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Lynnesbian :bune_ylw:

linux has a great way to run windows apps (wine) and progress is being made on macOS apps (darling)

now if only there was a good universal way to run linux apps on linux

43 comments
crowbars 4 justice :acab:

@lynnesbian well there's Flatpak, Snap, AppImage and... oh wait

Alexandra's old account

@lynnesbian *make installs furiously*
*ominous Gentoo noises*

Patashu (Classic Edition)

@lynnesbian what if that way turns out to be on windows so you have to run linux on windows on linux

James Helferty

@lynnesbian As someone who expects to soon be wanting to run closed source x86/x86_64 Linux software on arm Linux.. yeah..

Michaela Sue

@lynnesbian Packaging everything as a "snap" and then replying to every "[critical function] not working" with "oh, that's because of a snap thing, in theory there's a way to work around that and someday a future version might incorporate that" will continue until snap adoption improves....

Lynnesbian :bune_ylw:

@sterophonick sandboxed within Oracleยฎ VirtualBoxโ„ข for security purposes

Joshua Ashton
@sterophonick @lynnesbian I just liked and RTed this but this post is from 4y ago. How did you find this ?!
Dax0Lotl

@lynnesbian I always prefer .Appimages. I can run them from external drives to save space on my computer.

114N

@lynnesbian My favorite thing about this is that Valve's solution for Steam is literally just "write it for windows in a way compatible with our Wine fork"

Fabian (Bocchi) ๐Ÿณ๏ธโ€๐ŸŒˆ

@lynnesbian 5 years later and we have 1mio users on flathub. I think by now we have a good way to run linux apps on linux that isnt going to break in 2 month thanks to stable runtimes.

Lynnesbian :bune_ylw:

@fabiscafe
flathub is absolutely the best solution in this area, at least in my opinion, but it's still flawed - e.g. the discord flatpak can't see what game you're playing, firefox's kde plasma integration is broken, etc.

and of course, flatpak doesn't do command line programs

Fabian (Bocchi) ๐Ÿณ๏ธโ€๐ŸŒˆ

@lynnesbian hmm What Plasma integration does not work?

For the rest, yes. Discord would probably need another portal to look up processes and I dont know if this would be a good idea at all. But given how broken this functionality is on Linux in general I dont see any need to act on it tbh.

CLI apps are possible. It's just that they probably need to read outside the runtime and so would need to be build around portals (that probably dont exist rn). Maybe not worth it..

Fabian (Bocchi) ๐Ÿณ๏ธโ€๐ŸŒˆ

@lynnesbian Yeah. Sure thats a problem. Still i think this as a general one, outside of flatpak. Addons should not communicate without restrictioins to the system below. It's just that only now we have such a restriction that apps cant simply do whatever they want. But yes, it's problematic for now.

Danil

@fabiscafe @lynnesbian > isnt going to break in 2 month

Many complex linux software depends on GPU and kernel features.
What flatpak do - cut all features - and software will work impossible slow with no use of GPU features.
Basic obvious example - Firefox.
Native Firefox work multiple times faster.

And there more software in flatpak builds that does not even work, software that designed to do stuff GPU-stuff and modern features.

Building software with "no features" - this is not solution.

@fabiscafe @lynnesbian > isnt going to break in 2 month

Many complex linux software depends on GPU and kernel features.
What flatpak do - cut all features - and software will work impossible slow with no use of GPU features.
Basic obvious example - Firefox.
Native Firefox work multiple times faster.

Danil

@lynnesbian @fabiscafe not all types, and I mention combination of kernel features+GPU acceleration, and GPU part does not work without kernel features - and flatpak remove kernel features - GPU acceleration that depends on those also removed - slowdown/downgrade

Danil

@fabiscafe @lynnesbian entire python ML-CUDA stuff, and its replacement for Vulkan-compute and AMD ROCM.
I step on it few month ago - wanted to install some libs and they were "presented" only in flatpak - I installed - it does not even work because all GPU-kernel features just cut.
I do not remember name, and will not waste time trying to find it.
I also listed Firefox as obvious example - Firefox depends on kernel features that allow to "fast swap GPU-memory" - compare WebGL there.

Fabian (Bocchi) ๐Ÿณ๏ธโ€๐ŸŒˆ

@danil @lynnesbian True, the entire Nvidia stack depends on a matching version of the nvidia driver inside the flatpak runtime and on the system. If you mix in wayland, you also need GBM and KMS enabled on the "host" side and if you then mix in xwayland, you also need a pretty recent (latest?) driver version. Thats not flatpak, but mostly Nvidia.

So pretty much anything that uses freedesktop runtime >=21.08.9 should work.

Lynnesbian :bune_ylw:

@win8linux
this post is ~5 years old, but i don't think it's been abandoned, just slow going

Sigma

@lynnesbian@fedi.lynnesbian.space ๐Ÿ˜‚ This is honestly so funny. ^^

Reminds me of a talk by Linus Tovalds were he basically said, making Linux desktop apps is just a pain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzl1B7nB9Kc

:blobcat_hertog: :blobcat_hertog: :blobcat_hertog:

@lynnesbian *struggling not to start rambling about nix in a way that would not help one bit but it would let me mention nix*

Lynnesbian :bune_ylw:

@hertog
i need to learn how to use nix, i really appreciate what they're doing

honestly nixpkgs + flatpak really does solve 99% of the problem of running linux stuff anywhere

Diabetic Heihachi

@lynnesbian @k

*Chef's kiss*
Linux jokes always bash on themselves.

Johannes :verified_paw: :donor:

@ShadowJonathan @lynnesbian itโ€™s a 4 year old evergreen post. Betting $20 it will still be as accurate in 4 more years

patter

@lynnesbian good news, there's at least 5 of them :) (that is also the bad news)

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