Lock-in and requirements driven by abusing monopolistic power is not "just business", it's a crooked practice.

Developers already do. We are talking about those who say that they need flatpak. Others make bundled releases just fine.

MS are actively trying to push UWP and deprecate other forms of applications. UWP makes DX mandatory, i.e. you can't use Vulkan from there. That's a clear example of lock-in junk.

I have two main reasons to want Flatpak:

1. To finally get all of my applications using the same Open/Save dialogs.

2. To make it impossible for badly-behaved games like The Escapists to doodle all over $HOME and $HOME/Documents with their non-hidden folders by locking them into sandboxes which don't allow access to those locations.

Regarding sandboxing. I don't think this should be always coming from developers' side necessarily. I.e. there can be some tools that would take a normal bundled tarball and provide an easy way to sandbox it after you downloaded the game.

These are not comparable. APT is a package distribution system... what you're saying here is like comparing apples to the apple cart.

A big factor is developer experience. Software done right on Linux will keep working with minimal tweaking required as time goes on regardless of whether it's closed or open source, while software that's done poorly will likely break sooner rather than later. The same is true of Windows, but there's just a hell of a lot more experience and knowledge about which practices are good & which are bad on Windows than there is for Linux, at least when it comes to games.

Microsoft did quite a lot to stamp out (or buy out) competitors before they could become a threat to their position.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osSMJRyxG0k

Methods of installing software is what I meant. Package managers and distributions are just a cluster fuck it’s hard to keep track of everything

That’s a very good point and might very well be true. But how you do hone skill and experience with an OS that keeps changing the rules?

Why re you making me defend Microsoft I really don’t want to. Buying out competition is hardly a crime and I would look to the sellers more then the buyers if you’re unhappy with it. Microsoft not too long ago bought out Canonical one of the biggest players in the Linux desktop scene. All I can say to that is. That’s what happens when your fan base doesn’t financially support you.

Also Linux can’t just keep blaming Microsoft for their lack of public interest. Manopolies have been beaten all the time by bigger success in the industry. Sony beat Nintendo then Microsoft beat Sony, again and now Nintendo looks to be back on top. Make something good and people will get it.

Yeah I’ve seen videos from him before. AMD fans and Linux fans have a lot in common. Always blaming the competition instead of taking responsibly. I don’t want to get into a AMD vs everyone but suffice to say. The day that AMD make something good is the day I’ll use it. I put myself first as a customer not a brand. They’re here to serve me not the other way around.

that's cute ;)
reminds me of all the good old gtk/gnome <=> qt/kde fighting, where each side would desperately try to run only applications using their toolkit, so that nothing would dare to endanger the uniform look of the desktop :D

(flatpak seems a total overkill as solution for this)

ever tried firejail ?
firejail --private=/home/xxx/.local/share/escapist application
(or something like that)
will launch the application in a container and mount /home/xxx/.local/share/escapist as /home/xxx

or
firejail --overlay-named=escapist application

will mount a filesystem overlay (overlayFS) on top of the filesystem. All filesystem modifications go into the overlay, which is stored under $HOME/.firejail/<NAME>

Once you're used to having the "application-specific bookmark" feature for KDE's Places sidebar, you really start to miss it in the GTK+ dialogs... not to mention the hassle of manually having to keep the Places bookmarks in sync between the KDE and GTK+ dialogs.

As for it being an overkill solution, it's MUCH more stable than the infamously crashy old LD_PRELOAD hack named KGtk (not to mention that KDE's dialogs see all KGtk-monkeypatched apps as the same for application-specific bookmarking purposes) and I might as well use Flatpak if I was planning on combining it with Firejail anyway.

I'm still on a Lubuntu/Kubuntu 14.04 LTS hybrid desktop. There are known bugs in how Firejail interacts with 14.04's versions of components like PulseAudio so I decided to just defer the problem until I upgrade... at which point, since I'm already going to be evaluating Flatpak as a means to unify dialogs, there's no point in also using Firejail if I can avoid it.

that's a good point. didn't even know that these can be made application-specific.
I can see how that can be useful.
tbh I only ever use two bookmarks: one to $Home and one to my permament storage on a RAID system
I put up with doing a few clicks from there to my specific destination.

Methods of installing software on Windows:

- Windows Store
- Executable installer (e.g. GOG installer)
- "unzip and go" archives

And on Linux:

- System repositories
- .deb/.rpm/etc. package
- Executable installer (e.g. GOG installer)
- "unzip and go" archives

I personally find it much easier to keep track of everything on Linux than on Windows. Plus Linux has a more rigid structure for user files so it's less likely that configuration files etc. for one piece of software will be shotgunned across a bunch of different locations making it hard to find everything when making backups.

But the rules don't keep changing, which is why games ported by e.g. Ryan Gordon, Ethan Lee, and other veteran Linux developers work well and consistently keep working many years ahead, while releases by less experienced developers tend to be a bit more "hit and miss". This situation will improve as time goes on and more developers learn.

Microsoft did not buy out Canonical; I'm not sure where you pulled that from. Such a thing would have been huge news.

It's not about having a monopoly position but about abusing said position, something which Microsoft is infamous for because it's something they have done repeatedly and been in court over numerous times.

It's true though - you can look it all up yourself if you have any doubts.

That’s fair I think I’d have to write a dedicated article to go into further detail on this one. The short and sweet of it is though more Executable installers for Linux.

Every time I use Mint Ubuntu Manjaro, something has always changed and I have to get used to it again. Like writing that script for example.

Huh? Weird, it looks like they used just integrated some Ubuntu parts in the OS. It must have been this BS https://fossbytes.com/microsoft-buys-canonical-kills-ubuntu-linux-forever/ it’s the first thing that pops up on google. I know, I know, should look at things more closely.

Any business that obtains a monopoly is going to be doing something like that. Besides I’m criticising Linux not praising Microsoft. When says “Linux has got all these problems that needs addressing” you can’t respond to that with “But Microsoft did this and that”

I think this little clip from the Simpsons sums it up perfect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQcBI5SKJgU


Sorry mate I just don’t care. Either make something good or lose your business.

Why did Ruiner came out as tarball rather than regular GOG installer?

Haven't downloaded it yet, but I'd guess it must be because it contains a file bigger than 4GB (much like The Witcher 2 and Full Throttle Remastered).

Ah, good point. There is one like that indeed: Ruiner-LinuxNoEditor.pak

The game has some problem with cutscenes too - they don't work.