One of the strongest points of Linux is the package management. In 2025, the world of Linux package management is very varied, with several options available, each with their advantages and trade-offs over the others.
    • @Geodad@lemm.eeEnglish
      12•1 day ago

      Flatpak is actually a really good solution. Snap is garbage though.

      I do a combination of Flatpak for niche 3rd party applications and apt on Debian for standard stuff that everyone wants/needs.

      • @unhrpetby@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3•23 hours ago

        My biggest gripe with flatpak is the fact it isn’t sandboxed properly by default.

        I’m not referring to vendor-given privileges. Every flatpak, unless explicitly ran with the –sandbox option, has a hole in the sandbox to communicate with the portal. Even if you try to use flatseal to disallow it, it will still be silently allowed.

        This leads to a false sense of security. A notable issue I found is if you disallow network access to a flatpak, it can still talk to the portal and tell it to open a link in your browser. This allows it to communicate back to a server through your browser even though you disallowed it. Very terrible.

        Security should to be dead easy and difficult to mess up. The countless threads I’ve read on flatpak tell me the communication about flatpak’s actual security has been quite terrible, and so it doesn’t fit this category.

      • @tauren@lemm.eeEnglish
        3•1 day ago

        Same. I like it that I can install Librewolf and some other software on Mint from Flathub instead of adding some obscure repositories with commands I don’t even understand.

        Like with docker, this isn’t healthy:

        # Add Docker's official GPG key:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
sudo curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc

# Add the repository to Apt sources:
echo \
  "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
  $(. /etc/os-release && echo "${UBUNTU_CODENAME:-$VERSION_CODENAME}") stable" | \
  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
sudo apt-get update

        Source: https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/ubuntu/

        • @corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
          1•1 day ago

          adding some obscure repositories with commands I don’t even understand.

          You may want to learn the commands and review the repos.

          this isn’t healthy:

          True, but not in a way that SnapPakImage is going to fix.

    • @Linearity@infosec.pubEnglish
      3•1 day ago

      System packages are always light but share the same dependencies with everything else which saves space. However, they don’t have any sandboxing, which makes them less secure than Flatpaks. It’s best to use those for simple programs.

      Flatpaks are amazing because each Flatpak is sandboxed with its own dependencies, and if you already have the dependency on your device, it doesn’t download it again but clones it from your device to reduce bandwidth load. Flatpaks are a great fallback when system packages aren’t available because they’re compatible with all Linux distributions and I advise you use them primarily for any program that connects to the Internet as they’re more secure.

      Snaps are worse Flatpaks lmao