Future of the Debian Package System?

[pixel24]

Hi@all,

Many distributions (including LM) are based on Ubuntu and thus on its package system.

I have always found this system (DEB + Repo) to be the great advantage of Ubuntu. As far as I can see, Ubuntu is switching more and more to APP images (Snap). Of course, everyone can and should have their own opinion on this, but I personally don't like it.

What will happen with LM then, since it is based on Ubuntu? Will LM then also only be available with app images?

with best
pixel24

[Pjotr]

Very unlikely scenario. I'd only get concerned if Debian should ever stop packaging apps as .debs.

[xenopeek]

AppImage and Snap aren't the same thing. Canonical is not switching to AppImages.

As for Snap, Linux Mint has a clear position on why Snap is not acceptable: https://linuxmint-user-guide.readthedoc ... #criticism. Snap doesn't solve any problems other package formats don't already solve. And other package formats like AppImage and flatpak don't vendor-lock users to Canonical as Snap does. Until Canonical open sources the Snap Store it is highly unlikely Linux Mint will enable the Snap Store or follow Canonical to use Snaps.

That said the Debian package format is complex, burdensome for maintainers and there are other package formats that solve the same problems easier. It's also very slow for users (not as slow as Snap but still) and the format lacks an information field for why recommends and suggests packages are recommended or suggested. Ubuntu 21.10 as I understand it will switch to use Zstd for compression (from Xz currently) for packages from main repo, which should reduce the amount of time taken to install or upgrade those packages dramatically. Hopefully Debian will follow suit.

[Beerislife]

Ubuntu will also package Firefox as a Snap from 21.10 so I've read.

No thanks...

[Hoser Rob]

It's not Ubuntu per se who are behind the growth of snaps etc, it's the app developers themselves. They are pretty tired of maintaining software for all those different Linux packaging systems and the lack of stable APIs etc.

Unless the GNU/Linux community in general fixes those issues (I'd say the chances of that are between slim and nil), you're going to see more app software released in flatpaks etc.

[BenTrabetere]

Unless the GNU/Linux community in general fixes those issues (I'd say the chances of that are between slim and nil)

I am in the Nil crowd. Debian is not going to leave dpkg and Red Hat is not going to leave RPM. Same with Arch/pcman, SUSE/YaST. And Slackware will continue to do its thing.

AppImage, flatpak, and Snap are solutions to the problem, and I really wish developers would use (and learn to use properly) all three package systems.

[pixel24]

Sorry. I used the term "appimage" incorrectly. As a generic term for all the image formats (everything static in one image).

The answers make me confident that Linuxmint will continue to work with the normal packages / repos. At least that's how I understood it.

[Tolayon]

Well, as for Redhat, they may not replace RPM packages that soon, but Fedora Silverblue will eventually become the default for Fedora Workstation, basically an "immutable" system where all major apps are delivered as Flatpaks and every other change on system level creates an automatic backup/ snapshot (which then can be chosen on bootup, in place where regular Fedora now just shows the kernels available).