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by jmhain 3485 days ago
> We just don't provide Linux binaries, except Ubuntu Snaps, because it is extremely difficult to do.

Have you considered packaging with Flatpak [0] as well? Very similar to Snaps, but it'll work with many distros instead of just Ubuntu.

[0] http://flatpak.org/
2 comments
morganvachon 3485 days ago
According to the Flatpak site, you have to install the Flatpak base first, which is only officially available for Fedora, Arch, and Ubuntu, with unofficial/testing/backported ports for a couple other distros. There is no source download I could find on the site, which is necessary to build it for unlisted distros like Slackware (though I suspect its strict reliance on systemd would cause issues there anyway).

This all flies in the face of their marketing statement "The days of chasing multiple Linux distributions are over"; you can't claim a one-size-fits-all system if it only fits six out of hundreds of distros.

Edit: To the downvoters, please reply instead, and tell me why you disagree with what I wrote. If I'm wrong I'll own it.

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l2dy 3485 days ago
I didn't downvote you, but here's the source[1].

[1] https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak

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morganvachon 3485 days ago
Yep, I found the source by searching for it on Github, what I was calling out was the fact that a link to the source from the Flatpak website itself was buried at the very bottom of the "about" section where I missed it completely the first few times I went over the site. It should have been included in the "Build" or at least "Developer" section of the site.

Maybe it's just an oversight on their part, but I find the lack of any discussion of source or licensing (is it GPL, MIT, BSD?) on the site a bit of a put-off. I see from digging into the Github files it's LGPL, but why not advertise that, and the source link, more prominently on the main page? That, along with the other issue I mentioned (catering to only a few distros while claiming support for all distros) gives me pause.

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jbk 3485 days ago
> Very similar to Snaps, but it'll work with many distros instead of just Ubuntu.

Snaps run on a lot of distributions too:

https://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/06/14/universal-snap-packag...

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