I love Flatpaks, the programs are nicely separated so they don’t interfere with each other. They also don’t have flaws like Snap’s low performance or Nix’s complexity.

But being limited to only graphical apps seems like a real drawback. If one wants to use Flatpaks as their primary package manager there have to be some awkward workarounds for cli programs.

E.g., the prime Flatpak experiene is supposed to be on immutable distros like Silverblue. But to install regular cli programs you are expected to spin up a distrobox (or toolbox) and install those programs there.

Having one arch distrobox where I get my cli programs from will not work, as the package entropy over time will get me the very dependency issues that Flatpak wants to solve.

So what is the solution here? Have multiple distroboxes and install packages in those in alternation and hope the boxes don’t break? Use Nix alongside Flatpak? Use Snaps?

  • j0rge@lemmy.ml
    201·
    10 months ago

    the package entropy over time will get me the very dependency issues that Flatpak wants to solve.

    You can declare your distroboxes so that they get created regularly from scratch instead of upgrading in place: https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/blob/main/docs/usage/distrobox-assemble.md

    That way the entropy never hits you. Then use the Prompt terminal https://gitlab.gnome.org/chergert/prompt to make it just part of your terminal ootb.

  • sweet@lemmy.ml
    202·
    10 months ago

    I wrote a nice little CLI tool that lets you browse the flatpak store in the terminal and has an option to link all your flatpaks to their short names. Its really just a wrapper bash script that runs flatpak, but I like it because it goes from com.Blender.Blender to just “blender” and it works on the command line.

  • Dehydrated@lemmy.world
    202·
    10 months ago

    I think Nix is great for installing CLI apps, it’s not that complicated, in fact, it can make many things in your life easier.

    • Libretto@iusearchlinux.fyiOP
      5·
      10 months ago

      The point is that you can not find most cli programs on Flathub, de facto making Flatpaks unsuitable for cli programs. Snapcraft on the other hand hosts neofetch, dust, youtube-dl etc.

    • Falcon@lemmy.world
      1·
      10 months ago

      Worth mentioning that one can use bubblewrap directly over chroot to get similar behaviour as well.

      It’s often simpler to use distrobox but being able to rsync chroot a between devices can be very convenient.

  • EddyBot@feddit.de
    62·
    10 months ago

    If we are talking Silverblue then podman is your pick for everything Flatpack “can’t”
    there is no big push for cli flatpack since this already a solved cause with containers for podman/docker/kubernetes

    however no matter how you approach this you will always have dependency security issues
    unless you built every flatpack/container yourself you are at the whim of the creator of it to keep every dependecy updated
    this is already a known vulnerability factor in the container sphere on topbl of the threat of 0-day exploits

    • ElderWendigo@sh.itjust.works
      3·
      10 months ago

      I’m sure you know what you’re talking about. But your comment becomes a techno babble word salad when you throw in a typo or two, skip essential words and forego practically all correct use of punctuation and capitalization. I know this makes me sound old, dumb, and maybe a little mean. I know I’m old and dumb, but I’m really trying to not be mean.