Over One Million Active Users, and Growing | Flathub Documentation
docs.flathub.org
Earlier this month we shared new app metadata guidelines in response to the growth and maturity of Flathub. Today we're proud to share about that growth in a bit more detail including a huge milestone, how we calculate stats, and what we believe is driving that growth.
  • henfredemars@infosec.pubEnglish
    971·
    9 months ago

    It was me. Reinstalled three times a couple days ago because I’m an idiot.

    But I’m an idiot who uses FOSS and I rather be dumb in a world of genius than a genius in a world of dumb.

  • HouseWolf@lemm.ee
    16·
    9 months ago

    I know there’s abit of a war going on about the technical merits of flatpaks which I don’t know enough about the Unix world to fully understand.

    As a newer user flatpaks have been pretty great, I like having the Android like permissions system through flatseal especially for my proprietary apps like Discord.

    I dunno if I’d go all in on using only flatpaks but for what it is, consider me a fan.

  • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.de
    15·
    9 months ago

    The issue with those numbers is that they don’t account for people having multiple devices. My PC, Laptop, and Steam Deck all download apps from flathub, so I’m likely counted multiple times. On the other hand most people only use one device, so the actual numbers probably don’t doffer much. It’s an estimate anyway.

    Edit: I’m not surprised the amount of people using flatpak/flathub increased so much. It’s my preferred method of installing proprietary software and works on any distro, even unconventional ones like NixOS or Alpine. Sandboxing continues to get better, be it isolation or usability.

  • downhomechunk@midwest.socialEnglish
    10·
    9 months ago

    I am not one of the million, but I’m glad flatpaks exist. Anything to increase ease of use and hopefully wider linux adoption is a good thing.

  • 4vr@lemmy.ca
    92·
    9 months ago

    I like flatpaks but bundling everything as flatpak is a overkill.

    • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
      10·
      9 months ago

      You mean GitHub signin?

      Because Flathub operates on GitHub. If you hate it that much, you could use a different Flatpak distributor (I heard Fedora has its own?)

  • Aniki 🌱🌿@lemm.eeEnglish
    75·
    9 months ago

    By choice or by force? I’ll take flatpaks over Appimages and literally rocks over snaps, but what is this metric actually saying?

    • joojmachine@lemmy.mlOP
      161·
      9 months ago

      It is saying that more than one million people are actively using Flathub. What do you mean by force?

      • Aniki 🌱🌿@lemm.eeEnglish
        42·
        9 months ago

        Well if there’s an application that the developer only releases a flatpak for, do I have a choice in being one of those million if there’s no easy way to compile it myself? What if I’m a newbie linuxer and cannot get all the dev tools installed?

        • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.de
          3·
          9 months ago

          What do you currently do if a developer doesn’t package their software for other distros? Maybe they only provide an AUR package or a .deb, so someone else has to package it.

          With flatpak the only difference is that a distro independent package exists, that anyone can install. It being possible to do cross-distro apps with a single package doesn’t make it any harder for distros to also package it.

          • Aniki 🌱🌿@lemm.eeEnglish
            1·
            9 months ago

            I’m not arguing against flatpaks I’m just calling the number suspect to meaningless as a metric.

            • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.de
              1·
              9 months ago

              Thanks, I think I understand now what you mean. I still disagree on the notion that people are forced to use flatpak and that the number is meaningless because of that. People choose to use flatpak because it solves their problem.

              I’d say it’s similar to many people who use Ubuntu because of its big user base and software support. It’s still an achievement to be recognized.

              Anyway, I do agree that the number itself isn’t really relevant. I’m pretty tired and maybe I’m a bit pedantic, so good night (or have a nice day, depending on your timezone).

        • yukijoou@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          52·
          9 months ago

          what’s your point? if flatpak makes it easier for developers to package their software and easier for users to install it, there’s nothing wrong with it being famous

        • joojmachine@lemmy.mlOP
          52·
          9 months ago

          There are no cases of this that I know of. There are some developers that don’t encourage repackaging their apps, though.

        • survivalmachine@beehaw.org
          31·
          9 months ago

          do I have a choice in being one of those million if there’s no easy way to compile it myself?

          You always have a choice. Just yesterday, I had an app’s documentation say “install brew so you can download our application and themes”. I noped right out of there and found a different application altogether.

    • pastermil@sh.itjust.works
      12·
      9 months ago

      I don’t think there’s any business entity artificially forcing the users to use it (like Firefox on Ubuntu 😉) if that’s you’re asking.

      Otherwise, the only case where the user is “forced” to use flatpak would be when the software they’re looking for is not available under their distro’s repo, which happens a lot especially in point release distros.