One of the criticisms people have with containerizing their desktop apps is the "insane amount of space for their environment" that people think it requires. That's a direct quote from a reddit post on the topic from today.
Let's have a look
Today I'll compare two desktops, one will be
Flatpaks aren’t huge at all. This is a debunked myth. I can’t recommend reading this article enough.
So you only need to use two technologies that add complexity and cost performance (filesystem compression and deduplication) to get to the point where you are still 10+% higher in disk space use? I am not sure your post supports the argument it is trying to make.
What’s the use case where storage is at enough of a premium to matter? None of this is targeting a server where you’re getting silly with optimizing storage, and even the smallest storage on most consumer facing hardware is filled by media one way or another. It straight up doesn’t matter to a reasonable end user. Storage is less than dirt cheap.
Author here. The distro comes with the filesystem compression and deduplication already set up and I don’t need to manage it, so of course I’m going to use it.
Given the cost of storage I have no problems spending a barely noticeable amount of space to use flatpaks given all the problems they solve.
Deduplications comes with flatpak for free. Both systems had filesystem compression, so this one doesn’t count. 10% higher disk space is neglectible on most systems and the containerisation makes it worth it.
So you only need to use two technologies that add complexity and cost performance (filesystem compression and deduplication) to get to the point where you are still 10+% higher in disk space use? I am not sure your post supports the argument it is trying to make.
What’s the use case where storage is at enough of a premium to matter? None of this is targeting a server where you’re getting silly with optimizing storage, and even the smallest storage on most consumer facing hardware is filled by media one way or another. It straight up doesn’t matter to a reasonable end user. Storage is less than dirt cheap.
Ah yes. The mindset of: I have lots of money to spend on storage, so we shouldn’t care about optimisation for less fortunate users.
No, the mindset that the storage is less than pennies worth and this usage would have to explode massively to even approach negligible.
A device that is affected in any way by a GB of storage space is going to choke on 50 other things way before you get to that.
I have a cheap laptop with a small SSD dual booting Windows. To me, a couple of GB does matter.
Not when the manufacturers solder the storage and mark it up 1000+%. For many devices, 1GB is still worth over $1.
Author here. The distro comes with the filesystem compression and deduplication already set up and I don’t need to manage it, so of course I’m going to use it.
Given the cost of storage I have no problems spending a barely noticeable amount of space to use flatpaks given all the problems they solve.
?
End of text?
Deduplications comes with flatpak for free. Both systems had filesystem compression, so this one doesn’t count. 10% higher disk space is neglectible on most systems and the containerisation makes it worth it.
If I had to suffer only having 600GB of free disk space instead of 640GB of free disk space I’d shoot myself
Compression often improves performance as it means reading less data from storage. Deduplication, as flatpak uses it, is free.