I like them. It gives developers an easy way to distribute their software and as a user I have a little bit more security due to the sandbox.

Less evil than the snap.

It helps provide a better desktop experience across multiple distros.

But, but, it has inefficient space use.

In terms of containerized solutions for apps/programs?

Better than the alternatives.

In general?

I feel like they’re exes for Linux, and would greatly prefer to not have multiple different installations of the same or slightly different versions of dependencies wasting space.

They work pretty well most of the time. No complaints from me

they are pretty decent for atomic distros and fully automated updates. I served my time in arch and gentoo and don’t want to update all the time but still want the updates. That said there are a lot of things that have also bothered me at some point that may or may not still be a problem. being out of date sometimes, stupid notifications for the application running in the background when you minimize it, jankiness when launching via clicking a file or god forbid programs launching each other. probably other stuff.

I use it whenever possible, for its easy sandboxing. I’ve also been bui lding my own sandboxing solution based on Bubblewrap, for things not on Flathub. Maybe I should learn how to build flatpaks locally, instead…

When I’ve needed permissions closer to a native package (i.e. fewer security safeguards) Flatpak was the only one between that, Snaps, and AppImage to let me do what I needed to do.

Overall works well. Sizing is a bit large but can be worth it for the universal distribution.

Allows for more software to get out there.