I’m two large soya lattes into my day and I’m yet to write anything about the “hot topic” of the moment: Flatpak.
So, I’m going rogue.
I’m going to write for the sake of writing (which is, according to some of the overly enthusiastic creative blogs I read, one way to work through writer’s block).
Now, I appreciate there are plenty of things I could (and should) write about instead of Flatpak, the new-fangled containerised app distribution format, but neither ‘could’ nor ‘should’ are motivation on their own.
What follows is not going to be coherent, and certainly won’t be well written.
But I need to get some thoughts down, so what do you say?
‘People expect me to have an opinion’
My inbox and social media streams are jammed packed with questions, conspiracy theories, and hate mail on Flatpak right now. Clearly, trying to avoid covering it at all isn’t a viable course of action.
‘Flatpak is heralded as the ‘future of application distribution”
It’s a hot button issue in the Linux community and people expect me to have an opinion. To pick a side. To tell them to pick a side.
That’s not really me at all.
Now (mercifully, there’s a high chance that all you reading this already know, roughly, what Flatpak is. The project used to be called xdg-app, if that rings any bells.
Like Canonical’s Snap, software that is packaged in the Flatpak format (paks?, flats?, probably Flatpaks) are cross-distribution, bundled runtimes. A bunch of (potential) security bonuses are inherent, and they’ve been heralded as as “the future of application distribution”.
You’ve every reason to expect me to write about about them because, more than bringing a single-digit percentile among you up to speed, coverage adds coloir and context to this site’s coverage of Snaps, and to a lesser degree AppImages and Orbital Apps.
So why am I finding it so tough to say anything about them?
There’s no pro-Snap bias here
Pro-Snap bias is not something I lean into (I rarely cheerlead a technology because Ubuntu happens to use it, preferring to cheerlead on merit instead). I’m also not wanting to avoid covering Flatpak because it’s a competitor to Snaps, and (right now) not something Canonical is interested in using.
I’m yet to wade into the Flatpak vs Snaps war because I lack confidence in putting forth an opinion, and I am little battle-weary at this stage.
At a superficial level I think I know what Flatpak is and how it differs from Snaps. But, like a kid who wakes mid-lesson, I don’t feel confident in sharing my answer with the whole class!
That lack of confidence isn’t entirely unwarranted, either.
Flatpak, like Snaps, is under active development and is not yet a finished, polished, and ready-to-roll standard. Blanks on how app packagers will make use of its features (sandboxing, etc) are yet to be ironed out.
It’s all in flux, to a degree.
Why I have Written about Snappy
Standing aside my lack of confidence in the subject matter is a sense of expectation that because I wrote about Snap apps last week, I must to write about Flatpak apps this week.
The problem is… Canonical made things really easy.
In a live, pre-announcement press briefing Mark Shuttleworth and big-wigs from Dell, Samsung, Krita were on hand to explain, spotlight and talk through Snap apps, its strengths, its goals, and how it can help to ease the fragmentation of Linux app distribution, and so on.
They spoke as much about what Snappy will do as much as what it can (currently) do.
As I am far less steeped in distribution engineering than I ought to be this briefing was invaluable for me and gave me the confidence to write about it.
I had the opportunity to sound out the announcement, choose my angle, and fill any gaps in knowledge, all before the the official announcement was made. Like most embargoes, this gave me chance to prepare. To be able to tell you about the news with something approaching an informed look on my face.
The Flatpak press release arrived quietly yesterday alongside the more visible release of Fedora 24. I received no heads-up about it, nor any invitation to speak to developers to ask questions.
In fact, by the time I was aware the announcement had been made — thanks to everyone who sent a tip in — I was already too late; the narrative on it had been firmly constructed.
Welcome to Snappy vs Flatpak.
The Internet Laughs When Asked: “Can They Coexist?”
Can two competing, and subtly different, solutions to the same problem coexist peacefully?
It seems “the internet” has already decided that no, they can’t.
One GNOME developer already going as far as to call for a debate on whether to even allow Snappy into the Fedora archives at all, arguing that to do so would “undercut” Redhat’s effort:
“We …need to discuss, whether to allow that snapcore package into Fedora proper; there’s a strong argument to be made that we should accept all free software, but doing that could undercut our Flatpak effort. If popular upstreams start distributing snaps, then we’ll probably have to support it, though.
“It’d be quite unfortunate to support two competing desktop containerization solutions,” they add.
Is that from a technical standpoint or a monetary one? Which side am I supposed to be on? What if I don’t have enough information to decide?
Red Hat is a very profitable Linux company, and Canonical is, well, less so. But neither Flatpak nor Snappy are going to make their parent companies much money (they are free software, and cross-platform). Surely the for’s and against’s aren’t being drawn against old distro lines?
Get To The Point, Sneddon
I am late to the party. Short of regurgitating the press release issued yesterday (and linked to below) there’s little appreciable value I can add to the commentary that has not already spilled out in favour of the ‘us vs them’ model.
This is now, apparently, a war. I’m expected to pick a side. You’re either with ’em or against ’em. It doesn’t matter that both products have yet to actually achieve most of their lofty claims, much less explain why downloading a 200MB runtime is preferable to adding a PPA and installing an 50MB update…
But internet, don’t let facts or reason get in the way. Go ahead and pledge fealty to one side or risk being labelled a shill for the other.
Writing a blog (this one) that people (like you) read comes with a set of challenges, pressures and expectations. And as much as I may sometimes want to write about a topic (and as much as you may want me to write about them) sometimes… I just don’t have anything to say.