Please don't. I like having options, sometimes RPMs are useful, sometimes Flatpaks are useful. Let me choose.
this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2025
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Using RPMs through a frontend like Discover or Gnome Software can sometimes have unintended side effects that are much more easily anticipated when using dnf.
Just the other day, I uninstalled something through Gnome Software that was an RPM, and it also removed fuse-fs packages, breaking all of my appimage stuff until I manually installed fuse again.
This doesn't ever happen with Flatpak in my experience, though I could just be lucky. It makes some sense to limit the destruction potential for less technical frontend installers like Gnome Software and leave the RPMs to something else like dnf. Though, I do really enjoy being able to open a manually downloaded RPM in a nice GUI to install it.
Exactly this. Kde's graphical application store actually has a warning on arch, since pacman can be even more problematic when it comes to abstraction layers like GUI's.
At this point, rpm's and deb packages can be auto updated through their relevant package managers. And it looks like gnome software is attempting to try to get user packages installed via flatpak entirely.
This. Arch based distros have understood this a long time ago, most ship with no GUI for their package managers and if they ship with one they throw you to a terminal to solve anything, as it should be.
I don't want to deal with any of that, so I run Bazzite, do flatpaks only, and use Distrobox for whatever I can't find on the homebrew package manager.
Distros are still free to make their own RPM packages, they can't go around the GPL there.
But having official flatpak release makes it very easy to update to the latest versions regardless of your distro.
They have different purposes. While I do use flatpak whenever possible there are some things that need to integrate more closely with the OS and the sandbox makes the tool or service useless.
You can still install RPMs through dnf. There is also dnfdragora AFAIK. Packagekit (cross-distro API and daemon that abstracts package managers like dnf and apt) is a pile of crap anyway, and is a source of many GNOME Software's issues.
Why
Flatpaks let me isolate app files and disable permissions, RPMs give me greater access to the system files.
great way to make people detest gnome and flatpaks for the rest of their lives! brilliant move!
But why? It's job is to install software, why make it worse by supporting less package formats?
But why?
Probably because having two separate dependency management solutions can lead to a lot of needless headaches.
And it makes particular sense for Gnome to switch over, since Gnome is focused on user space apps. Flatpaks should generally be more relevant and lower risk, long term, since they don't require root privileges to install.
That's just plain dumb. I usually don't install rpm packages with the store but I frequently update my system from it. If they remove rpm support then they remove a huge ease of use feature.
My case is the other way around. I look for software in the store, and if I can't find it, then I install from the terminal, but I always update (and remove) from terminal. I'm a diehard Gnome user, but this will certainly make me move to something else.
Now, in flatpak's defense, it's great to keep browsers away from my system, as well as some other inconsequential apps that have no business integrating with my system. I like flatpak's for these use cases. Everything else, I need my RPMs.
Ugh I can't wait for PopOs to move to Cosmic
More like poop os haha get it
haterz gonna hate...
I let the intrusive thoughts win
It doesn't use pkgkit like Discover? wtf?
It does. This discussion is about Fedora where packagekit works with dnf and RPMs.
Then gnome will cease to be an option.
Fucking flatpaks.
While I prefer Debian packages, what's wrong with Flatpaks other than a bit of bloat caused by redundant dependencies? They're not Snaps.
They acutally use deduplication. So if there is a package needed in e.g. 10 different flatpaks it will not take 10x the space on the drive.
Really? Nice. Didn't know that about Flatpaks.
It was mentioned in a podcast from the linux cast - there was actually a guy (I believe he works for gnome) and he cleaned up with some prejudices about flatpaks. One of them being that they consume too much space on disk ;)
I really don't like how gnome is doing things, even I not using a distro that uses rpm im considering migrate to cosmic