Most of them are bundled terribly, forcing you to use flatseal or similar to make it work - way to much to do and understand for the average user
Roughly half of all the programs I install are flatpaks, and the other half are appimages. They both largely work the same, but the fact that there’s a difference will be crippling to the average user. Especially if you ask them to choose between one or the other
Believe it or not, a lot of people are not comfortable with the app store mentality flatpak seems built around. Googling “chrome download” is far more ingrained in the average person. Aside from browsers and projects of similar scope, this is difficult to achieve on linux
Can 800 year old grandma Doris use the feature? Can the average person who writes comments on YouTube videos? Minion meme posting facebook aunts? If not, it’s not ready for mainstream.
While I agree with most of what you said, typical users won’t run into these issues unless they’re doing something more technical (e.g installing blender or something), in which case they can ask for help.
Can 800 year old grandma Doris use the feature? Can the average person who writes comments on YouTube videos? Minion meme posting facebook aunts? If not, it’s not ready for mainstream.
I don’t think these people can install Windows or are pros at using it either, and in which case it’s the responsibility of whoever installed the OS to guide them through it a little like I did with my parents (they’re in their 80s and they’ve been using Linux for the past five years just fine), and I imagine those kind of people to only care about browsing the web and maybe viewing a PDF every once in a while.
That would be totally true if every software was distributed as a flatpak and every distro had flatpak enabled in the package manager out of the box. That’s just not reality.
I said “usually”, and I’m talking about mainstream distros.
Also the original comment says “the whole OS is not ready for the general public”, which is also vague. I don’t expect the “general public” to install Gentoo and suffer from this issue.
Not even then. For example the biggest Linux distribution in use is Ubuntu, and it doesn’t have flatpak built in. So even if a flatpak of an app is available, a user of Ubuntu would have to already understand what a flatpak is, and already know that it would make the app installable on Ubuntu, and know that flatpak itself can be installed separately, and know how to use a different install method already just to get the flatpak system onto their computer in the first place
You don’t need to be “techie” to install stuff from a package manager with a GUI. People use app stores on every mobile device out there and they don’t have any problems with that
What? When was the last time you tried Linux?
With flatpak, it’s usually a one-click process to install anything nowadays.
Except:
Can 800 year old grandma Doris use the feature? Can the average person who writes comments on YouTube videos? Minion meme posting facebook aunts? If not, it’s not ready for mainstream.
While I agree with most of what you said, typical users won’t run into these issues unless they’re doing something more technical (e.g installing blender or something), in which case they can ask for help.
I don’t think these people can install Windows or are pros at using it either, and in which case it’s the responsibility of whoever installed the OS to guide them through it a little like I did with my parents (they’re in their 80s and they’ve been using Linux for the past five years just fine), and I imagine those kind of people to only care about browsing the web and maybe viewing a PDF every once in a while.
That would be totally true if every software was distributed as a flatpak and every distro had flatpak enabled in the package manager out of the box. That’s just not reality.
I said “usually”, and I’m talking about mainstream distros.
Also the original comment says “the whole OS is not ready for the general public”, which is also vague. I don’t expect the “general public” to install Gentoo and suffer from this issue.
They don’t all have that either
And yet they all have a package manager of some kind to install packages from. It doesn’t have to be Flatpak specifically
Not even then. For example the biggest Linux distribution in use is Ubuntu, and it doesn’t have flatpak built in. So even if a flatpak of an app is available, a user of Ubuntu would have to already understand what a flatpak is, and already know that it would make the app installable on Ubuntu, and know that flatpak itself can be installed separately, and know how to use a different install method already just to get the flatpak system onto their computer in the first place
Me fail reading.
Me forgive. Reading hard.
I use Linux regularly, and the last time i installed an app was probably within the past 365 days
Ah. I see. That’s very informative.
I can install apps well enough, but I’m very techie, the general population isn’t gonna be able to do it reasonably
You don’t need to be “techie” to install stuff from a package manager with a GUI. People use app stores on every mobile device out there and they don’t have any problems with that