I feel like inmutable distros are in a quite good state nowadays, and while solutions like bootc and sysexts are not “mainstream” yet, it’s getting there

when it comes to getting non Flatpak packages, things get interesting, there are a lot of options, really

AppImages, statically linked binaries, tarballs, OCI containers, distrobox/toolbx, Homebrew, VMs, Nix even experimental formats like RunImages, AppBundles and FlatImages

if you need some non-system level package, you’ll have a way to use it yet, still it seems sort of chaotic “which one should I choose? how will I be able to easily manage them?”

GPM, dbin, Soar, AM… and the list goes on

and it’s okay, the so called cloud native approach is still evolving, so this fragmentation is expected so it’s nice to share opinions about this while we’re living this interesting phase any thoughts?

  • overcast@lemmy.zipOP
    2·
    4 hours ago

    my thoughts

    • lol i just completely forgot about snaps
    • Nix can’t be installed in the standard way on inmutable distros :(
    • Homebrew is actually good, it’s exactly like your usual package manager and works with /home as a symlink, however it can take up a lot of storage since it pulls it’s own dependencies and that GCC thing is another one
    • distrobox/toolbx have their usecases, but until things get better it can be used as a last resort
    • and good old AppImages, I think they’re good for slow moving projects and games, but a large amount of them are not really portable, which defeats the purpose of AppImagws in the first place