this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
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applications are installed with flatpak - basically little containers that contain everything a program needs. sort of like docker
so normally if you wanna install something - let's say minecraft. you would also need to install java. the flatpak for minecraft would have java inside of it so it can be run in its own little container and you don't need to install either
Doesn't that lead to huge redundancy – say, multiple java copies effectively existing in the system? And also to software not optimized for the system (I assume flatpaks are pre-compiled)?
You're right - having multiple copies of everything is a drawback of housing each application in its own container or VM. The standard rejoinder is that disk space is cheap. The validity of that rejoinder depends on what you're doing and what hardware or budget you are working with.
Another problem is that old versions of these dependencies will be baked into an image that is then used for many years without updates. This ensures the application keeps working without being disrupted by an update to a shared library, but it also means things like security flaws persist. Arguably, this is mitigated by only that image having the problem, but one insecure app can be a real problem - especially when it accesses shared resources - and when the same problem applies to many applications.
Compiled code optimized for a specific system's hardware is less relevant than it used to be - even Gentoo users do not focus on this anymore. Rolling your own container isn't much harder than compiling with your own options.
Another argument for the each app has the library it needs model is that your system no longer is pinned to the least common denominator which means apps should be able update their packages faster without the concerns of other apps.
You also have flatpak's runtime concept which means you could force an app to try and run with a newer runtime.