Things we see all the time, but no one can really describe, like
Docker
Federated
Self host
Fork
Container
Instance
Flatpak
Tailscale
Distro
Wayland
Nginx
Etc.
Sure we can search but the terms are just so abstract I can’t understand some of it.
*this is for helping some new users as well as myself -
Docker: it’s a container used as a sort of sandbox environment for running various tools
Federated: uses the activitypub protocol
Self host: Don’t use services in the cloud. Build your own
Fork: Derived from existing project (or process)
Container: Sandboxed part of your OS
Instance: There are multiple definitions but the one probably most relevant to you is a node of a federated network
Flatpak: No idea. I think this is Ubuntu’s containerized deliverable
Tailscale: I think this is a reverse proxy?
Distro: A flavor of Linux
Wayland: Succesor to X11. Gives you graphics on Linux
Nginx: Web server software. Alternative to Apache
Flatpaks: NOT Ubuntu’s containerized deliverable. They use snaps. Flatpaks are more Fedora’s thing. I know Mint uses flatpaks, and Silver blue relies heavily on them. Snaps v Flatpaks are like Coke v Pepsi. It’s all just sugar water, but people care, for reasons.
Flatpak’s back end is open source, Snap isn’t. That’s ugly.
Huh. Today I learned. I avoided snaps because Firefox snap took so dang long to load, and Firefox flatpak just launched…
Flatpak isn’t without its problems, but both front end and back end are open, and one can host his own flatpak repo. Canonical keeps Snap’s back end proprietary, so it is not possible to host your own Snap repo. Canonical being Canonical.
It is my understanding that Snap was at one point intended to be a package manager for their embedded OS, which was more locked down. Then they started pushing it to all flavors of Ubuntu.
Explain to me why, on Ubuntu systems, sudo apt install firefox installs the Snap version? Clem over at Linux Mint asked the same question, which is why Mint ships with Flatpak and not Snap support out of the box, and Mint…I’m going to get the details wrong here, either Firefox themselves packaged the APT version, or the Mint crew did, or both at various times.
You can also just gentoo and compile from source instead of remembering which distro uses which package lol