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?

  • d3Xt3r@lemmy.nzM
    2·
    8 months ago

    This.

    Also, @[email protected] - you not be aware but you can use Nix in an imperative way (as opposed to declarative), which doesn’t require learning the Nix language or editing config files etc.

    Eg: say you wanted to install tealdeer, all you need to do is run: nix profile install nixpkgs#tealdeer

    There are similar one-liners to search, upgrade, rollback etc.

    I use Fedora uBlue (Bazzite), and use Nix to install all my CLI apps, and Flatpak for all my GUI apps. Been running this setup for a few months on and it’s been great experience (bit of a learning curve doing this way of course, but I’m pretty happy with my setup now).

    • Libretto@iusearchlinux.fyiOP
      0·
      8 months ago

      Thanks, I will try that out. I want to use uBlue as well, but cli program installation has been holding me back.

      uBlue also makes nix available via fleek, but the way you describe it it seems easier to just use nix directly

      • j0rge@lemmy.ml
        1·
        8 months ago

        ublue contributor here. We’re set up so you can install any cli program from any distro transparently. Should we outline that more in our docs?