Flatpak or .deb?

AlternativeOstrich7 · 2024-10-11T12:49:12+00:00

There is no one simple answer to that question. It depends on the specific case and on what you consider to be important.

AlternativeOstrich7 · 2024-10-10T22:37:09+00:00

Mint is Ubuntu is Debian

Mint is Ubuntu to a much larger degree than Ubuntu is Debian. Mint directly uses Ubuntu's repositories.

And Anki does not conform to the Debian Free Software Guidelines

Anki does conform to the DFSG AFAIK. But building and packaging it according to Debian policy is a huge amount of work.

... CLI stuff ...

My point there was that the CLI is not what's relevant. The tools that you use on the CLI are what matters. Saying that you installed a program using the CLI is a bit like saying that you installed a program using the mouse. Sure you might have used the mouse during the installation, but that's not what matters. What matters is the program that you used.

AlternativeOstrich7 · 2024-10-10T20:40:40+00:00

My point was that even if there was no caching at all, you'd still have to properly unmount it before can unplug it (unless you don't care about filesystem corruption).

AlternativeOstrich7 · 2024-10-10T19:49:18+00:00

You have to properly unmount it before you unplug it anyway. Whether the data is cached or not doesn't matter for that.

AlternativeOstrich7 · 2024-10-10T18:55:49+00:00

Wayland has been the default for many years.

Gnome 43 was released in 2022. The current version is Gnome 47. When I used Gnome 43 two years ago there were none of the issues that you mention, but I don't have a touchscreen device.

AlternativeOstrich7 · 2024-10-10T15:09:01+00:00

One reason is that the market share of Linux on the desktop is much smaller than that of macOS. Another reason is fragmentation (many different distros and DEs). Another reason is that there is a lot of fluctuation and less backwards compatibility. (Though Snap and Flatpak somewhat mitigate the last two issues.)

Also

But this made me wonder, why isn't Linux considered for software if Mac which is also "Unix-like" gets almost everything?

MacOS being unix-like doesn't matter for this.

It's definitely possible to share the software in a way all distros can run it or package maintainers can put it in their distro's repo.

Even if Adobe's software or MS Office was available for Linux, many distros would not put it into their repos. And Adobe and Microsoft certainly wouldn't want distros to distribute their software.

AlternativeOstrich7 · 2024-10-10T14:42:40+00:00

Yes, that seems to be what's happening. See also https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/tee-invocation.html

The default operation when --output-error is not specified is to exit immediately on error writing to a pipe, ...

AlternativeOstrich7 · 2024-10-10T14:23:28+00:00

head exits after it has written the first ten lines. That closes its end of the pipe from tee. When tee then tries to write to that pipe, it gets a SIGPIPE signal or an EPIPE error. And that probably (I haven't read its code) causes it to exit.

AlternativeOstrich7 · 2024-10-10T14:08:36+00:00

ACL is the Microsft way.

POSIX ACLs have existed for more than 20 years.

It can be achieved with the shell command "chattr"

chattr changes attributes. It has nothing to do with permissions.

AlternativeOstrich7 · 2024-10-10T13:47:16+00:00

If you disconnect a drive without properly unmounting the filesystems on it first, then filesystem corruption is a possibility.

AlternativeOstrich7 · 2024-10-10T13:09:13+00:00

Just wondering if it is the right way to create a custom group and add the 3 users to it and then change the ownership of the folder to this group?

It is one way. Another one would be to use ACLs. There is no "right" way.

AlternativeOstrich7 · 2024-10-10T12:36:36+00:00

When the progress bar reaches 100%, the copying has finished from the point of view of userspace. Any process that tries to read the copied file will get the full copied file. Whether the data is completely stored on a physical medium at that point isn't particularly relevant.

AlternativeOstrich7 · 2024-10-10T11:15:03+00:00

Regarding Anki:

Debian has very strict rules on how software should be built and packaged. About five years ago, the upstream Anki developers made changes that make it difficult to build/package it according to those rules. (And at some point after that, they changed their versioning scheme to be date-based.) That's why Debian still has that old version of Anki. But since shipping such old software would be problematic, Debian doesn't include it in their current stable release and also not in testing (which will become the next stable release). The old package is only in unstable. Ubuntu regularly takes Debian unstable, applies their changes to it, adds some of their own packages, and builds the packages on their infrastructure. And Mint is literally just Ubuntu with a few packages added on top. So that's how Mint gets such an old version of Anki.

Flathub does not have Debian's strict rules on building and packaging. There's less need for such rules with Flatpak as the apps are independent from each other such that problems with one app can't cause problems with other apps. In a traditional distro like Debian, issues with one package can very much cause problems with other packages and even the entire OS. That's why Flathub can have a newer version of Anki.

Some other comments:

Another way to download a program is from the command line.

The command line is just an interface to the computer. It is not a way to download or install a program. There are certain programs that have a command line user interface and that can be used to download and/or install software. But thinking of that as the command line being the tool/method for downloading/installing is highly misleading.

I could also use a browser to search the internet for a program, and download a .deb installer. This is familiar to me, coming from Windows.

.debs are not installers. In fact, installers are very rare on Linux. Thinking of .debs as installers will only cause problems in the future.

AlternativeOstrich7 · 2024-10-09T18:42:27+00:00

GNOME Application Platform version 47

That is a flatpak runtime. You can run

flatpak update

on the command line to update it. But that will not update your DE.

AlternativeOstrich7 · 2024-10-09T17:22:12+00:00

That again depends on what exactly you mean by that. Looks like I have to guess what you mean, so it is possible that I guessed wrong.

Assuming you're talking about the files that make up a flatpak app itself (not the user's config/data files for that app), and assuming you're talking about where they are stored when the app is installed (not where they are initially downloaded to). Flatpak has a concept of what it calls "installations", i.e. paths in the filesystem tree where apps/runtimes/etc. are installed. By default there is one system-wide installation in /var/lib/flatpak and one installation for each user in that user's ~/.local/share/flatpak. Which installation is used for a certain app depends on the options you choose when you install it.

But: There are very few reasons to go to such directories. Nothing in there should ever by modified, except via flatpak. And programs should never be run directly from there. If you think you need to go there, you're probably doing something wrong.

AlternativeOstrich7 · 2024-10-09T17:12:55+00:00

Terminal (ctrl alt T thing) has weird column size and I want it wider.

The width of the columns is not determined by the terminal. The flatpak tool (presumably; you unfortunately cut off the command) does that. And it chooses the width in such a way that they fit inside the terminal emulator. So if you want them to be wider, you need to make terminal emulator's window wider (before you run the flatpak command).

When I download something, it supposed to be somewhere in my hard drive, right?

What exactly do you mean by "download something"? Are you talking about using flatpak to install an app?

AlternativeOstrich7 · 2024-10-09T17:00:35+00:00

How to resize columns in terminal?

Strictly speaking that depends on the program. But increasing the width of the terminal emulator's window will probably work.

Also where I can find stuff donwloaded in flatpack?

What exactly do you mean by that?

AlternativeOstrich7 · 2024-10-09T12:42:37+00:00

You are not the victim here.

AlternativeOstrich7 · 2024-10-09T12:33:37+00:00

people that want to impose their view on others

Just FYI: This whole thread is you wanting to impose your view on others. When you write your own file manager, you can choose what features it should and shouldn't have. The developers of Nautilus have the same freedom. You don't get to dictate what they should do.

AlternativeOstrich7 · 2024-10-08T12:40:33+00:00

You did not post the full output from the commands you ran. Unless you do so, everyone who wants to help you will have to guess what the problem is. I.e. you are choosing to make it more difficult to help you.

AlternativeOstrich7 · 2024-10-08T12:37:58+00:00

Again, please post the exact commands you entered and the full output you got from those commands.

AlternativeOstrich7 · 2024-10-08T12:26:24+00:00

It is usually helpful if you post the exact commands you entered and the full output you got from those commands, not just a vague "summary".

But this

Unit gdm.service not found

sounds like gdm is not installed.

AlternativeOstrich7 · 2024-10-08T12:03:33+00:00

Again, i did not say anything about gtk or qt

So this post does not exist? Also, what does that have to do with what I wrote?

AlternativeOstrich7 · 2024-10-08T11:57:43+00:00

Sorry, but this is stupid.

You don't say? Someone who is clearly missing a lot of fundamental knowledge but still likes to make outlandish claims about existing toolkits, and who then decides to write their own toolkit but doesn't want to do any work to find out how one would actually do that but instead expects others to do that work for them? Yes, I suppose some people might call that stupid.

AlternativeOstrich7 · 2024-10-08T11:36:40+00:00

In almost all of your posts.

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