xdg-desktop-portal-gtk VS flathub

Compare xdg-desktop-portal-gtk vs flathub and see what are their differences.

xdg-desktop-portal-gtk

Gtk implementation of xdg-desktop-portal (by flatpak)

flathub

Issue tracker and new submissions (by flathub)
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xdg-desktop-portal-gtk flathub
9 114
114 1,071
3.5% 2.2%
6.8 6.7
5 days ago about 16 hours ago
C
GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 only GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 only
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

xdg-desktop-portal-gtk

Posts with mentions or reviews of xdg-desktop-portal-gtk. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-05-17.
  • Is the Racket 8.9 flatpak supposed to take this long to load?
    2 projects | /r/Racket | 17 May 2023
    I came across this, could this be playing a role? If it fixes Fedora 37 then it would be a clue and perhaps then the package could enter the string itself? https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal-gtk/issues/72
  • Where to file bug reports about "portals" ?
    7 projects | /r/flatpak | 27 Mar 2023
    However, the actual dialogs and access points are provided by a backend, which differs from what desktop are you using. For example, Gnome uses xdg-desktop-portal-gtk, KDE uses xdg-desktop-portal-kde and so on.\ If there is an issue with the implementation of an portal, you need to find the backend you use and report it to them.
  • Web (Epiphany) running in the background
    1 project | /r/gnome | 20 Feb 2023
    Is the Web search provider enabled in Settings? Those can apparently trigger background detection: https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal-gtk/issues/293
  • How can the "Save File" dialog window of Chrome be set to focus when saving?
    1 project | /r/gnome | 5 Sep 2022
    That sounds like https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal-gtk/issues/137
  • obs wayland pipewire capture missing
    4 projects | /r/Gentoo | 3 Sep 2022
    gui-libs/xdg-desktop-portal-lxqt Available versions: 0.2.0 Homepage: https://lxqt-project.org/ Description: Backend implementation for xdg-desktop-portal using Qt/KF5/libfm-qt gui-libs/xdg-desktop-portal-wlr Available versions: 0.4.0(0/9999) 0.5.0(0/9999) ~0.6.0(0/9999) **9999(0/9999)*l {elogind systemd} Homepage: https://github.com/emersion/xdg-desktop-portal-wlr Description: xdg-desktop-portal backend for wlroots [I] kde-plasma/xdg-desktop-portal-kde Available versions: (5) 5.24.6 ~5.25.4 {debug} Installed versions: 5.24.6(5)(01:02:06 07/29/22)(-debug) Homepage: https://kde.org/plasma-desktop Description: Backend implementation for xdg-desktop-portal that is using Qt/KDE Frameworks [I] sys-apps/xdg-desktop-portal Available versions: 1.14.6 {geolocation screencast systemd} Installed versions: 1.14.6(20:25:44 08/27/22)(-geolocation -screencast -systemd) Homepage: https://flatpak.org/ https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal Description: Desktop integration portal sys-apps/xdg-desktop-portal-gnome Available versions: 42.3 {X wayland} Homepage: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/xdg-desktop-portal-gnome Description: Backend implementation for xdg-desktop-portal using GNOME sys-apps/xdg-desktop-portal-gtk Available versions: 1.8.0 1.14.0 {X wayland} Homepage: https://flatpak.org/ https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal-gtk Description: Backend implementation for xdg-desktop-portal using GTK+ Found 6 matches
  • Flaptak (and Snap) is not the future
    10 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 23 Nov 2021
  • GNOME 41 is out.
    3 projects | /r/archlinux | 10 Nov 2021
    you still xdg-desktop-portal-wlr in sway for screen sharing. the purpose of the gtk portal on non-gnome setups is to pass through some gtk settings (e.g. fontconfig, aliasing, gtk theme) to flatpak apps. your gtk flatpak apps won't follow the system theme and fontconfig unless you have the xdg-desktop-portal-gtk installed. right now it's borked though see below for more details - https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/72686?project=1&string=xdg-desktop-portal-gtk - https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal-gtk/issues/360
  • xdg-desktop-portal-gtk PR#345: Gnome-free portals
    1 project | /r/swaywm | 8 Jun 2021
  • What's killing a background app and how to reset it?
    1 project | /r/kde | 31 Mar 2021

flathub

Posts with mentions or reviews of flathub. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-04-12.
  • XZ backdoor story – Initial analysis
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 12 Apr 2024
    > Nobody ever even audits the binary contents of flatpaks on flathub (were they actually built from the source? the author attests so!).

    IME/IIRC There aren't (or shouldn't be) any binary contents on Flathub that are submitted by the author, at least for projects with source available? You're supposed to submit a short, plain-text recipe instead, which then gets automatically built from source outside the control of the author.

    > The Flathub service then uses the manifest from your repository to continuously build and distribute your application on every commit.

    https://docs.flathub.org/docs/for-app-authors/submission/#ho...

    Usually the recipes should just list the appropriate URLs to get the source code, or, for proprietary applications, the official .DEBs. Kinda like AUR, but JSON/YAML. Easy to audit if you want:

    https://github.com/orgs/flathub/repositories

  • FOSS software is probably less likely to abuse this, but it just depends how ruthless the publisher is, a lot of people desire to be successful and it's human nature to look for advantages to put yourself above others in competitive environments.
    1 project | /r/programmingcirclejerk | 6 Dec 2023
  • Flathub – The Linux App Store
    9 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 16 Nov 2023
    I also don't believe third parties maintainers packaging software on flathub is a big issue but I'm also not familiar with how other distro repos trust their maintainers. Hopefully more developers maintain their flatpak themselves (or someone they trust) and get their apps verified. If most apps are verified, warning users of unverified apps might be a good idea.

    There's ongoing discussion about splitting open source and proprietary apps in to seperate repos [1]. Additionally having seperate repos for verified and unverified apps might make it more obvious where an app comes from in the cli.

    But I don't know how seamlessly an app could transition between being in the third party repo and being in the official repo. Having the user quietly stop receiving updates seems like a bad idea, but automatically migrating might not be desirable either.

    I also think flatpaks cli interface needs some work. It is functional but far from distro package managers.

    Being verified is especially important for critical apps. Recently someone added malicious versions of apps to the snap store [3]. This lead to people getting their cryptocurrency stolen.

    [1] https://github.com/flathub/flathub/issues/691

    [2] https://docs.flathub.org/docs/for-app-authors/requirements

    [3] https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/temporary-suspension-of-automat...

  • Bforartists Flatpak, coming soon to Flathub
    2 projects | /r/Bforartists | 29 Jun 2023
    That means Linux users can now install Bforartists on any Linux distro easily, regardless of glibc version! https://github.com/flathub/flathub/pull/4295
  • Turtle 0.3 released (formerly TurtleGit)
    1 project | /r/gnome | 23 Jun 2023
    Still having some problems with the flathub build, see https://github.com/flathub/flathub/pull/4082 for the current status.
  • TurtleGit released, a git frontend for GNOME and Nautilus
    1 project | /r/gnome | 25 May 2023
    Here is the flathub draft pull request: https://github.com/flathub/flathub/pull/4082
  • The first tip to give to any new Linux user should be "do NOT search for, download, and install software on the Web!"
    2 projects | /r/linux | 22 May 2023
    i assume you dont know how flathub works , theirs little or no QC , done flathub is just get told theirs an update for the package , if yo go look at the github repo pes https://github.com/flathub/flathub/pull/4164 for example , only updates the link to the girt repo , theirs 0 code checked
  • Who is behind flathub and rpmfusion really?
    2 projects | /r/Fedora | 21 May 2023
    It all should be written in pages for contributors, read the docs for fusion, and the docs for flathub.
  • Flathub just hit 1 billion total downloads
    2 projects | /r/linux | 6 May 2023
    These are criticisms of the flatpak ecosystem as it stands today. Currently, the Firefox ESR package on flathub seems to be caught in limbo or maybe dead. Mozilla publishes both a snap and a flatpak of Firefox latest, but only a snap of the ESR version. This raises the question of why. Have Mozilla chosen to invest more in snaps than in flatpaks? If so, what's their reasoning? (More users on snaps, making it similar to why they put more investment into Windows than Linux? Something else?) If they haven't invested more into snaps than flatpaks, is this a sign that it's harder to maintain flatpaks (or at least on flathub) than snaps? If that's true, I would hope that flatpak/flathub would be soliciting feedback from Mozilla about it.
  • VirtualBox as Flatpak
    1 project | /r/flatpak | 4 May 2023
    Because that may be very hard to sandbox: https://github.com/flathub/flathub/issues/3366

What are some alternatives?

When comparing xdg-desktop-portal-gtk and flathub you can also consider the following projects:

xdg-desktop-portal-wlr - xdg-desktop-portal backend for wlroots

ZeroTier-GUI - A Linux front-end for ZeroTier

nix-gui - Use NixOS Without Coding

Ryujinx - Experimental Nintendo Switch Emulator written in C#

org.signal.Signal

bubblewrap - Low-level unprivileged sandboxing tool used by Flatpak and similar projects

us.zoom.Zoom

flatpak - Linux application sandboxing and distribution framework

flatpak-cve-checker

openbsd-wip - OpenBSD work in progress ports

freedesktop-sdk

steam-runtime - A runtime environment for Steam applications