I don't mind Flatpak, I just don't like when it's my only option to install something. I understand that sandboxing can make development marginally easier, but I have yet to see software get released via Flatpak that outright wouldn't be possible without it.
I do not have Flatpak enabled in my package manager, and will likely never enable it. That's not an attack on Flatpak users or the software, I'm just not putting it on my desktop. If we come to a point where people exclusively distribute via sandboxed methods like Snap and Flatpak, I'm going to have to start to get choosy with my applications.
You're setting an impossible threshold for your expectations. No software will be possible to use with Flatpak but not without it. That's not the goal for Flatpak and there's no technical reason for this to ever happen.
It's on the software author to decide if they want to deal with all possible package formats or concentrate on specific ones. You always have the option to publish your own packages in the preferred format. Copr/PPA/others make it pretty simple even without local builds.
You're missing one major benefit of Flatpak: With on small build manifest and by using flathub you can ship your application to a couple dozen distributions.
Everything else is just more work for application developers and distributors won't include every application in their repositories.
> I understand that sandboxing can make development marginally easier
I don't think I missed it, did I? I mean, I understand that sandboxing your software will make it run on every platform, but so will shipping a VM with your program preinstalled. At some point we just have to cut our losses and pick a platform that Just Works.
You were talking about sandboxing, I was talking about building and distributing software. Sandboxing is an optional thing flatpak provides at runtime, so I'm not sure how it's supposed to make development or distribution easier. It seems we're just talking about different things when we say "sandboxing".
> I mean, I understand that sandboxing your software will make it run on every platform, but so will shipping a VM with your program preinstalled.
Do you know of a VM solution which is as easy to use for developers and users, offers the same or better platform integration and has little to no runtime overhead?
I do not have Flatpak enabled in my package manager, and will likely never enable it. That's not an attack on Flatpak users or the software, I'm just not putting it on my desktop. If we come to a point where people exclusively distribute via sandboxed methods like Snap and Flatpak, I'm going to have to start to get choosy with my applications.