Orion for Linux

Stardread1997

alexjsteffen exactly. It would be better for them not to feel rushed to meet a deadline. It would be best for a release they were more or less confident in rather than an iffy release

emanuelserpa

IMO, launching before Christmas is optimal because some people will have plenty of time to try it and report bugs.

It's alpha, anyways, we don't need to worry about fast fixes or something like this.

aspiringnobody

Have you given any thought to distribution? An appimage would be nice for quick testing on the most distros. If not I’d like to put in a vote for an RPM so I can install on Suse.

Or I suppose we can compile that’s fine too.

Shoggoth

aspiringnobody Pretty sure they've already stated flatpak only for now.

That should cover just about everything.

Vistaus

Shoggoth That's too bad — I really don't like Flatpak. Even if they don't want to go with distro-specific packages, I'd much rather have a tarball, or an AppImage if they really don't want to provide a tarball. I'll still give the Flatpak a try, though.

Narvi2

Vistaus new generation of desktops like immutable distros (fedora, bazzite etc) use flatpak as a first choice for GUI apps, and everything else would be a hack to install. Imo this is a very good decision to package it like that

Shoggoth

Vistaus Flatpaks are the future of software distribution on Linux, especially for companies looking to port their applications and do not wish to be locked down to a distros repository, or managing a bunch of different packages.

Flatpak ensures that an app will have what it needs to run on any distribution that supports Flatpak and can be easily updated, whereas AppImages require hacky solutions or 3rd party tools to manage. Flatpak is also far more popular and better supported than AppImage. Some AppImages even require different versions of things like FUSE, (ever had those libfuse.so.2 errors?) and then you have to through the process of installing things needed for the AppImage to open, then you have to Chmod it in most cases. With flatpak, it's just "flatpak install *.flatpak" and you're done. It also handles .desktop files where for AppImage you again need 3rd party tools, or do it your self by hand.

Flatpak also offers sandboxing and security isolation, which is pretty nice for a browsers.

Managing a Flatpak is much easier than handling AppImages.

I think making it a flatpak is the perfect choice.. at least IMO.

They could do an AppImage and roll that up into a Flatpak pretty easily, then provide both if they choose with minimum work. I know Duckstation use to do that in its scripts.

Hope that didn't sound too aggressive, lol I don't really have a super strong opinion on how they package it as long as it isn't snap. 😛

ColdSprinkles9

Would this have stability/smoothness changes over what epiphany already is?

Dustin

ColdSprinkles9 They have stated in this thread that it's not a fork of Epiphany

ColdSprinkles9

If it's not based on epiphany, it might be hard to implement this sort of a behaviour

nzo

Shoggoth For me AppImages is more reliable than Flatpack. Everything you need is embedded on it, It’s lighter, faster, self-sufficient and It should be compatible on every (proper) distribution (never got an issue with AppImages 🤔). I think It’s could be the future of Linux applications against the thousands of distribution, a unique file executable on any Linux machine. While Flatpack is for me a temporary container like solution to handle an app in every distro, which can be a mess with some app like Steam for exemple. This is not like this how we should install and use an app, but It work !

The main problem is the Linux fragmentation in a thousand of different distro…

Vistaus

Shoggoth I know and I'm not against Flatpak, I just don't like the way it works.

But why does everyone focus on AppImage or distro packages? I said I would be fine with a tarball as well. A tarball is not hacky nor hard to create/maintain.

Shoggoth

nzo Just because you don’t personally encounter issues, or because many others here haven’t, doesn’t mean the problems I mentioned with AppImage don’t exist. I’ve worked with and packaged both, so I’m familiar with the challenges developers and users face with both.

You brought up Steam, and as far as I know the Steam Flatpak isn’t official. There is a reason for that. 😛
I don't even think bazzite uses a Flatpak for Steam. but as you said with AppImages, a lot of people don't have an issue with it. (Doesn't mean it doesn't have flaws..) Flatpak isn't perfect, but way closer to the goal post in every way.

Vistaus

I wasn't attacking you or anything for AppImage just bringing up reasons why they'd choose flatpak over Appimage for discussions sake. I'd be fine with either, but I'd hope they'd use what's best for everyone and not me, as it doesn't matter what it is for me. One is better for your average person not versed with Linux.. Those are the people you target every time when you develop software. (When you can.)

I don't have anything to say about tarballs. Lol Nothing wrong with offering a tarball for advanced users.

ZZ

I switched from orion+ monthly to the lifetime plan to support orion for linux

Vistaus

@Shoggoth Thanks for your reply. 🙂

The only thing I would like to address: you mentioned what would work better for the average person not versed with Linux. Do keep in mind that we're talking about the first public alpha version here. I don't think the average person not versed with Linux is going to try alpha software anyway.

But I'm going to try the Flatpak version no matter what. I'm really looking forward to it, so Flatpak is fine for now. I just hope they'll offer a tarball (or AppImage) later on. 🙂 (Btw, even tarball versions of software have self-updating mechanisms these days, so they're actually pretty easy to use.)

« Previous Page