Will fedora 39 default to flatpak in fedora 39 ?
1 Like
1 Like
FESCo does not allow applications from third-party sources to be installed by default, so we cannot get it from Flathub. For it to be provided via Flatpak, somebody would need to commit to maintaining the Fedora Flatpak, which depends on the Fedora RPMs, so those would need to be maintained too. Historically, this has all been maintained by Red Hat, but Red Hat will not be maintaining LibreOffice anymore. An additional hurdle will be that currently all apps in Fedora Workstation are shipped as RPMs, not Flatpaks. I’d like to switch everything to Flatpak at the same time so we don’t have an awkward transition period. Here’s a ticket for that. I think we’re getting closer, but it’s not likely to happen in the Fedora 39 timeframe.
So, in short: nope.
There are two more likely possibilities here. (a) Fedora community successfully picks up maintenance of LibreOffice and it continues to be shipped via RPM, no changes. (b) LibreOffice winds up retired due to orphaned dependencies, and it gets removed from the distribution.
2 Likes
Let’s put every effort into option a). If it turns out to be option b),
Fedora no longer deserves to carry the title Workstation, imho.
I don’t mind trying out software from FlatHub using Flatpaks. But I
don’t want this to be my main source of software. I shudder every time
looking at the huge blobs it requires for simple packages.
If everything moves towards Flatpaks from FlatHub, we may as well drop
all efforts on dnf5. Since a smaller package base will mean less
updates, less metadata. Thus, dnf will be able to cope just fine.
3 Likes
1 Like
Sorry, not the world I want to live in. I would have to trust upstream
entirely for very critical software. I would need to trust them not to
sneak in any non-FOSS software. I would need to trust them to provide
sensible default settings. I would need to expand on disk space to
accommodate all the binary blobs, that get shipped with Flatpaks.
No thanks. Sounds to me like it is shifting the burden from packagers to
end users.
1 Like
As now more and more distros are moving towards immutable variants even now ubuntu want to have that with ubuntu core fedora with coreos silverblue and vanilla os and open suse will also make a immutable variant so having libreoffice in flathub make more sense. And why not update to the newest the concept of using flatpak is simple while using rhel 8 or debian 10 you can use libreoffice 7.5 without any issues.
1 Like
My problem with losing the LibreOffice support is not so much that it’s going away, but that it seems like we’re not replacing it with another default office suite. If we could provide the LibreOffice flatpaks by default going forward, then I’m fine with that, but if we’re not able to do that then I think we’re in a pickle.
From this perspective, the new question might be whether or not distros even need to be shipping office suites by default. I think that’s the shocking idea for the people who see the headlines. Even if the answer to that question is “no”, I think we would then have to think about the messaging surrounding that so that Fedora doesn’t get clowned on in the reviews for that release.
I know that if I want an office suite, I can just download this from Flathub, but it feels weird to think that we would ship without one. Even if its an unreasonable expectation at this point, it’s still a strong expectation.
Is it possible to make an exception for the LibreOffice Flathub flatpaks so that we can keep a default office suite?
3 Likes
A lot of people got used to have LibreOffice not only on Linux systems. I advertised/promoted/installed it on many of my friends/family members computers (Macs&Wins). I rarely use it myself (mostly for some document conversions, or when I need to do some quick temporary stuff.) If it’s going to be “ditched” I’ll go here Development/BuildingOnLinux - The Document Foundation Wiki
I’m not afraid of longlasting builds, did it decade ago with SeaMonkey https://www.seamonkey-project.org/ so I’ll do the same with LibreOffice.
That’s reasonable question. But if one wants to attract users, he must give them some basic stuff to play with for a starter.
I’m cheering for that.
It seems like a flatpaked version would come with a fair amount of flatpak-specific issues, if the LibreOffice Flathub issues list is any indication. If such a transition is inevitable as part of Fedora’s strategic shift (FESCo ticket linked above by Michael), I’m hoping that some extra focus can be dedicated to squashing those issues upstream in LibreOffice’s codebase, to minimize the impact on Fedora—but that sounds like a very technically involved endeavour.
2 Likes
why not just use onlyoffice? it works better imo
I’m fine as long as we have an office suite, lol.
OnlyOffice is not a community-run project, it is a somewhat open source product, apparently using an “open core” model; they are a business that cares firstly about the cloud version and has no qualms about removing features from their “community edition” as was seen here and pointed out there. Their legal terms are super long. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it would also have a CLA requirement to contributions either, but I can’t be bothered to dig around to check if this particular hunch of mine is correct.
From a purely statistical community healthiness metrics perspective, they are also completely dwarfed by LibreOffice, which keeps improving with each release, and has an order of magnitude more contributors and development activity.
- LibreOffice has hundreds of contributors and developers, OnlyOffice has… eight. So their bus factor is 8 people. This should immediately raise alarm bells for sustainability.
- As far as I know, LibreOffice’s formats compatibility is unmatched in the industry.
For these various reasons, I have zero trust in OnlyOffice and I refuse to use it. There is no serious alternative to LibreOffice in my worldview, and I suspect many others in the Fedora community would feel the same way.
3 Likes