I run Debian 13 Stable with KDE Plasma, and have Flathub enabled on KDE’s Discover software store. I have a slight idea of the difference between the two: that Debian packages share system libraries and are therefore lighter in storage but do require password to access those shared libraries and could therefore become a security hazard if installing from an untrusted source, while Flatpaks have all they need and don’t require password to install, being more secure that way, but, as a consequence, consume more storage. Also noticeable is the fact that, for some programmes, the Flatpak version tends to be more recent and it therefore becomes the obvious choice when looking for the latest software.
However, I was looking at the SuperTux game, and what’s curious about this is that both, the Debian package and the Flatpak are version 0.6.3, while consuming 6.7 and 259,9 MB of storage respectively.
So should the obvious choice here be the Debian package, or would you still go for the Flatpak? I am not asking this because I’m particularly interested on this game as much as to learn more about the two system packages and whether my assumptions are correct or I am missing something.
Thank you and have a nice weekend!
I run Debian 13 and I will use apt repositories whenever possible and I avoid flatpak with a passion.
My flowchart is:
My main reasoning for it is strictly ease of use. I find flatpaks while I’m sure makes it easier on the developers making it to be super bloaty and take up more system resources, While causing more restrictions and annoyances during configuration due to their enhanced security setup.
The only time I really don’t use a repo if it’s available is if the program itself updates on its own, or updates super frequently such as Discord, which I got annoyed enough at that I had to make my own update script that to check if there’s an update and then auto update it, because I got sick of the Discord has an update message every other day.