Flatpak throws the baby out with the bathwater though. For example, on Ubuntu 22 if you install Firefox and don't have snaps enabled it installs the Flatpak, but if you do it can't access ffmpeg in the system so you can't play a lot of video files. It also fails to read your profile from Ubuntu 20 so you lose all of your settings, passwords, plugins, etc... It also wants to save files in some wierdass directory buried way deep in the /run filesystem. System integration also breaks, so if a Gnome app tries to open a link to a website the process silently fails.
> it can't access ffmpeg in the system so you can't play a lot of video files.
That's a typical packaging bug. Libraries should be bundled in the build or specified as a runtime dependency.
> It also fails to read your profile from Ubuntu 20 so you lose all of your settings, passwords, plugins, etc... It also wants to save files in some wierdass directory buried way deep in the /run filesystem. System integration also breaks, so if a Gnome app tries to open a link to a website the process silently fails.
All of this sucks and the user experience here needs a ton of work. I get the technical issues with co-mingling sandboxed and unsandboxed state, but there needs to be at least user-friendly options to migrate or share state with the sandbox.
A replacement for the xdg-open/xdg-mime/gio unholy trinity that offers runtime extension points for sandboxes might be nice. Maybe I could write a prototype service.
I think the issue with ffmpeg is that it needs to access GL driver libraries in order to support hardware acceleration. The GL libraries are dependent on your hardware and have to match what you have installed on the system. So you'd end up having to support a hundred different variations of Firefox flatpacks and users would have to make sure they match when installing, and remember to uninstall and reinstall when they update their graphics drivers.
Flatpak throws the baby out with the bathwater though. For example, on Ubuntu 22 if you install Firefox and don't have snaps enabled it installs the Flatpak, but if you do it can't access ffmpeg in the system so you can't play a lot of video files. It also fails to read your profile from Ubuntu 20 so you lose all of your settings, passwords, plugins, etc... It also wants to save files in some wierdass directory buried way deep in the /run filesystem. System integration also breaks, so if a Gnome app tries to open a link to a website the process silently fails.
> it can't access ffmpeg in the system so you can't play a lot of video files.
That's a typical packaging bug. Libraries should be bundled in the build or specified as a runtime dependency.
> It also fails to read your profile from Ubuntu 20 so you lose all of your settings, passwords, plugins, etc... It also wants to save files in some wierdass directory buried way deep in the /run filesystem. System integration also breaks, so if a Gnome app tries to open a link to a website the process silently fails.
All of this sucks and the user experience here needs a ton of work. I get the technical issues with co-mingling sandboxed and unsandboxed state, but there needs to be at least user-friendly options to migrate or share state with the sandbox.
A replacement for the xdg-open/xdg-mime/gio unholy trinity that offers runtime extension points for sandboxes might be nice. Maybe I could write a prototype service.
I think the issue with ffmpeg is that it needs to access GL driver libraries in order to support hardware acceleration. The GL libraries are dependent on your hardware and have to match what you have installed on the system. So you'd end up having to support a hundred different variations of Firefox flatpacks and users would have to make sure they match when installing, and remember to uninstall and reinstall when they update their graphics drivers.
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