Over the last few weeks on the site there have been several references to both flatpak and wayland. These are technology I know nothing about and I suspect I am not alone.
Please can we have a clear idea what the implications are for end users, is it positive progress or negative.
Do users just go with the flow or make changes.
I notice when I go into the repositories for lmde the option for either package from flatpak or not, how does a end user choose and why.
I know wayland is connected to nvida graphics drivers but again do I just let the driver manager choose which to use, mint has this in its control panel but not come across it yet on any system.
I am sure there are other new technologies coming out where confusion will rain.
Topic for discussion or article on the site or both?
Flatpak is a means to package software such that it’ll run on any distribution, much like snap and appimage, although those accomplish such in different ways.
I’m unsure how to describe Wayland and its pros and cons. Xorg does its job just fine for me. That being said, it needs some care what programs you run on Xorg, as windows have absolute access to all input of other windows. Wayland supposedly fixes this, but there are some issues I’m not happy with with Wayland (such as it not providing help with window decorations, leaving it to the developers of DEs/WMs).
For the time being, with Linux Mint, I’d stick to Xorg, as Wayland support is still very much experimental.
I dont see how that can be claimed. If the software has system calls they may vary between distros although there is a subset that are posix standard.
No such thing in BSD… Flatpaks will not run there…
Flatpak does fix library dependencies… but not system libraries.
I had thought you installed flatpak itself then you could after install apps using that.
But normally just go for regular apps. They ask by default if they can install other things at the same stage, always say yes, but never known what would happen if i said no!
Its knowing what to say yes or no to is the difficult part, normally I just say yes to everything, perhaps bad on my part. But not been caught out yet.
Why do you think that could cause issues ?
I only get from the repository of the linux version and its usually the items recommended that I say yes too
Both (Wayland and xorg/x11) equally connected to GPU drivers for AMD / Radeon or Intel GPU as well as NVidia; or any other GPU drivers for that matter - what else is there? I guess there’s the ARM GPUs out there (e.g. RPi), and some ARM vendors like SunXi have their own proprietary GPU, and maybe some users still using things like Matrox or other GPU (are they still supported?).
I’d probably rather be running Wayland - just 'cause it’s better optimised than the vast legacy of xorg / x11 - but I’m still using X11… 'cause of Synergy…
If it aint broke - don’t fix it?
Was just thinking today - about - trying out Synergy 3, so I can try out gesture support… but it’s not broken right now - so I probably won’t…
And I can’t figure out how to switch my Pop!_OS to Wayland : I run X by logging into TTY and typing startx - 'cause GDM is broken - I’ll probably have to re-install I reckon…
