One of the criticisms people have with containerizing their desktop apps is the "insane amount of space for their environment" that people think it requires. That's a direct quote from a reddit post on the topic from today.
Let's have a look
Today I'll compare two desktops, one will be
Flatpaks aren’t huge at all. This is a debunked myth. I can’t recommend reading this article enough.
So you only need to use two technologies that add complexity and cost performance (filesystem compression and deduplication) to get to the point where you are still 10+% higher in disk space use? I am not sure your post supports the argument it is trying to make.
Author here. The distro comes with the filesystem compression and deduplication already set up and I don’t need to manage it, so of course I’m going to use it.
Given the cost of storage I have no problems spending a barely noticeable amount of space to use flatpaks given all the problems they solve.
I feel like they assumed people were familiar with flatpak.
But one big problem is software availability and distribution. Developers don’t care to make a version for every distro and keep it up to date. That’s work that distro repo packagers need to do. And that’s a shitload of work, divided between loads of distros and their repos. For user the effect from this would be that an app might not get updates very quickly or that the app simply isn’t in the repo. Flatpak solves this in that developer (or someone) can make a flatpak of the app and it’s easily available to everyone. Cuts down a ton of work and improves app availability for users.
What’s the use case where storage is at enough of a premium to matter? None of this is targeting a server where you’re getting silly with optimizing storage, and even the smallest storage on most consumer facing hardware is filled by media one way or another. It straight up doesn’t matter to a reasonable end user. Storage is less than dirt cheap.
I have over a decade old used and and beat up laptop. Even that had enough space that the extra space use from flatpak was never an issue.
I feel like you’re being a bit too dramatic here. Even old as shit laptops and desktops aren’t so space starved that flatpak use would he a huge issue.
Deduplications comes with flatpak for free. Both systems had filesystem compression, so this one doesn’t count. 10% higher disk space is neglectible on most systems and the containerisation makes it worth it.
So you only need to use two technologies that add complexity and cost performance (filesystem compression and deduplication) to get to the point where you are still 10+% higher in disk space use? I am not sure your post supports the argument it is trying to make.
Author here. The distro comes with the filesystem compression and deduplication already set up and I don’t need to manage it, so of course I’m going to use it.
Given the cost of storage I have no problems spending a barely noticeable amount of space to use flatpaks given all the problems they solve.
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End of text?
I feel like they assumed people were familiar with flatpak.
But one big problem is software availability and distribution. Developers don’t care to make a version for every distro and keep it up to date. That’s work that distro repo packagers need to do. And that’s a shitload of work, divided between loads of distros and their repos. For user the effect from this would be that an app might not get updates very quickly or that the app simply isn’t in the repo. Flatpak solves this in that developer (or someone) can make a flatpak of the app and it’s easily available to everyone. Cuts down a ton of work and improves app availability for users.
What’s the use case where storage is at enough of a premium to matter? None of this is targeting a server where you’re getting silly with optimizing storage, and even the smallest storage on most consumer facing hardware is filled by media one way or another. It straight up doesn’t matter to a reasonable end user. Storage is less than dirt cheap.
Ah yes. The mindset of: I have lots of money to spend on storage, so we shouldn’t care about optimisation for less fortunate users.
No, the mindset that the storage is less than pennies worth and this usage would have to explode massively to even approach negligible.
A device that is affected in any way by a GB of storage space is going to choke on 50 other things way before you get to that.
I have a cheap laptop with a small SSD dual booting Windows. To me, a couple of GB does matter.
Not when the manufacturers solder the storage and mark it up 1000+%. For many devices, 1GB is still worth over $1.
I have over a decade old used and and beat up laptop. Even that had enough space that the extra space use from flatpak was never an issue.
I feel like you’re being a bit too dramatic here. Even old as shit laptops and desktops aren’t so space starved that flatpak use would he a huge issue.
Deduplications comes with flatpak for free. Both systems had filesystem compression, so this one doesn’t count. 10% higher disk space is neglectible on most systems and the containerisation makes it worth it.
Compression often improves performance as it means reading less data from storage. Deduplication, as flatpak uses it, is free.
It was a one or two gigs difference. Do you really consider that a huge space use?
If I had to suffer only having 600GB of free disk space instead of 640GB of free disk space I’d shoot myself