434: Endlessly Flat
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The Director of EndlessOS joins us to respond to recent Flatpak criticism.

We take the opportunity to expand on the overall effort to solve Linux fragmentation.

Special Guests: Martin Wimpress, Neal Gompa, and Will Thompson.

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Links:

• Pocket Popcorn Computer) — Finally, a handheld Linux device with a high-definition 1080p display and large battery life. Pocket P.C. is your hacker terminal on-the-go.
• On Flatpak disk usage and deduplication – Will Thompson’s GNOME-ish blog) — There is a blog post doing the rounds asserting that Flatpak Is Not The Future. The post is really long, and it seems unlikely that I and the author will ever agree on this topic, so I’m only going to talk about a couple of paragraphs about disk usage and sharing of runtimes between apps which caught my eye.
• Bustle) — Graphical D-Bus message analyser and profiler.
• Gnome Initial Setup)
• Endless OS Foundation) — Our mission is to help all people and communities connect with technology.
• Will sometimes does other stuff and writes about it)
• Flatpak Is Not the Future - Ludocode) — Flatpak calls itself “the future of application distribution”. I am not a fan. I’m going to outline here some of the technical, security and usability problems with Flatpak and others. I’ll try to avoid addressing “fixable” problems (like theming) and instead focus on fundamental problems inherent in their design. I aim to convince you that these are not the future of desktop Linux apps.
• docker-slim) — Don’t change anything in your Docker container image and minify it by up to 30x
• Flatseal) — Flatseal is a graphical utility to review and modify permissions from your Flatpak applications.
• Bruch with Brent with Stuart Langridge) — Brent sits down with Stuart Langridge, co-host of Bad Voltage, for an exploration of open source’s “final mile”, the text and language interface as a UX opportunity, terminals vs. search engines, Darwinian processes and crab-bucketism in software development, and more.
• Seeking contractors for work on Flathub project) — GNOME has a donor who is interested in supporting financial sustainability for app developers and removing barriers to an inclusive ecosystem. Flathub would like to use these funds to work with a contractor for a short-term project and make steps towards supporting application developers being able to request payments (whether donations or subscriptions).