The Future of Flatpak

Over here in Windows land I can’t fathom why you need something like Flatpak just so users can reliably launch and run a program. I mean trust me I understand that Linux is so broken it needs something like flatpak. But imagine saying you’re disappointed the Windows executable format isn’t evolving! Running an exe shouldn’t require decades of maintenance. It shouldn’t be that complicated. It doesn’t have to be.

Thing is, .exe on windows is broken on so many levels. You don't have sandboxing, apps don't always follow standards as to where to store their data, there's no dependency management but if you don't have the correct version of e.g. java installed your app won't work. Etc.

> Running an exe shouldn’t require decades of maintenance.

That's why windows is so full of malware and viruses.

> Running an exe shouldn’t require decades of maintenance. It shouldn’t be that complicated. It doesn’t have to be.

What do you think is all that stuff in C:\Program Files, C:\Program Files (x86), c:\Windows\System, C:\Windows\System32, C:\Windows\SysWOW64, %USERPROFILES%\%APPDATA%\Local and %USERPROFILE%\%APPDATA%\LocalLow or the seven versions of the C/C++ VS Redistributable you have installed?

EDIT: typos

in reality a bunch of stuff no user ever has to look at. On Windows literally anyone can click on a 20 year old executable and in all likelihood it just works because the good people at Microsoft care about giving the user a decent supply of libraries and stable ABIs and an actual operating system people can build against.

The Linux world is just in complete shambles in this regard. You build something on one LTS release, you don't know if it executes on the next. As the joke goes (it isn't even really a joke), it's so bad that Win32 is the only stable ABI on Linux

Honestly, you have a point. At one point there was a proposal for a "Linux Standard Base", but none of the distros really cared (they had their special sauce), so it withered. If Linux app devs could target "LSB-2020" or something, it could be similar to Windows devs targeting a particular Windows version. Flatpak is basically a work-around to the distributions.

(Note that Windows also does vitalization for compatibility reasons.)

On another level, maybe it's just "in the name". Windows lets you run your GUI windowing programs, and that all keeps working. GNU/Linux lets you run 1990 base industry standard API programs, all that keeps working, but for anything else, all bets are off.

> But imagine saying you’re disappointed the Windows executable format isn’t evolving!

I actually am disappointed about pretty much that. There is still no good permissions/sandboxing mechanism for PC operating systems like what's on smartphones. (to be clear I'm not calling for smartphone-like freedom restrictions on PCs, just more control over what applications can do)

That's one of the issues Flatpak tried to resolve on Linux. AFAIK Windows Store is an idea pretty similar to Flatpak (permissions, solving distribution problems...) but also no one uses it. So it's not like Microsoft doesn't want to evolve exe either.

> Running an exe shouldn’t require decades of maintenance.

Running a statically linked elf doesn't. Meanwhile modern Windows does its best to corral users into the Microsoft Store. The primary difference is a single centralized ecosystem versus true user freedom and the anarchy that results in.

Microsoft definitely wants to evolve, from my understanding they are looking at trying to lure people to package their apps, and to present similar hurdles as on macOS if your app is unsigned.

But due to old apps which nobody will update to package, I assume a lot of users will just disable all sort of warnings.

Windows has, like, half a dozen ways to run an app. And the correct way according to Microsoft is Windows Store, which you didn't mention... so...