Flatpak and the likes are similar enough to Apple's "bundle" concept where you put all the versions, dedicated libraries and frameworks inside the bundle for your 'thing' that you want to distribute. It has been proven to work well (or well enough). I suppose the additional technology behind overlays/bindmounts etc. is different since a Darwin bundle is practically just a directory with some predetermined layout but the experience is the same.
Once it doesn't depend on (yet again) a daemon, registry, and other system-level components but is understood by the shell (or DE) instead, you get a user experience that something like Nix cannot deliver (or at least, not without cutting down on the whole "learn this language to then learn those features to then get work down" thing).
The bundle concept applies more to AppImages than to Flatpak. Flatpak downloads common runtime libraries and packages and uses them to run all GUI packages in a sandboxed environment using bubblewrap. OStree is also involved.
I dislike Flatpak because it encourages package maintainer obsolescence. I heard a guy from OpenSUSE saying in a MicroOS presentation that why create, manage, and use RPMs when we can just use Flatpak. I also don't want to touch Flatpak anymore because people from GNOME are involved in it.
I have to admit that Flatpak's runtime deduplication is impressively good, despite preferring the Nix approach.
It's a shame to hear that kind of talk coming from the openSUSE world when Zypper did so much to raise the bar for high-level Linux distro package management tools. :(
openSUSE does an awesome job getting a hell of a lot of mileage out of RPM, from the vendor-based repo management to BTRFS snapshots to the huge and powerful (cross-distro!) automated build service.
> It's a shame to hear that kind of talk coming from the openSUSE world when Zypper did so much to raise the bar for high-level Linux distro package management tools. :(
Yeah, I don't think it'll last in the foreseeable future judging by how these distros are jumping on the Flatpak/Snap bandwagon. For these distros, package management might as well be dead.
I expect a few distros, such as Alpine Linux and Arch Linux, to remain relatively free from the influence of Flatpak and that's what I'll continue to use on my personal machines.
Once it doesn't depend on (yet again) a daemon, registry, and other system-level components but is understood by the shell (or DE) instead, you get a user experience that something like Nix cannot deliver (or at least, not without cutting down on the whole "learn this language to then learn those features to then get work down" thing).