How do you guys get software that is not in your distribution’s repositories?

  • cley_faye@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Native package manager > Native binaries > AppImage > Flatpak.

    Yes, snap isn’t even on the scale.

    • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      Not a fan of AppImages myself. For an universal format it has surprising amount of issues with different distros, in my experience. And the whole Windows style “go to a website, download the AppImage, if you want to update it, go to the web page again and download it again” is one thing I wanted to get away from. At least they don’t come with install wizards, that clicking through menus thing was a pain.

      For one off stuff I run once and never need again, AppImage is alright. But not being built-in with sandboxing, repos, all that stuff, it just seems like a step back.

    • skulblaka@sh.itjust.works
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      7 months ago

      I’m a technically savvy but new to Linux user who installed Mint as my primary OS about a month ago. So far I’ve used Flatpaks and AppImages without any issue and haven’t come across snaps. Would you explain the differences and why I would care about one over another?

      • PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de
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        7 months ago

        IMO flatpaks are the future of installing linux apps. The comment you replied to lives in the past. System package manager should be for system binaries, not for applications.

        • Schmeckinger@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          But I like my applications years out of date and I think its good that every distro has to spend manhours on packaging it individually.

            • Schmeckinger@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              I see the appeal for the package manager for a lot of things, but space got so incredibly cheap and fast that duplication is way less of a deal than the effort to make stuff work the traditional way. But im not a real linux user. I don’t like tinkering, I want to download something and it works. And the amazing thing is we can have both. If people like spending time to package something be my guest.

              The funniest interaction I had recently. I downloaded a program that isn’t in my package manager or had any sort of flatpack/appimage so I downloaded it as a deb and it didn’t run because of some dependency. So I could clone the git and build it from source which might have worked, but I was too lazy to. So I just downloaded the windows exe and ran it through wine, which worked flawlessly.