I love Flatpaks, the programs are nicely separated so they don’t interfere with each other. They also don’t have flaws like Snap’s low performance or Nix’s complexity.
But being limited to only graphical apps seems like a real drawback. If one wants to use Flatpaks as their primary package manager there have to be some awkward workarounds for cli programs.
E.g., the prime Flatpak experiene is supposed to be on immutable distros like Silverblue. But to install regular cli programs you are expected to spin up a distrobox (or toolbox) and install those programs there.
Having one arch distrobox where I get my cli programs from will not work, as the package entropy over time will get me the very dependency issues that Flatpak wants to solve.
So what is the solution here? Have multiple distroboxes and install packages in those in alternation and hope the boxes don’t break? Use Nix alongside Flatpak? Use Snaps?
Flatpak can do CLI apps it’s just mildly unwieldy because of the whole
flatpak run ....If you want reproducible dev environments, yeah you’re pushed to container solutions be it distrobox, Podman or Docker. Or something like nix as a user.
If you install a Debian distrobox it’ll be as reliable as Debian itself is. It’s only an issue when you’re after 100% reproducible systems, which Docker can help somewhat with, or again, nix. Or NixOS if you really want it all system-wide.
the package entropy over time will get me the very dependency issues that Flatpak wants to solve.
You can declare your distroboxes so that they get created regularly from scratch instead of upgrading in place: https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/blob/main/docs/usage/distrobox-assemble.md
That way the entropy never hits you. Then use the Prompt terminal https://gitlab.gnome.org/chergert/prompt to make it just part of your terminal ootb.
I wrote a nice little CLI tool that lets you browse the flatpak store in the terminal and has an option to link all your flatpaks to their short names. Its really just a wrapper bash script that runs flatpak, but I like it because it goes from com.Blender.Blender to just “blender” and it works on the command line.
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Cool, where can we find it?
You mean I can stop filling up my .local/bin with bash scripts that just run the flatpak?
I think Nix is great for installing CLI apps, it’s not that complicated, in fact, it can make many things in your life easier.
This.
Also, @Libretto@iusearchlinux.fyi - you not be aware but you can use Nix in an imperative way (as opposed to declarative), which doesn’t require learning the Nix language or editing config files etc.
Eg: say you wanted to install
tealdeer, all you need to do is run:nix profile install nixpkgs#tealdeerThere are similar one-liners to search, upgrade, rollback etc.
I use Fedora uBlue (Bazzite), and use Nix to install all my CLI apps, and Flatpak for all my GUI apps. Been running this setup for a few months on and it’s been great experience (bit of a learning curve doing this way of course, but I’m pretty happy with my setup now).
Thanks, I will try that out. I want to use uBlue as well, but cli program installation has been holding me back.
uBlue also makes nix available via fleek, but the way you describe it it seems easier to just use nix directly
Yep exactly. I tried Fleek first, but it just added a whole bunch of layers of complexity which I wasn’t prepared to get into. In fact, the first time I tried setting it up, I couldn’t even get it to work with a basic preset (“bling” level), because some dependency in the chain somewhere was broken and it thru a bunch of errors… and that to me wasn’t a good sign of things to come, so I abandoned the idea.
Nix however has been super easy to use, literally just install/uninstall stuff just like how you’d use a regular package manager, except it installs to your user profile/path, doesn’t need sudo, no container/sandbox slowing things down, no Distrobox limitations and bugs, and most impressively it’s fast. Like so fast that stuff installs instantly, and you’d think that the command didn’t work!
ublue contributor here. We’re set up so you can install any cli program from any distro transparently. Should we outline that more in our docs?
hey, I’m a bit overwhelmed by all the options you provide to install cli programs. There’s nix, fleek, devbox, devcontainers, distrobox, incus, brew and probably even more options.
I just want one preferred way to install my cli programs globally, like on normal distributions, but it is not clear which option is the default one. After digging through posts on the forum I found out that the ubuntu distrobox with apt is supposed to be this default installation environment. Maybe make that clear when someone opens the host terminal on bluefin, or let the bluefin installer give this info to the user.
Even then, projectbluefin.io in the FAQ section suggests that homebrew is the creator’s preferred installation method, not ubuntu. So which one should I use now? On one hand, bluefin’s default DE is GNOME which is very simplified and has one correct workflow, on the other hand bluefin provides a multitude of choices all seeming equally viable, which is more in line with KDE’s philosophy.
Also, why prefer homebrew over something like nix? AFAIK, homebrew leads to the same dependency issues that the traditional package managers have.
Additionally, what is making ublue hard for me is that all the important info seems to be scattered on the ublue website, blog posts and forum posts. I’d really like it if there would be one website which gives clear guidance for people who are new to bluefin (or bazzite etc.). Not explaining all of the possibilites, but just the most important stuff to get started. Just a really dumbed down, compressed version of the existing ublue guides. The users can figure out more themselves afterwards.
Something like:
- install bluefin-dx (not the regular bluefin)
- only install graphical stuff via flatpak
- only use the ubuntu terminal for any terminal stuff, including cli program installation
- do not use the host terminal unless you are doing host administration with ujust or rpm-ostree
- etc.
These starter instructions may not be perfect, but at least then the users have a daily driver they can learn more about over time instead of having to learn everything before daily-driving ublue.
Thank you for all the hard work you guys are putting into this, I’m excited to see the project mature
Maybe make that clear when someone opens the host terminal on bluefin, or let the bluefin installer give this info to the user.
We’re working on a dynamic motd system that will give you some guidance when you first run the terminal. Here’s the issue if you have some feedback! https://github.com/ublue-os/bluefin/issues/609
So which one should I use now?
Yeah the reason it’s ubuntu by default is that’s what the target audience uses, but we’ve been working on a wolfi/brew distrobox that ends up being a better experience, so we’re mulling shipping that by default.
Also, why prefer homebrew over something like nix? AFAIK, homebrew leads to the same dependency issues that the traditional package managers have.
We picked homebrew because it’s overwhelmingly the most popular package manager for cloud people and has everything people need. nix doesn’t really fit in a container world, but we don’t stop people from using it, and with devbox there’s at least a common devcontainer pattern people can use. I haven’t really run into dependency issues with homebrew but the new bluefin-cli container maintains state and is destroyed/rebuilt regularly so that hopefully won’t be a problem.
scattered on the ublue website, blog posts and forum posts.
Yeah this is annoying and we’re in the middle of consolidating docs, I’m hoping to streamline it by Fedora 40. I’m also working on a 10m “how to use this thing” video, it’s just been hard to spend time on it when we’re still making it. We’re almost feature complete at this point so I’ll start on this soon.
Your starter steps are exactly what we want the default to be, do you think we should say that more strongly? Thanks for your feedback! I think we can clean up a bunch of this stuff to make it easier.
Thank you for the answers and listening to the feedback.
Your starter steps are exactly what we want the default to be, do you think we should say that more strongly?
Yes, I’d definitely try to make it more clear to the user that the ubuntu/wolfi distrobox is the way to go and that all the other installation methods are just bonus for those who need it.
Also, I think it’s a bit confusing for newcomers whether to choose bluefin or -dx. It seems like dx is always the better option, even if you end up not using all of the extra features
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The point is that you can not find most cli programs on Flathub, de facto making Flatpaks unsuitable for cli programs. Snapcraft on the other hand hosts neofetch, dust, youtube-dl etc.
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Worth mentioning that one can use bubblewrap directly over chroot to get similar behaviour as well.
It’s often simpler to use distrobox but being able to rsync chroot a between devices can be very convenient.
If we are talking Silverblue then podman is your pick for everything Flatpack “can’t”
there is no big push for cli flatpack since this already a solved cause with containers for podman/docker/kuberneteshowever no matter how you approach this you will always have dependency security issues
unless you built every flatpack/container yourself you are at the whim of the creator of it to keep every dependecy updated
this is already a known vulnerability factor in the container sphere on topbl of the threat of 0-day exploitsCan one tool be used for multiple use cases? Sure. Should it? Maybe not.
Try fleek. I use it on my fedora system and it integrates really well.
VPN apps don’t seem to work with it and Proton said their Drive app won’t either. So for whatever reasons those might be.
Would Homebrew work for this? I use it in WSL for all my CLI programs.
Flatpaks are disk and memory hogs, and they start slowly. That’s because they’re like little selt-contained full-fledged operating systems.
Flatpaks, like snaps, applimages, dockers, Electron apps, React apps or Flutter apps are the lazy 21st century developer’s way of achieving cross-compatibility without any effort.
I always like comments like this that don’t offer the “real” solution
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That’s not true and misleading. Docker and flatpak base images mostly contain shared libraries and even these get automatically deduplicated. Your flatpak calculator doesn’t ship systemd or any other init system nor does it ship system drivers lol
And yeah if you are working in a restrained env and care about those few mbs taken by shared libraries then containarization is not for you.
Containerization is not perfect and it will never be, but that was never the goal. Making apps and services independent of the base system and easily restrictable like mounting volumes, restricting network, etc… was.
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I didn’t say they were the same thing. I said they’re what people do today to avoid having to port their code to different platforms and manage shared library versions, performances be damned.
