I'm mad about linux distros again today and I think I am realizing why this is so hard for me to write about systemically: I have a software engineer brain and so I try to model the various problems as technical problems.
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@matt @cthos @miss_rodent the main thing is that it is missing a macOS style powerbox file dialog (which, ironically, was originally invented in linux, via bifrost in OLPC)
@glyph @cthos @miss_rodent It looks like the File Chooser portal (https://flatpak.github.io/xdg-desktop-portal/docs/doc-org.freedesktop.portal.FileChooser.html) is supposed to implement a powerbox file dialog. I assume it somehow doesn't get this right.
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@matt @cthos @miss_rodent I think *most* telling though, the thing that is downstream from all the various subtle upstream problems with flatpak, is why does the platform still have “native” apps and “flatpak” apps as separate categories? is there an OS yet which is ONLY a runtime for flatpaks and doesn’t have a privileged class of “good” apps which don’t have to live in flatpak jail?
@glyph @matt @miss_rodent I don't agree that this is a "problem" per se, but most of the immutable distros (SteamOS, Bazzite, VanillaOS) lean _heavily_ on Flatpaks because you cannot just do `apt install {foo}`.
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@matt @cthos @miss_rodent I think *most* telling though, the thing that is downstream from all the various subtle upstream problems with flatpak, is why does the platform still have “native” apps and “flatpak” apps as separate categories? is there an OS yet which is ONLY a runtime for flatpaks and doesn’t have a privileged class of “good” apps which don’t have to live in flatpak jail?
@matt @cthos @miss_rodent as long as the native version of apps still exists then that’s still 1 platform with 2 platform targets which ISVs now have a bunch of research to do to find out users are gonna be mad if they package their particular app like that. which by itself is already more work. and if your platform also supports whatever a “snap” is, god help you
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@glyph @cthos @miss_rodent It looks like the File Chooser portal (https://flatpak.github.io/xdg-desktop-portal/docs/doc-org.freedesktop.portal.FileChooser.html) is supposed to implement a powerbox file dialog. I assume it somehow doesn't get this right.
@matt @cthos @miss_rodent I have never seen an app do this in a way which appeared to work. my experience is limited though. glad to hear it at least exists though!
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@glyph @matt @miss_rodent I don't agree that this is a "problem" per se, but most of the immutable distros (SteamOS, Bazzite, VanillaOS) lean _heavily_ on Flatpaks because you cannot just do `apt install {foo}`.
@glyph @matt @miss_rodent There are also other solutions for dev work, like most of those also have a contrivance for running a mutable distro in a container and then exposing binaries from that container to do stuff because not everything is a flatpak
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@glyph @matt @miss_rodent There are also other solutions for dev work, like most of those also have a contrivance for running a mutable distro in a container and then exposing binaries from that container to do stuff because not everything is a flatpak
@cthos @matt @miss_rodent immutable distros are probably the future in more ways than one. I didn’t realize this nuance, I should probably get one of these installed (other than steamos)
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@cthos @matt @miss_rodent immutable distros are probably the future in more ways than one. I didn’t realize this nuance, I should probably get one of these installed (other than steamos)
@glyph @matt @miss_rodent Aurora and Bluefin are the Universal Blue immutable distros for development work, with either KDE or GNOME respectively - Bazzite's their "gaming" distro. They all work pretty similarly. VanillaOS is probably the most stripped-down one I've tried. And of course Fedora provides their own series of images.
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@glyph @matt @miss_rodent Aurora and Bluefin are the Universal Blue immutable distros for development work, with either KDE or GNOME respectively - Bazzite's their "gaming" distro. They all work pretty similarly. VanillaOS is probably the most stripped-down one I've tried. And of course Fedora provides their own series of images.
@cthos @matt @miss_rodent on the one hand this is encouraging. on the other hand omg the branding here is beyond stupid. why are these referred to as different operating systems, with unrelated nouns? are they somehow incentivized to confuse users?
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@cthos @matt @miss_rodent on the one hand this is encouraging. on the other hand omg the branding here is beyond stupid. why are these referred to as different operating systems, with unrelated nouns? are they somehow incentivized to confuse users?
@cthos @matt @miss_rodent like if I were to create an operating system for doing SMTP with twisted and a different operating system with unrelated branding for doing websockets
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@cthos @matt @miss_rodent on the one hand this is encouraging. on the other hand omg the branding here is beyond stupid. why are these referred to as different operating systems, with unrelated nouns? are they somehow incentivized to confuse users?
@glyph @matt @miss_rodent Couldn't tell ya. Fedora does it too with Silverblue and Kinote (GNOME / KDE respectively).
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@glyph @matt @miss_rodent Couldn't tell ya. Fedora does it too with Silverblue and Kinote (GNOME / KDE respectively).
@glyph @matt @miss_rodent They're all built off the same base and you can rebase from one to another at will, though.
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@cthos @matt @miss_rodent like if I were to create an operating system for doing SMTP with twisted and a different operating system with unrelated branding for doing websockets
@cthos @matt @miss_rodent sorry I do not mean to be mean about this. but it seems like they’ve done some really good work here and are trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I have *heard* about bazzite and bluefin. at some length. i knew they were immutable distros. I had considered installing them. I did not even realize they were largely compatible let alone more or less the same thing
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@glyph @matt @miss_rodent They're all built off the same base and you can rebase from one to another at will, though.
@cthos @matt @miss_rodent thanks for all the info. there is a thick fog of war in distroland and this is very useful info
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@cthos @matt @miss_rodent sorry I do not mean to be mean about this. but it seems like they’ve done some really good work here and are trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I have *heard* about bazzite and bluefin. at some length. i knew they were immutable distros. I had considered installing them. I did not even realize they were largely compatible let alone more or less the same thing
@glyph @matt @miss_rodent It's a valid critique!
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@miss_rodent but nothing is hostile to corporate interest here; the corporate interest can quite happily co-opt all the labor in any case; SteamOS has already proved that concept. You can either accept the corporate takeover *by* corporate leadership, or you can consolidate into an organization that protects user agency.
The logic here is "we shouldn't have a union, because that's just the same as a corporation". I specifically called out "volunteer-driven" distros (Debian, Fedora(ish), Arch)
You call out to the distributions to abolish themselves?
To bring up the topic: Systemd is exactly what @glyph is looking for „Unifying pointless differences between distributions“ https://unixdigest.com/includes/files/gnomeasia2014.pdf , brought to you by the systemd-critic article https://unixdigest.com/articles/the-real-motivation-behind-systemd.html but I verified the source on the conference homepage.
It seems to help PostmarketOS which is a systemd-only distribution which supports lots of exotic devices.
Unification seems to be the actual point which commercial cooperations like, for which reason the systemd lead developer was paid by Microsoft for 2022 to 2026.
„Never specific, always generic“ isnt necessarily environment-friendly, though.
I for my part prefer systemd free operating systems which differ on a wide variety of concepts.
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@matt @cthos @miss_rodent I think *most* telling though, the thing that is downstream from all the various subtle upstream problems with flatpak, is why does the platform still have “native” apps and “flatpak” apps as separate categories? is there an OS yet which is ONLY a runtime for flatpaks and doesn’t have a privileged class of “good” apps which don’t have to live in flatpak jail?
@glyph @cthos @miss_rodent You might be interested in this blog post from a Fedora developer which, among other things, argues that Fedora should move away from packaging apps as RPMs: https://blogs.gnome.org/mcatanzaro/2025/07/21/fedora-must-carefully-embrace-flathub/
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@glyph @cthos @miss_rodent You might be interested in this blog post from a Fedora developer which, among other things, argues that Fedora should move away from packaging apps as RPMs: https://blogs.gnome.org/mcatanzaro/2025/07/21/fedora-must-carefully-embrace-flathub/
@matt @cthos @miss_rodent thanks, this is great!
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In short, all the volunteer-based distributions need to have a gigantic conference where they all come together and *agree to stop working on about 99% of them*, to pool efforts to make a real Linux platform. A lot of people will need to put their egos aside and decide to acquiesce to solutions they believe to be technically inferior, in order to be able to address the diffusion of labor into pointlessly recreating basically the same toolchain a thousand times.
@glyph@mastodon.social Linux International?
But judging by the the propensity of FOSS developers to disagree, I can imagine an schism forming just like the Marx/Bakunin schism of the First International. -
In short, all the volunteer-based distributions need to have a gigantic conference where they all come together and *agree to stop working on about 99% of them*, to pool efforts to make a real Linux platform. A lot of people will need to put their egos aside and decide to acquiesce to solutions they believe to be technically inferior, in order to be able to address the diffusion of labor into pointlessly recreating basically the same toolchain a thousand times.
@glyph I have already facilitated something like this for a single very small scoped Python/cross-distro problem and it still took us 2 fucking years to fix, at the scope of an entire distro I think it's simply not possible
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@glyph I have already facilitated something like this for a single very small scoped Python/cross-distro problem and it still took us 2 fucking years to fix, at the scope of an entire distro I think it's simply not possible
@ehashman that's backwards from the usual logic of the industry. you took 2 years to fix it, so the next one will only take 6 months to fix, and within 5 years we'll be fixing 6-7 issues every microsecond. easy!
(I am constantly hearing in my head ThoughtSlime's iconic line, "And if that trend continues indefinitely, as indeed all trends do" <https://youtu.be/Ttb2BdExy38?si=omSvDlTgH0y6UeJY&t=62> )
