They're somewhat sandboxed, likely to be up to date, and it behaves similarly across different machines. It's nice for GUI programs that don't need access to the wider system.

I get the vast majority of my GUI programs from Flathub. I didn't know there was a controversy with it, other than just wanting a different way of doing things.

I'm familiar with the Snap controversy though

[–] Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com 21 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Yea I love Flatpak. No dependency hell, works great in Discover, never need to pipe curl into bash for some huge installer script, it gives a little bit of safety with sandboxing, and you can even install/update without the admin password

I almost always favor it except for something more core to the system (web browser, Steam... that's about it lol)

[–] Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org 22 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Because it just works, and updates faster than apt.

[–] vagrancyand@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Everything updates faster than apt, and AppImages just work if that's the standard we're going with.

[–] Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I don't hate AppImages, but they're certainly not as convenient as Flatpak

[–] Auth@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

How? I dont think its possible to be more convenient than an AppImage.

[–] Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

AppImages don't go in Discover with all my other programs. They don't auto update, no review system, no way to cleanup the files they created when uninstalling, I have to manually add shortcuts to my app launcher. Also Flatseal is pretty cool. And I'm pretty sure Flatpak does incremental updates instead of having to redownload the entire program every time.

I've tried Gear Lever, but in my experience it hasn't ever succeeded in updating an AppImage for me. And it's kind of awkward giving it an AppImage file so it can move the file, instead of the download and the installation being the same single action.

One thing a lot of people don't know about Flatpak is that you can get .flatpakref files like Kdenlive uses for their daily builds. Very cool!

https://cdn.kde.org/flatpak/kdenlive-nightly/org.kde.kdenlive.flatpakref

https://kdenlive.org/download/

[–] pressanykeynow@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

How do you know an update has been released? How do you upgrade it?

[–] dreamy@quokk.au 2 points 3 weeks ago

Use AppImageLauncher or Gear Lever.

[–] Lumisal@lemmy.world 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Gear Lever?

[–] pressanykeynow@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

That's interesting, so it requires flatpak to install, but why would you when you already use flatpak?

[–] Lumisal@lemmy.world 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

To use App Images! :D

[–] pressanykeynow@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

For when the devs provide app image but not flatpak or are app images somehow better?

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 11 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Because at least with flatpak I don’t end up with app fines littering my system and personal folders.

Macos’s application format used to be the best.

[–] wilmo@programming.dev 2 points 3 weeks ago

A clean home directory is the best selling point for me with flatpaks

[–] Mikina@programming.dev 6 points 3 weeks ago

I have an atomic distro, and it lets me install apps without having to reboot or spin up distrobox.