What are your thoughts on Flatpak/Flathub?
What are your thoughts on Flatpak/Flathub?
Flathub aims to be the place to get and distribute apps for Linux. It is powered by Flatpak which allows Flathub apps to run on almost any Linux distribution.
How does it stack up against traditional package management and others like AUR and Nix?
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AUR is similar to flathub in that most packages aren't thoroughly checked. Except for the packaging guidelines which usually have to be followed. I'm not sure how in depth nixpkgs or other distros check the source of packages of new maintainers.
Flatpak runs on all distros and supports sandboxing, which makes it a great addition to all distro repos. AUR can cause issues with dependencies and unmaintained packages, and the make file should be read since it's run with root privileges. Additionally the AUR only works on Arch Linux. Breakage isn't a risk with Nix and it's seamless rollback, but has to be installed deeply into the system (
/nix)My personally preferred package manager for most GUI apps is flatpak. Nix is great because it allows to install packages declaratively.
Edit: NixOS -> Nix
Except on NixOS, where it's possible to install packages declaratively.
Why only use nix on nixos?
You're right. I've never tried installing a wm with Nix on another distro, but it should be possible.
Half of the packages on my system are debian, the other half is nix. It's a really good combo, and home-manager makes it easy.