I recently brought over some ideas from VanillaOS over to my Arch install.
Install as much as possible via flatpak
Install a bunch of other stuff in distrobox (with podman backend)
That gives me like 50% (idk fake number) of the features from VanillaOS, but I get to keep control over my system.
Not that I ever had any problems with native pacman installs though… so… not sure how much benefit I’m really getting from doing this. I guess my pacman -Syu command runs faster now. That’s something…
Honestly, just because I’m the most comfortable in Arch. I tried VanillaOS briefly, but it was way too annoying to install tailscale, so I went back to what I know.
Not judging but just fyi, that’s like the worst of both worlds tbh. The point of installing independently of the base system is that the system is immutable and easy to roll back to a previous state, if you use a mutable system and also install packages with other means, you’re working around a limitation that isn’t even there and wasting more space to get almost none of the benefits (aside from easier permission control for Flatpaks)
Really my main point of doing this was to try something different. I’ve been neutral on flatpak this whole time. I’ve never had problems with native installs, but I’m also a little judicious on what I try to install on my systems. The point of this exercise was to flip those habits.
About flatpaks, I’ve learned:
a ton of stuff I installed via AUR is available as a flatpak
some flatpak apps seem to be a little less buggy than the native installs for some reason… (Thunderbird specifically)
flatpaks use more disk space
Distrobox has also been cool because I usually don’t like to install random crap on my machine, but with Distrobox I’ve been doing just that. I can install random C++ libraries, Node, Haskell, Postgres, etc and not worry about polluting my main system I actually care about. In the past, I would take some time to consider if I should really install this random thing. And yes, I’d pacman -Rs pkg if it didn’t pan out.
I’m not sure if I’ll keep running the system like this, but so far it’s been interesting to run things a little differently.
Things I’ve liked:
Thunderbird flatpak is less buggy than Thunderbird native
Managing flatpak apps via Software Center or flatpak is easy/nice
Distrobox seems useful for working on different types of software projects
Things I don’t personally care about (but other people might and that’s fine):
using more disk space
the fact that my main system is still mutable
Things I didn’t like:
nothing so far
I actually went in thinking I was gonna have to fight
with the flatpak permissions, but everything has worked
fine so far, so… not sure what I don’t like.
maybe I’ll hit a snag soon and then I’ll change my mind
I recently brought over some ideas from VanillaOS over to my Arch install.
That gives me like 50% (idk fake number) of the features from VanillaOS, but I get to keep control over my system.
Not that I ever had any problems with native
pacmaninstalls though… so… not sure how much benefit I’m really getting from doing this. I guess mypacman -Syucommand runs faster now. That’s something…Why are you even running arch at that point, for the DE updates?
Honestly, just because I’m the most comfortable in Arch. I tried VanillaOS briefly, but it was way too annoying to install tailscale, so I went back to what I know.
Not judging but just fyi, that’s like the worst of both worlds tbh. The point of installing independently of the base system is that the system is immutable and easy to roll back to a previous state, if you use a mutable system and also install packages with other means, you’re working around a limitation that isn’t even there and wasting more space to get almost none of the benefits (aside from easier permission control for Flatpaks)
Really my main point of doing this was to try something different. I’ve been neutral on flatpak this whole time. I’ve never had problems with native installs, but I’m also a little judicious on what I try to install on my systems. The point of this exercise was to flip those habits.
About flatpaks, I’ve learned:
Distrobox has also been cool because I usually don’t like to install random crap on my machine, but with Distrobox I’ve been doing just that. I can install random C++ libraries, Node, Haskell, Postgres, etc and not worry about polluting my main system I actually care about. In the past, I would take some time to consider if I should really install this random thing. And yes, I’d
pacman -Rs pkgif it didn’t pan out.I’m not sure if I’ll keep running the system like this, but so far it’s been interesting to run things a little differently.
Things I’ve liked:
flatpakis easy/niceThings I don’t personally care about (but other people might and that’s fine):
Things I didn’t like:
Byebye to your storage 😆
Luckily, I’m able to afford more than an 8GB SSD on my laptop. 😆
$ podman system df TYPE TOTAL ACTIVE SIZE RECLAIMABLE Images 2 1 2.775GB 2.293GB (83%) Containers 1 0 3.492GB 3.492GB (100%) Local Volumes 2 2 0B 0B (0%) $ flatpak list | wc -l 65 $ du -hs /var/lib/flatpak 12G /var/lib/flatpak $ df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/cryptroot 234G 31G 191G 14% /A 256GB drive is on the smaller side and I’m barely at 14%. Storage is cheap.