this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
305 points (97.5% liked)
Linux
48212 readers
2058 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
(This is going to be grossly oversimplified and possibly minorly inaccurate, but) Flatpaks are built against and run using shared runtimes, so if two Flatpaks share the same basic dependencies (and those dependencies are included in the most common runtimes, which they usually are), you only have to download the shared runtime once. Every Flatpak built on the same runtime will share the one runtime. The way you described it is a common misconception.
Now if the packager manually bundles less common dependencies into the app itself, yes, that would have to be individually updated, but that's theoretically more of an edge case.