Linux - Why not Edrummin App packaged as Flatpak?

[Sharkuel]

Hello all,

Hope you are doing well. And I hope this is the correct place to add this request/question here.

Given that the Flatpak format is here to stay, and is widely used accross the whole myriad of Linux Distros, I can't wonder to ask and/or suggest, is there a reason why the Edrummin app isn't packaged as a flatpak?

The reason I asked is because I am running Arch Linux, and I noticed that when you try to run the sh install file it runs an apt-get command to retrieve some dependencies. That's nice for Debian based distros, but for the folks who use Fedora, OpenSUSE or Arch, installing the app can be an headache. I mean, yeah you can use distrobox to circumvent this, but not everyone is keen to have containers on their machine only for a single app.

This is where Flatpak can come in handy, since it can be packaged with all dependencies and also Flatpaks are completely distro agnostic! Would make everyone's life ease, and honestly, I would preffer that if the app becomes available on the Flathub, such would be done by Audiofront directly as a certified app.

[Rob]

I don't know anything about flatpaks. I will research some basic information about them for interest sake, but I doubt implementing them would be simple and likely would require a significant time investment to get it working well with my build system. I certainly have zero interest in maintaining my software on someone else's 'hub'. For the number of Linux users, it's just not worth it.

[Rob]

Flatpak also won’t export udev rules or systemd services from the sandbox to the host and requires manual configuration after installing the flatpak package.

That's a showstopper.

[Sharkuel]

Well that's really sad to read, but I somewhat understand your point.

But just as an headsup, Linux is growing in the Desktop market, specially on the Content Creation side. We have companies like Presonus and Davinci Resolve supporting Linux, as the Steam Deck and the odd decisions behind Microsoft are pushing Linux like we never seen before as a quite viable.

Audio & Music Production on Linux, since Pipewire was implemented, has become quite powerful, on par with Mac. My whole studio runs on Arch Linux, and it is a bummer that you don't support non-Debian based distros, and there is a whole comunity of Linux Sound Engineers and Musicians that use Linux so perhaps you might reconsider supporting other packaging formats in the near future.

Also, if the sandboxed nature of Flatpaks is a showstopper, maybe you can consider the alternative: AppImages.

Thank you for your response though!

[Rob]

Just as a heads-up, Linux has been ready to take the world by storm for the past 30 years--that and nuclear fusion.

Also my Linux apps.depend on VSTGUI which has its own dependencies on Debian I think.

[Sharkuel]

Just as a heads-up, Linux has been ready to take the world by storm for the past 30 years--that and nuclear fusion.

Also my Linux apps.depend on VSTGUI which has its own dependencies on Debian I think.

6.88% of the Desktop Market if we count ChromeOS that is dropping its Gentoo roots and jumping to the Debian bandwagon. And with steady growth in the last year or so. Mac users are at 14.5%.

AppImages can have all the dependencies packaged and the file can be hosted on your website as well, and they are distro-agnostic.
I don't want to sound confrontational, just a suggestion given the current state of affairs in the Linux world that could both benefit your project, if you want to support Linux as a viable platform, and the Linux comunity in general that want to use your solutions, without being limited to deb packages. They even have a tool for that: https://appimage.github.io/appimagetool/