as) ‘old habits’; which is exactly what Homebrew allows. It’s worth noting that, during the aforementioned search process, they’ve made the deliberate choice to rely on Wolfi (which is known for upholding some excellent security standards) rather than Alpine (which -in all fairness- has also been utilized by Jorge for boxkit). IIRC, people working on uBlue and related projects have even contributed to upstream (read Distrobox) for patches related to Wolfi. So, there’s reason to believe that the uBlue team takes security seriously enough to work, contribute and deliver on more secure alternatives as long as it doesn’t come with a price to be paid by convenience. Which, in all fairness, is IMO exactly why Homebrew is used for in the first place (besides their recent utilization of technologies that have similarities to the ‘uBlue-way’ of doing things)…

j0rge,

I’m not a security expert but I do know that the Homebrew is working with openssf on security: openssf.org/…/alpha-omega-grant-to-help-homebrew-…

Boxkit predates wolfi so it’s still alpine, I’ll probably replace it at some point but most of the forks of boxkit are because people want the premade github actions and they end up replacing it with whatever distro they want anyway. The wolfi connection is because I know the people who work there (including a ublue maintainer) and we have similar goals/ideas on how linux distros should be put together. My ideal dream is a wolfi userspace systemd-sysext on top of fedora base, then we can have our cake and eat it too!

We’re not security experts but lots of us work in the field and that gives us access to peer review from experts when we set things up. We sign every artifact with sigstore so users can verify that the code used in github is what’s on their image, that sort of thing. And most of our practices utilize CNCF governance templates that lots of other projects use.

Pantherina,

I learned quite some things from this talk

youtube.com/watch?v=4WuYGcs0t6I&t=456

Appimages are damn broken

avidamoeba,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

I mean, I’m not saying they aren’t. I think the original argument is valid. I just think they’re better than the alternative, which isn’t Flatpak but self-extracting .sh files.

Pantherina,

Yes thats true. But that talk specifically mentioned the horrible security practice of appimages, and that they dont run everywhere at all

avidamoeba, (edited )
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

No argument. The security aspect is something that seemingly a lot of people in this thread don’t get. The some-person-creates-a-package-I-install model works as reliably as it does without sandboxing only when that person is a well known trusted individual or group. For example the Debian maintainers team. It’s a well known group of people who are trusted due to their track record to not produce malware-ridden packages intentionally or unintentionally. That is the line of defense you got. If you remove that, you end up in download-random-shit-on-Windows land in regards of security.

What’s worse, this extends to the bundled libraries. Unlike central systems with shared libraries like Debian, bundling libraries means that the problem extends to the sources of those libraries! Package A and package B both include libjpeg-v1, it’s got a remote exploit gaping hole. Developer A has time to follow CVEs and updates theirs. Developer B doesn’t or has moved on. The system gets a patched libjpeg-v1, app A gets it, assuming it can be auto-updated. App B remains open for exploitation.

Therefore given all that, sandboxing is a requirement for safely using packages from random people. Even when the packages from those come from a central source like Flathub or Snap Store. Sandboxing is why this model works without major security incidents on Android.

Anyway, won’t be the first bad practice advocated by some in this community.

Pantherina,

This matches very well with this talk of an OpenSuse microOS maintainer doing a followup on his thoughts of Appimages, Snaps and Flatpak.

Spoiler: Flatpaks are the only ones that work.

avidamoeba, (edited )
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

Snaps work too if you use Ubuntu and trust Canonical, as he mentions. I’m a bit annoyed at Flatpak for being inferior to Snap in that it can’t be used to install system components. Snap allows for a completely snappy system, without the need to build the base OS one way and the user apps another. The OS from-traditional-packages, user-apps-from-Flatpaks model is an unfortunate compromise but I guess we’re gonna get to live with it long term. It’s better than the status quo.

BTW I completely disagree with him that everyone should be using rolling releases. As a software developer, user, and unpaid IT support, this is a mind boggling position.

Pantherina,

Yesno. Snaps are not sandboxed at all, which is a nogo for normal application distribution.

So while I think it also sounds nice to pack an OS into different immutable parts, if the entire system is flawed, its not worth it.

Flatpak is good for app distribution, the rest is job of the OS.

not rolling release but normal stable release, not some random LTS. Not every software is like Firefox ESR (which honestly is not needed as Firefox doesnt break), but Debian etc. often just randomly dont ship updates.

Fedora is a bit too rolling, but if you always stay on the older supported version, thats okay. Especially with atomic.

Churbleyimyam,

As a humble linux user of the last year or two my experience has been that anything that is not in the Debian repo is a confusing nuisance. Nobody told me how to get appimages to integrate with my desktop. I had to rummage the internet and learn how. Compare this to a single click in Gnome software or simple command in the terminal for apps in the repo. I also installed flatpak, so I could get programs that weren’t available in the repo but nobody told me I would have to install and rummage Flatseal to enable them to work properly, that it would make my backups and restores take 900% longer and would rinse my data when they need updating. It’s been annoying enough that I’ve ended up learning how to install from source as well. Maybe it’s cool that I’ve learned how to do all this new stuff but to be honest I just feel like I’ve had to do loads of extra head-scratching and unnecessary work. I did it willingly because I’ve been committed to not being held back from using open source software but I couldn’t expect my friends and family to do any of this, so if I do get them onto Linux I can’t recommend these programs to them.

Current tier list:

  • Debian repo
  • .deb downloaded from a website!
  • Enjoy using application, go for a bike ride.
  • Make sure I’m free for a couple of hours, install from source.
  • Appimage
  • Do without given application
  • Flatpak
Pantherina,

You shouldnt need Flatseal as Flatpaks should have as little restrictions as need to make them work properly.

This is an app problem, on Android all apps start with 0 permissions and many work completely without.

I maintain a list of flatpak apps following modern standards. Those dont just work because their sandbox is full of holes, but because they are adapted to use portals etc.

So Flatseal is used to harden flatpaks, not weaken them, normally.

that it would make my backups and restores take 900% longer and would rinse my data when they need updating.

You mean their storage space? Yes, biggest problem. Not very well solved tbh compared to android where all apps are also sandboxed but they have sizes of 30MB or something.

Flatpaks should be preferred over many other formats though, as they just work, dont touch the system and are more secure, unlike Appimages.

I highly recommend to watch this talk that some commenter mentioned

www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4_TXZJw3rU

Churbleyimyam,

Thanks for the links. I really want flatpak to work for me because I like the sandboxing but the storage thing is a bit of a killer for me at the moment and I could not for the life of me get Digikam, Shotwell or Rawtherapee to hand image files over to GIMP with the flatpak versions, whereas the repo versions were fine out of the box. Also, I feel like flatpak programs are much slower to open but that might just be me.

Pantherina,

Flatpaks will always be a little slower, notably if you are on slow storage media.

Yes this is all native messaging I suppose. Flatpak apps can query an app list, just look at flatseal. So I think querying the installed flatpaks and handing it over to the system portal where you then choose the desired app is the modern workflow for this.

You might want to request that Digikam etc. implement portals for this file opening. Firefox can do for example but of course these are limited as long as apps dont modernize their workflow

Churbleyimyam,

I do hope flatpak can solve these things. I have the deb installs all working harmoniously at the moment, so I don’t want to touch them but will have another look at flatpak versions at some point in the future.

Pantherina,

Downstream Distribution is simply very very work intensive. By having the system and apps come from a downstream origin, packagers need to follow upstream and keep up with versions. And as upstream doesnt officially support these packages, many will have bugs. Or like on Debian, packages will be unusable as they are too old with unfixed bugs for years.

Neither Android, nor Windows nor any other big OS do things that way, for a reason.

GlenTheFrog,
@GlenTheFrog@lemmy.ml avatar

Totally agree with basically every point here. You hit the nail on the head. App images are the .exe’s of the Linux world and I don’t understand how someone can say they love app images but hate Window’s portable exe’s. Even Windows doesn’t have nearly as many portable executable as they once did. And when they do, most people (even those who prefer app images) prefer an exe with a Windows installer.

Anyways, this is all to point out why I avoid app images if at all possible

Tattorack,
@Tattorack@lemmy.world avatar

As someone who didn’t have a computer and had to install everything on a USB drive at some point, I absolutely LOVE portable .exe’s. Don’t see why anyone would have a problem with it. Don’t see a problem with aopimages either.

h3ndrik,

We’re also regularly debating Flatpak here. That password managers don’t tie into the browser and the desktop themes don’t apply. It’s also not the best solution and regularly confuses newer users.

Pantherina,

That native messaging portal is probably developed somewhere. But for sure, also apps installing themselves “partly” as an extension of another, like Zotero and Libreoffice. This could be done though, okay.

Themes generally just work on KDE at least. At least light/dark themes, which may not really be the fanciest of choices

h3ndrik,

I’d be happy if people just cut down on advertising Chrome/Firefox and LibreOffice via Flatpak to new users. They should use the packaged version. That’s why we have distributions, to make the whole system a smooth experience and everything tie together.

Flatpak is slowly getting there and I think at least some distros have it preconfigured so the default GTK themes are in place.

Ultimately, I’d like sandboxing to be available natively in Linux, at least for desktop applications. And we can talk about a packaging format that is available to the user, allows pulling software directly from the upstream project, includes libraries and runtimes.

Pantherina,

Yes SELinux confined users or apparmor could allow sandboxing apps the same way as flatpaks.

On 2GB of RAM systems that would make a lot of sense.

Chromium cant use its native sandbox, Firefox supposedly can.

But Librewolf and more should be used as Flatpak, unless you need multiple apps to chat between (native messaging) which doesnt work yet, its way more stable.

h3ndrik, (edited )

Yeah, I think we should extend on the sandboxing features like AppArmor, SELinux and Flatpak for desktop use. Look at MacOS and Android and what they’re doing for desktop users. That is currently not the Linux experience. Ultimately I’d like my system to have an easy and fine grained system to limit permissions. Force third-party apps to ask permission before accessing my documents or microphone. have sane defaults. make it easy to revoke for example internet access with a couple of clicks. make it so I can open an app multiple times. and have different profiles for work, private stuff and testing. This should be the default and active in 100% of the desktop applications. And apps should all use a dedicated individual place to store their data and config files.

Librewolf and more […] used as Flatpak, […] its way more stable.

That’s just not true. I’ve been using Linux for quite a while now. And I can’t remember my browser crashing in years, seriously. Firefox slowed down a bit when I had 3000 tabs open, but that’s it. How stable is your Flatpak browser? Does it crash minus 5 times each year? How would that even work? And what about the theming and addons like password managers I talked about in the other comment? Use the distro’s packaged version. It is way more stable. And as a bonus all the edge-cases will now work, too.

Pantherina,

Most things already work. You know, desktops need to start with that, they need to implement popups for these permissions. And I guess apps also dont ask for permissions yet (like they do with Pipewire access), they just take it or fail.

So its again a problem of adapted apps.

Storage is all stored in ~/.var/app/ and could be duplicated etc if you really want to. That would require some hacking, but you could have multiple profiles for apps. Tbh this is not hard to do at all, just rename the app folder to “appname-profile” and rename the active folder back to the apps name.

A GUI for that would be interesting.

Browsers are a big example of good native packaging, as they get most attention. But for example on Debian, or Ubuntu, or many other platforms, I would prefer to use Flatpak Firefox (if firefox didnt have their deb repo now).

Chromium is hacky as Flatpak as the Sandbox is imcompatible and needed to be replaced.

For firefox there is no statement about this, hopefully soon. I use native browsers for the same reason as you.

GravitySpoiled, (edited )

Flatpak is the best solution.

Password manager is usualy an add on.

Themes not applying is wrong packaging, not flatpaks fault.

Flatpaks limitations are real but you should install as flatpak first and if not working, then use the native package or nix. And limitations in flatpaks should be advertised.

h3ndrik, (edited )

Hehe, No. It’s the sandboxing.

But with this approach you take over the answering questions to newbies… Why doesn’t the webcam show up in the videoconferencing? Why doesn’t my GTK / QT themes apply to some software and it’s a 2 page tutorial with lots of command line commands to fix that? Why can’t I install Firefox add-ons and on Windows and MacOS everything just works? Why is Linux so complicated and regularly stuff doesn’t work?

I had this argument multiple times now. There is an easy solution: Do it the other way around until you know what you’re doing and about the consequences. Distributions are there for a reason. They put everything into one package and do testing to make sure everything works together. They provide you with security patches if you choose the right distro. LibreOffice and a Browser even come preinstalled most of the times. If you do away with all of that, it’s now your job to tie the software into your desktop, your job to handle the sandboxing if there is addons that need to pierce the sandbox. Your job to make sure the Flatpak publishers do quick updates and keep the runtimes up-to-date if a security vulnerability arise within an used library…

I’m not directly opposed to using Flatpak. I’m just saying there are some consequences that aren’t that obvious. There are valid use-cases and I also use Flatpak. But in my experience hyping some of the available technologies without simultaneously explaining the consequences is regularly doing a disservice to new users.

GravitySpoiled,

Do you mean fedora not installing codecs by default and the flatpak version of firefox has it bundled, i.e. just works?

I don’t want to argument with you about that. If something doesn’t work as expected or intended, you’ve done a bad job. Stuff not working on linux isn’t exclusive to flatpak. It’s the fault of maintainers if people complain about a flatpak version compared to distro package.

More people have to use flatpak and report the bugs they experience. The more people focus on flstpak the less infancy bugs will appear.

I’ve got only recent runtimes installed. There’s no old runtime. I understand your concern though, but it’s less of a problem for maintained software. Moreover, you’ve got the same problrm for other package manager. Flatpakcan even improve upon this because it’s bundled.

There’s also a distinction to be made if it’s an official distribution channel or if someone else packaged it.

h3ndrik, (edited )

I mean it’s not even my own problem. I just have Spotify, Microsoft Teams and Zoom installed that way, and a few pieces of software that I’m testing. I use a rolling distro so I have the most recent versions of every software I need anyways. And I have the skills to configure stuff. So I myself don’t have an use-case for a spyware-riddled Chrome browser from Flathub or something. I have a nice LibreWolf from the unstable channel of my distro. Steam and all the other stuff is there, too. And it works almost flawlessly. Why would I trade that in for a 4GB version of the same software that has downsides?

It’s the newer users I’m concerned with. Their sub-par experience of Linux.

This is what I mean:

  • github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/7352 (Maybe Keepass works as of now(?) I don’t think so but I haven’t tried. At least some addons do. But other’s don’t. It requires the permissions to be configured by the prople preparing both flatpaks that want to talk to each other.)
  • itsfoss.com/flatpak-app-apply-theme/ / docs.flatpak.org/en/…/desktop-integration.html
  • All the issues people had with Steam, the graphics drivers, attaching gamepads/controllers or headsets, getting Discord and extras working. (Some of that seems to have been resolved in the meantime. They put quite some work into it.)
  • Some distros don’t update Flatpak packages as part of their standard update mechanism. You need to learn to regularly run “flatpak update” or learn how to activate that.
  • I have some packages still rely on old runtimes that are missing security patches. I suppose it’s the same for a lot of other people. And there isn’t a mechanism to warn you. You also need to learn how to figure that out.
  • I don’t remember which of the video conferencing solutions this was, but I remember fighting with the webcam permissions and advice on the internet was to disable sandboxing entirely. I set the permissions a bit better but then also screen sharing wouldn’t work.

As I said, it’s okay for someone like me - and probably you - to use, and I don’t complain. I’m glad I have Flatpak available as a tool. But look at the issues I’ve linked above and the steep learning curve for the beginner. They need to learn what GTK is, what QT is, what desktop they use, learn what Flatseal is, use the CLI. They have no clue why it is even required to do that much work to get their Keepass set up. And that it’s not Linux’ fault but their decision from 2 weeks ago to install the browser that way. And their experience is just worse than it needs to be. And this isn’t unsubstianced, I’m speaking from experience. I’ve answered these questions over and over again. It’s already annoying to get the NVidia stuff set up reliably, find new software and adapt your workflow. And the switch from X11 to Wayland broke things like screen sharing/recording, anyways. And we’re now piling 20 other things on top, to learn and do manually if you happen to be one of the users who don’t use the default standard setup.

And nothing of that is “bad” or can’t be fixed… We’re making progress with all of that. And we’ll get there. All I can say with my experience helping people with their Linux woes and the current state of Flatpak: The “use Flatpak for everything” mentality is causing issues for some newer users. And experience shows: They rarely understand the consequences but heard the hype about Flatpak. And few of them can explain why they used Flatpak over the proper packages in their distro.

So my opinion in short:

  • Flatpak is nice : yes
  • try a Flatpak first, then the distro package if it doesn’t work: hard no
  • you can get recent software on older distros with flatpak: yes
  • you can recommend Flatpak: Yes, if you also explain the consequences of the sandboxing and pulling things from potentially unreliable third-party sources. You’re doing people a disservice if you don’t.
  • some of this will change in the future: yes
  • we should have more sandboxing: yes
BlahajEnjoyer,

I’m not a fan of alternative packaging solutions. Never been. If it’s not in Debian’s repositories then I don’t bother with it. Some would say that’s close minded as not all packaging solutions are bad but when you use a stable distribution like Debian the native packaging solution is a lot easier to maneuver and troubleshoot than flatpaks and the like.

Pantherina,

Flatpaks dont touch the system, which makes them a perfect addition to a Debian Base. Tbh I think Windows is the best example that this works, stable, boring base, and no software is stable for no reason. They outsource the work and the software even installs and updates in random ways, but it is always up to date which never breaks the system.

But to be fair I am not a Debian user. I would consider it when being an admin for many clients that want a stable system. But I would install all apps from Flathub then, to have them up to date and not years old.

d3Xt3r, (edited )

I’m a Flatpak user myself, but a lot of those arguments against AppImage are outdated or invalid. Here are my counterpoints:

Usability issues

GearLever solves all the problems mentioned.

Updates

There are AppImages out there that self-update , but GearLever also solves the update issue. And if you don’t want to use GearLever, there are other updaters like AppImageUpdate.

The lack of repositories
Appimages don’t even have a central place where you can find them, not to mention download them.

This is blatantly wrong - AppImageHub exists for this very reason. There are also GUI frontends like AppImagePool which makes it easy to discover/download/install them.

Lack of Sandboxing

That is a fair point, however, AppImage never claimed to be a sandboxing solution, and for some use-cases this can even be seen as an advantage (any Flatpak user would’ve at some point run into annoying sandboxing limitations - such as password manager and browser integration, or themeing woes). But there are other sandboxing options out there, such as using containers, and IMO, using a proper container is a better option for sandboxing. Or even better, use a VM if you’re actually running an untrusted app.

Random location
[…] A necessary step would be mounting the entire /home non-executable. This is no problem for system apps, or Flatpaks, but where do you put Appimages now?

There would need to be a standard directory to put such files in, which is normally the PATH. But this is also the easiest attack goal for malware, so PATH would be non-executable as well.

I completely disagree with making the entirety of /home as non-executable, when $HOME/.local/bin is recommended by the XDG standard as a place to store executables. As long as $HOME/.local/bin is in the XDG spec, I’ll continue storing my executables there. If you disagree, go argue with the XDG guys.

Duplicated libraries

This is a fair point but “they include all the libraries they need” is the entire point of AppImage - so mentioning this is pointless.

If users would really install every Software as Appimages, they would waste insane amounts of storage space.

Then it’s a good thing that they don’t right? What’s the point of making hypothetical arguments? Also, this is 2024, storage is cheap and dedicating space for your applications isn’t really a big deal for most folks. And if storage space is really a that much of a concern, then you wouldn’t be using Flatpak either - so this argument is moot and only really valid for a hypothetical / rare use-cases where storage is a premium. And again, in such a use case, that user wouldn’t be using Flatpaks either.

Finally, some distros like Bazzite already have the above integrations built-in (GearLever/AppImagePool), so you don’t even need to do anything special to get AppImages integrated nicely in your system, and there’s nothing stopping other distros adding these packages as optional dependencies - but it’s kinda moot at this point I guess since Flatpak has already won the war.

Personally, I’m pro-choice. If AppImage doesn’t work for you, then don’t use it, as simple as that. Stop dictating user choice. If AppImage is really as bad as you claim, then it’ll die a natural death and you don’t have to worry about it. What you really need to worry about is Snap, which has the backing of Canonical, and some dev houses new to the Linux ecosystem seem to think packing stuff as Snap is an acceptable solution…

Pantherina,

GearLever](github.com/mijorus/gearlever) solves all the problems mentioned.

Sceptical but I will try it for sure.

It makes appimages less worse than Flatpaks though, so its only “badness reduction” for me.

There are AppImages out there that self-update , but GearLever also solves the update issue. And if you don’t want to use GearLever, there are other updaters like AppImageUpdate.

The first is what I mentioned, such updates can be perfectly done by a central package manager. Did you ever try to seal off a Windows install using Portmaster, where every installed app needed network access for their individual update services? Just no…

Ans to the repos, yeah maybe, havent looked if they are as secure as a linux repo. But the concept of “it is acceptable to download software from random websites” allows for malware to fit in there. Only if you will never find a .flatpak file it is possible to be sure its malware.

But there are other sandboxing options out there, such as using containers, and IMO, using a proper container is a better option for sandboxing. Or even better, use a VM if you’re actually running an untrusted app.

All worse than bubblewrap. Containers are either manual af (like with bubblejail) or if you refer to Distrobox/Toolbox, unconfined by default. They have no portal integration and no GUI configuration apps. So it may work somehow but probably worse, more resource heavy and there simply already is something better.

Same for VMs. Keep an eye on Kata containers, but this is about least privilege, not some QubesOS system that will not run in a tablet, for example. Android uses containers, is damn secure, and runs on phones.

[non executable stuff]

This is about protecting against malware. Linux Desktops are built on a different logic. Any unconfined software can download a binary to localbin, copy a random desktop entry from usrshareapps to your local folder, edit the exec line and add that binary to it.

Or just manipulate your .bashrc, change the sudo command to read input, save to file, pipe input to sudo. Tadaa, sudo password stolen.

That concept of “users can change their home but not the system” is poorly pretty flawed. So any directory that is writable without any priveges is insecure, if you dont trust every single piece of software you run.

Agree that Snaps are a problem. Its only really problematic when repackaging is illegal though, of course annoying but the Spotify flatpak is a repackaged snap. Same as with appimages.

I should write the same about snaps, but I feel they are covered WAY better.

thiccckk,

This tool also good

github.com/ivan-hc/AM

Pantherina,

Dont spam please

avidamoeba,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

Oooh yes, let’s throw some mud in the gaping holes of this packaging solution, spit and tape the rest to make it do something it was not designed to do. Brilliant idea! ☺️

jjlinux,

This is how you bring your thoughts to the table. Awesome information that I certainly did not have. Thanks man.

vhstape,
@vhstape@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Ate em up

aksdb, (edited )

I agree with you on all but one point: I detest the argument that “storage is cheap”.

While true, it’s of no value to have 10 times the storage when all your apps grow 10 times in size. You can still only do as much as before but had to upgrade in between. This also means, it leaves behind people who simply can’t afford an upgrade and who have an otherwise running system.

On top of that, we live in a time where we should not waste resources, since the world already suffers enough.

I am therefore still a fan of optimizing software to be as efficient as possible.

That being said: carefully used AppImages solve one such issue for me. Not every application I use needs constant updates. I want to stay at a specific version. That’s easy with AppImages.

Kusimulkku,

GearLever

Download from Flathub

Hehe.

Duplicated libraries

This is a fair point but “they include all the libraries they need” is the entire point of AppImage - so mentioning this is pointless.

“Bloat” is one big topic around these newer packaging formats so definitely not a pointless thing to bring up imo. I don’t think it should be as big of a topic as it is (the actual issue here is fairly minor imo) but it is definitely talked about.

And flatpak (and snap I think) have much better tools to mitigate the space use issues.

Takios,

(any Flatpak user would’ve at some point run into annoying sandboxing limitations - such as password manager and browser integration, or themeing woes)

While I overall do prefer Flatpak over AppImage these days, the sandboxing has indeed been giving me more trouble than I think it is worth so far.

someacnt_,

Yeah, it is also interesting how people do not see in eyes of developers.

DerpyPlayz18,

I think appimages are this popular because of tauri

corsicanguppy,

flatpak?

Frying pan, meet fire.

rotopenguin,
@rotopenguin@infosec.pub avatar

It would be nice if there was a way to bundle up a flatpak that was at risk of disappearing

Pantherina,

I think this is possible, just install it for now. There are .flatpak files

Montagge,

Flatpak is bloated monster that has no idea how much it has to download to update. I’ll take AppImage over flatpak if I can.

Kusimulkku,

I’m confused. You call flatpaks bloated but AppImages have to bundle everything with them and there’s no dedupping or sharing libraries between them, unlike with flatpak. Unless the devs assume you have certain libraries and certain versions of them, which kinda ruins the point of AppImages. How come you think flatpak would be more bloated than AppImages as a packaging format?

has no idea how much it has to download to update

That’s actually the dedupping stuff in action. It knows you might need this much at maximum, but realized you only needed to download a lot less since you already had most of it downloaded beforehand. It’s funny but I can’t see it as a big issue tbh.

spacebanana,
@spacebanana@lemmy.world avatar

Appimages come with the library dependencies, flatpaks come with that + multiple versions of the runtimes and drivers. Flatpaks make the most sense if all you use it’s that, otherwise you will have 5 different versions of mesa, gnome runtime, video codec libraries and other runtimes for little reason.

Kusimulkku,

When you’re talking about bloat you meant when using just one or at best a few apps and otherwise using repo packages? I was more thinking as a replacement for repo stuff, with 5+ apps. The more you have flatpaks the better the advantage of them over AppImage would be with dedupping and shared runtimes.

The dedupping works between different runtimes and whatnot too btw. So two versions of gnome runtime don’t actually use all that space they claim they do, just what has changed between them.

Not to mention the savings when it comes to download size over time. Unless they’ve made some delta download system for AppImages, which would be pretty cool.

Montagge,

laughs in download 113.4MB/<9.4MB

Kusimulkku,

Can’t say I’ve bumped into that one. I wonder what could cause it. Downloading less makes sense, it might not know right away what parts you already have but downloading more, dunno

Pantherina,

Flatpak has a good package manager?

Read the other comments etc. No motivation to repeat everything

tigerjerusalem,

Appimages are awesome for the regular user. Single file, just double click to run anywhere. Snap and Flatpak should die a quick death and all the work should be used to improve Appimages. There’s no other concept for the end user as simple and clear as this.

Yubishi,

They mimic the apple application format to some degree and it is a great way to distribute. The real detriment is sandboxing but with more support this could be included.

iopq,

I double clicked, the program didn’t run because it’s missing some dependencies

Pantherina,

No it is not. Appimages are bad.

youtube.com/watch?v=4WuYGcs0t6I&t=456

Watch that talk. And also read the text I guess. Also comments under other comments.

Appimages are seriously broken

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