[NBLUG/talk] preferences on software package versions, thoughts on Snap/Flatpak/Appimage

[Derek B. Noonburg]

If you want the latest versions of applications, your choices come down
to:

(1) Run a Linux distribution that updates things often, which probably
means a rolling release distro.  Oh, and you also need to make sure
that the distro packages the particular apps you want.

(2) Run binaries built by the application developers.  Lately those
have been moving toward flatpak/appimage/snap/whatever.  I haven't
personally played with any of those formats, but they feel pretty
kludgey to me -- "All these Linux distros have different library
versions...  I know, we'll package up all of the libraries (almost a
mini Linux distro) with our app."  I guess that approach does "fix" the
problem, but ick.

This also has the downside of requiring you to make sure the apps get
updated -- as you pointed out.

(3) Build the applications yourself from source.  This avoids library
version problems, but obviously requires some extra work.  Maybe worth
it if you have a small number of applications that you really care
about keeping current, maybe not.

Also, some applications are pretty easy to build from source, and some
are a major pain in the butt.  It's kind of hard to tell until you
actually try to build them.

This has the same update problem as option 2.

It would be nice if the Linux folks could settle on a single desktop
distribution, so that application developers could simply package for
that distro.  But: https://xkcd.com/927/

Given all of that, do you really need the absolute latest versions of
those applications?  For system libraries and common attack targets (web
browsers), you clearly want to apply security updates promptly.
Centralized system updates are great for that.  For other things... how
many security updates (as opposed to bug fix and feature updates) does
FreeCAD (for example) receive?

If you really do want the updates -- maybe you ran into a bug in
FreeCAD that's been fixed, maybe Mint has a particularly old version,
or whatever -- if there are only a couple applications like that, then
maybe it's worth considering option 2 (or 3) for just those
applications.

- Derek


On Mon, 4 Jul 2022 12:50:04 -0700
Brad Morrison <bradmorrison at sonic.net> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> As I'm fairly new to Linux, I'm sure that there are reasons for why
> the software packages in the Ubuntu repositories are often not the
> latest versions available via the various projects' websites. I tend
> to prefer to not use Flakpak/Flathub, after reading a blog post from
> Clem, the project lead of Linux Mint (which is the distro I use)
> about his concerns about Snap (https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3906).
> But I have noticed that for both FreeCAD and gnuCash, the Flatpak
> versions are considerably more recent/updated than the "Ubuntu"
> version (is that what you call it?) also available in the Linux Mint
> software manager.
> 
> FreeCAD: 18.4 for the Ubuntu version v. 19.4 for the Flathub version
> - https://www.freecadweb.org/
> 
> gnuCash: 3.8b for the Ubuntu version v. 4.10+ for the Flathub version
> - https://www.gnucash.org/
> <https://www.gnucash.org/>
> 
> I could also download the appimage from the FreeCAD website, but I
> like centrally managed updates.
> 
> Does anyone else have any thoughts to share on this? Preferences?
> 
> And I've also wondered how the desktop version of Signal is set up so 
> that the package is installed via the Linux Mint software manager,
> but the updates come via the web (from Signal). Is that another
> approach to similar issues?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Brad