Anyone else starting to favor Flatpak over native packages?

DidacticDumbass@lemmy.one to Linux@lemmy.ml – 206 points –

I am currently using Linux Mint (after a long stint of using MX Linux) after learning it handles Nvidia graphics cards flawlessly, which I am grateful for. Whatever grief I have given Ubuntu in the past, I take it back because when they make something work, it is solid.

Anyways, like most distros these days, Flatpaks show up alongside native packages in the package manager / app store. I used to have a bias towards getting the natively packed version, but these days, I am choosing Flatpaks, precisely because I know they will be the latest version.

This includes Blender, Cura, Prusaslicer, and just now QBittorrent. I know this is probably dumb, but I choose the version based on which has the nicer icon.

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I had fedora installed the last few years, and was digging flatpak.... until I wasn't. One day I ran out of disk space - 230 Gb of flatpak dependencies. I run a pretty slim system, so what the actual heck? Did some research, learned how to flush cached and redundant packages, shrunk my flatpak deps to.... 150 Gb

I've since been trying Endeavor

That is unreal. I had no idea it can get that bad. Makes no sense, honestly.

It was likely the build up of a few years' packages, updates, and so on, but it eventually came to a head and I had to wipe and load. Maybe it's better now, but I think I started that install around Fedora 34? So not too long ago

Weird. That is unfortunate, and I hope it was just an ugly bug that unfortunately effected you.