I’ve been involved with Linux for a long time, and Flatpak almost seems too good to be true:
Just install any app on any distro, isolated from the base system and with granular rights management. I’ve just set up my first flatpak-centric system and didn’t notice any issues with it at all, apart from a 1-second waiting time before an app is launched.
What’s your long-term experience?
Notice any annoying bugs or instabilities? Do apps crash a lot? Disappear from Flathub or are unmaintained? Do you often have issues with apps that don’t integrate well with your native system? Are important apps missing?
Flatpaks have been amazing for me.
My home directory is a lot cleaner, dependency issues are a thing of the past, it’s easier on the developers, I’m getting updates faster (not having to rely on distro maintainers), my installs are more portable than before.
I wish we had Android-like permission setting, where it pops up asking if each program can use X permission as it requests it.
And I wish Gnome settings would implement some of the more basic flatseal options (flatseal can still exist for power users), although that one isn’t a shortcoming of flatpaks itself, it’s more to do with development manpower on the Gnome side.
Overall I’m really glad that one of the biggest annoyances in Linux is getting resolved. We’ve finally pretty much agreed on an app distribution and packaging standard