Flathub Alternatives

flathub reviews and mentions

• 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

• A note from our sponsor - InfluxDB
  www.influxdata.com | 20 May 2025

  InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now. Learn more →