• BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    This is misleading.

    Flatpak installs sandboxed libraries and then shares them between different apps as you install them. The first app installed may seem big but often the next app will use many of the same libraries rather than redownload/reinstall them.

    Appimage does not share libraries. Each Appimage is a complete image, libraries included and compressed out of necessity. It can be targeted at systems to reduce library bloat but it’s often easier just to shove everything in to ensure it works. Also that compressed file system needs to be decompressed which causes further overhead. Simple apps with few dependencies will be small, but big apps can bloat massively particularly if they’re not targeted (and that’s common as they’re treated as run-anywhere solutions for developers).

    Plus Appimage can include security flawed libraries - the significance of that will depend on the App being exposed to them. I wouldn’t want to run a web browser using a poorly maintained appimage for example, but I’d consider running a random small tool or utility if that was the only option.

    Both models are flawed compared to native apps - not quite to the point of installing an entire distro but close. But Flatpak installs one shared set sandboxed environment, while every AppImage is crudely it’s own distro.

    • pmk@lemmy.sdf.org
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      7 months ago

      I’m trying to understand the Flatpak model here, so if Flatpak installs sandboxed libraries, does that mean that all programs on Flathub are compiled against the same “base” runtime? Theoretically, if I had 10 flatpaks installed, could they pull in 10 different runtimes? It seems like this could get out of hand. Iirc, Fedora has their own runtime for their own flatpaks, tied to the version. (A runtime for Fedora 39, another for 40, etc?) In that case, is the idea to have one (traditional) set of libraries for the base OS, and another (runtime) set of libraries for user applications? Could it come full circle so that the base OS is relying on the same libraries as provided by the runtime? I am somewhat confused…

      • AProfessional@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        A new freedesktop runtime releases once a year, most apps are on the latest.

        Nobody uses the Fedora runtime. It exists for political reasons not practical.