And also all the other improvements of the Linux world : Vulkan, KDE/Gnome, Wayland, Pipewire, Wine, Proton, Valve, Flatpaks.
And also all the other improvements of the Linux world : Vulkan, KDE/Gnome, Wayland, Pipewire, Wine, Proton, Valve, Flatpaks.
Because it is packaging regression. 497 megs for GIMP vs 49.7 is very bad. For graphical libraries this is very bad. Why many games don’t support wayland? Because libSDL shipped with it does not support wayland.
It’s a tradeoff. You have to include more in the image but being able to target way more linux users is an obvious win. I would call the horrible state of linux desktop fragmentation “very bad” as well.
Flatpaks have finally made most distros interchangeable for me, they’re a wonderful tool. Not every single thing should be installed with them, but the current compromise of shipping core system components (including DEs in here) as native packages and user apps as flatpaks has drastically reduced the amount of troubleshooting I’ve had to do. When the vast majority of your tiny packages have no overhead, you can eat a few gigs for a nicer user experience. Even on my 120GB laptop that hasn’t been a practical issue for me.