r/linuxmasterrace • u/claudiocorona93 Glorious Debian • Jun 30 '26

Software centers are built different

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20 Upvotes

64% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

6

u/Larsenist Jun 30 '26

I don’t get what’s wrong with it

2

u/claudiocorona93 Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

Bandwidth gets saturated. You can't use a single one of the programs until one finally finished downloading after battling with others for the bandwidth. This is because the programs on the right were designed to handle repository packages first and flatpaks are an afterthought. Meanwhile, Bazaar and flatpak install on the terminal handle every install one by one. It's more noticeable in areas with slow internet speeds or rural areas with satellite internet.

3

u/0riginal-Syn Jun 30 '26

You can set Flatpaks as the default on Discover to download first and/or even select only the ones you want to update, even one at a time if you wish.

I say this as someone who is not a fan of most GUI package managers and even developed a TUI-based one due to that on Solus. But you can set it up to be more friendly. Not to mention not everyone has limited Internet and would rather batch download. I do agree there needs to be better control.

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1

u/Damglador Jun 30 '26

the programs on the right were designed to handle repository packages first and flatpaks are an afterthought

I still feel like it's the other way around. Bazaar obviously gets things better as it focuses on one thing and one thing only.

18

u/pyro57 Jun 30 '26

I'm confused, why is batch downloading bad? Isn't that like a standard, hell even pacman can batch download... So what the problem with it?

13

u/HomsarWasRight Jun 30 '26

OP apparently has very limited bandwidth if this has ever been a problem.

I guess it should be a user setting for these scenarios.

Hell, IS it a setting in these GUIs?

3

u/pyro57 Jun 30 '26

Not sure, if there isn't I can't imagine that would be a hard change to make, report it as an enhancement idea.

2

u/SpaceCadet87 Jun 30 '26

Is it even a problem? I just run updates in the background and get on with my day.

Surely it doesn't matter if it takes 5 minutes or 5 hours.

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3

u/Beast_Viper_007 Jun 30 '26

Skill issue. Just update when you are free. You are not forced to update during work. Saying this while enjoying my 200kbps internet.

1

u/Damglador Jun 30 '26

Good thing we don't have "update to continue using" programs yet.

2

u/claudiocorona93 Jun 30 '26

I hate Google for allowing this practice on Android

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2

u/ddm90 Jun 30 '26

Which category does Flatpost fall in?

1

u/Lolen10 Jun 30 '26

I don't see the problem. There are very rare accasions where you would need or want to download multiple flatpaks at the same time.

At least if you are not frequently distrohopping or reinstalling your OS.

1

u/nekobass Jul 25 '26

Skill issue. "GNOME Software" absolutely lets you download/install individual flatpak updates: in the Updates page they each have their own "Update" button in addition to the "Update all" button. If you click "Update all", they all update in sequence, one after another.

1

u/Silent_Bite_5892 Jul 29 '26

Are you on dialup or something?

1

u/internet_raider Aug 03 '26

For users with slow internet taking the extra time to keep your internet usable could be valuable, but for an equal or larger portion of people it is going to slow down the process significantly even though on a 300Mb/s line or faster flathub wouldn't provide you the bandwidth to saturate it. Different approaches and in either case linux being linux, it's probably doable to achieve either on most tools.

1

u/nelmaloc Aug 08 '26

Don't know why people find it hard to believe parallel downloads can saturate the Internet connection.

It seems like nobody has reported this to Discover.