A sidestory to this is that Flatpak and AppImage have been miraculous boosts to Linux OS machines. After I figured out that ya gotta throw the --user flag into your flatpak installs so they don’t jam up your / tree, and also throwing flatpak override --user xyz.app onto a few apps that benefit from universal access, things have been fine and dandy.
I continue to be happy with how awesome Linux has gotten just over the past 5 years.
I’ve been using mint exclusively for like 3 months and have been using a hearty blend of terminal installs and the program manager app.
It seems to not have caused any problems YET, but I’ve been assured it will. I see flatpack conversations a lot and don’t fully understand the differences (apart from the install method).
Is it worth understanding and committing to a single system or can I just be a low-power user for a while?
Basically every app is sandboxed to some extent. That way you don’t get conflicting dependencies. Because I use this machine for work, game performance is a much lower priority than file system permissions and stability and for most typical workloads. MacOS does the same thing by default now and very few apps get access to the actual root directory.
One thing you might notice is that flatpak defaults to “system” installs. Is your root system directory filling up? You probably want to start installing onto --user, as this will put things in /home where they belong and, by default, sandbox permissions away from root (that, too, can be easily changed).
Also, don’t fear mixing different ways of installing. I use AppImage, Flatpak, the default app-get install method, and .deb. FlatPak at this point is the best, because it offers the ease of use of AppImage, but the flexibility and auto-maintenance of apt-get/Software Update. The only problems I’ve encountered were due to me not understanding that it was filling up my root partition by default…
I’ve been running Mint MATE for about 9 years. Love it to death.
This is why I have used flatpak steam. It’s a lot easier to manage drivers in it vs the shitshow that is doing it natively with adding custom driver specific repos and whatnot.
Hoping the new PC I just ordered (with an AMD GPU) will be better with the native app.
I will remark that that sounds like a distro issue - I use Arch and the drivers are just in the official distros, no need to add external ones. Just look up what you need on the wiki and install it.
That said, AMD will still probably be a better experience.
I’m on Fedora KDE. I think it was drivers. I had the official drivers just fine, but at the time (18-24 months ago?) they were shitty and breaking some games on my GPU so I switched to alternate drivers. I think the drivers are better now, but I haven’t switched back and cleaned out my repo list.
I think I was using an NVidia GPU up until about 3 years ago, when I switched to AMD when upgrading, so my knowledge on that front is a bit outdated.
The arch wiki has more information if you’re curious, but I’m aware of official proprietary drivers, official partially opensourced drivers, separately packaged legacy drivers, and the unofficial opensource Nouveau drivers which weren’t really usable back then.
What you’re describing sounds odd to me, but looking it up, sounds like Fedora doesn’t package official drivers? I’m having trouble finding proper information on this, but it could be for ideological reasons, since those drivers are proprietary - so the default drivers might be Nouveau, which might be rather broken, both because of lack of workforce and NVidia blocking unofficial drivers from using their devices properly.
If that’s the case, it’s basically a conflict between ideology and usability within that distribution - it might seem like a great distro for users, and it might be competently made, but when somebody doesn’t care about the ideology and just wants their device to work, they’ll end up with confusion and work to do.
Literally this week I learned that you need to install flatpak Nvidia drivers if you use flatpak Steam. Once I found that out, proton works great!
A sidestory to this is that Flatpak and AppImage have been miraculous boosts to Linux OS machines. After I figured out that ya gotta throw the --user flag into your flatpak installs so they don’t jam up your / tree, and also throwing flatpak override --user xyz.app onto a few apps that benefit from universal access, things have been fine and dandy.
I continue to be happy with how awesome Linux has gotten just over the past 5 years.
Have you tried flatseal? It’s designed for flatpak permissions
deleted by creator
I’ve been using mint exclusively for like 3 months and have been using a hearty blend of terminal installs and the program manager app.
It seems to not have caused any problems YET, but I’ve been assured it will. I see flatpack conversations a lot and don’t fully understand the differences (apart from the install method).
Is it worth understanding and committing to a single system or can I just be a low-power user for a while?
Basically every app is sandboxed to some extent. That way you don’t get conflicting dependencies. Because I use this machine for work, game performance is a much lower priority than file system permissions and stability and for most typical workloads. MacOS does the same thing by default now and very few apps get access to the actual root directory.
One thing you might notice is that flatpak defaults to “system” installs. Is your root system directory filling up? You probably want to start installing onto --user, as this will put things in /home where they belong and, by default, sandbox permissions away from root (that, too, can be easily changed).
Also, don’t fear mixing different ways of installing. I use AppImage, Flatpak, the default app-get install method, and .deb. FlatPak at this point is the best, because it offers the ease of use of AppImage, but the flexibility and auto-maintenance of apt-get/Software Update. The only problems I’ve encountered were due to me not understanding that it was filling up my root partition by default…
I’ve been running Mint MATE for about 9 years. Love it to death.
Recommending the —user flag is good advice and isn’t intuitive!
This is why I have used flatpak steam. It’s a lot easier to manage drivers in it vs the shitshow that is doing it natively with adding custom driver specific repos and whatnot.
Hoping the new PC I just ordered (with an AMD GPU) will be better with the native app.
I will remark that that sounds like a distro issue - I use Arch and the drivers are just in the official distros, no need to add external ones. Just look up what you need on the wiki and install it.
That said, AMD will still probably be a better experience.
I’m on Fedora KDE. I think it was drivers. I had the official drivers just fine, but at the time (18-24 months ago?) they were shitty and breaking some games on my GPU so I switched to alternate drivers. I think the drivers are better now, but I haven’t switched back and cleaned out my repo list.
I think I was using an NVidia GPU up until about 3 years ago, when I switched to AMD when upgrading, so my knowledge on that front is a bit outdated.
The arch wiki has more information if you’re curious, but I’m aware of official proprietary drivers, official partially opensourced drivers, separately packaged legacy drivers, and the unofficial opensource Nouveau drivers which weren’t really usable back then.
What you’re describing sounds odd to me, but looking it up, sounds like Fedora doesn’t package official drivers? I’m having trouble finding proper information on this, but it could be for ideological reasons, since those drivers are proprietary - so the default drivers might be Nouveau, which might be rather broken, both because of lack of workforce and NVidia blocking unofficial drivers from using their devices properly.
If that’s the case, it’s basically a conflict between ideology and usability within that distribution - it might seem like a great distro for users, and it might be competently made, but when somebody doesn’t care about the ideology and just wants their device to work, they’ll end up with confusion and work to do.
Bazzite has native drivers included. I believe Fedora requires you to install them.
(btw)
:)
No flak. I do, too.