Flatpak support
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There must be more Linux users in forum, they all do not need a Vivaldi flatpak? Strange. Request was created around 5 years ago.
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There must be more Linux users in forum, they all do not need a Vivaldi flatpak?
@DoctorG I'd say not because the target group is basically "immutable distros"
nobody
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Have no idea if it works, but someone might have made a Flatpack version.
They say they aren't going to support it because they are moving to a different browser, but they might be able to give some pointers if someone wants to take on the maintenance of supporting it.
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@nomadic Already known by Vivaldi Linxu dev.
But this flatpak not complete, does not download media codec. -
@npro said in Flatpak support:
the target group is basically "immutable distros"
i have the great misfortune to happen to know someone who has some of these to play around with in virtual machines [she's mad like that]. she has permitted me to pass on this info from a recent quick & dirty test she did this morning, after she read recent posts in this thread. as her picture below indicates, it seems that as long as one chooses the "right" immutable distro, in her example being
blendOS[an immutable archlinux, with inbuilt distrobox containerisation facilitating numerous other distro package installations beyond only arch ones, or so she tells me], then installing standard vivaldi without needing any flatpak thingie is quite the doddle, in this immutable distro.she wanted me to add something snide about kinoite & silverblue & kalpa & aeon can bite her, but i responded firmly that i respect this forum far too much to be so gauche here, & thus i refused.
Spoiler
Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't need to follow me. You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves! You're all individuals!
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@DoctorG said in Flatpak support:
few votes (163), seems Linux user interest no so high as expected.
It's 15th place of all feature requests right now! Not bad, but we could do better!
Linux users
let's make this number 1 feature request! 
Let's hit that
button on the 1st post! -
@ybjrepnfr said in Flatpak support:
blendOS
ufff that one
boooUbuntu 23.10 is out.... UBUNTU 23.10 !!!1
yay -
@npro Please! No OS flamewars.
Stay on topic "flatpak support". -
@DoctorG aw gee whiz mum, you never let us have any fun. not fair!
@npro said in Flatpak support:
yay
well ok, sure you can go ahead & try it, but somehow i just don't think it's gonna work in
@npro said in Flatpak support:
buntu 23.10
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90-100% of Linux+Vivaldi users I have interacted with would like a Flatpak version. Perhaps I will direct them to this thread to vote on it.
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@Ruarí I appreciate the valuable information in this post. I wish I had found it sooner. I have reached out to the maintainer of Zypak to see if these concerns can be addressed. I will see what else I can do.
I saw your next post on snaps - they may work, but there is already a Vivaldi .deb for Ubuntu, and snaps only really work on Ubuntu. Flatpak works everywhere, although Canonical has tried to interfere with that on Ubuntu.
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Vivaldi Flatpak would make video acceleration work?
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+1 for flatpak.
The flatpak release is important for two reasons:- Availability for almost all distributions (in my case in silverblue as alternative I installed it in distrobox).
- Presence in flathub can greatly popularize it, since many people don’t know about it, and the browser will be at hand. There is currently no alternative to Firefox from official companies in the flathub
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Why less upvotes? Id the request for Flatpak so unimportant for Linux users here. Irritating me.
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@DoctorG
Could you please stop denigrating people about not upvoting an obscure forum post? You have been doing this for months, and it is not constructive.(Edit: clarified intent, see next messages)If you want to see how important flatpak support is to Linux users: the Chromium flatpak has been installed 953,983 times from flathub. The Brave flatpak has been installed 1,530,503 times from flathub. The Edge flatpak has been installed 1,252,195 times from flathub. The Firefox flatpak has been installed 4,039,778 times from flathub. Flathub is not the only hosting platform for flatpaks. These statistics are public information.
Vivaldi is currently available as .deb and .rpm packages, and officially only really supports 3 distros I can think of: Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora, but not Fedora Silverblue, which the Fedora Project is moving toward over the next few years. The flatpak packaging format officially supports 36 major distros and counting. Several of these distros prefer or explicitly require that packages be installed as flatpaks. Times have changed.
I have made progress on what is blocking an official Vivaldi flatpak. I will post again with the details of that, and how it can move forward. If you can help me get in touch with Ruari or someone else working on Linux at Vivaldi, I would greatly appreciate it. I got in touch with the person who developed Zypak and the refined patches for Chromium, Brave, and Edge to run in flatpaks, resulting in those 8 million installations. They are willing to help the Vivaldi team review the 1600 lines of code necessary for the patches (which does not seem like a lot to me as a developer).
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@atimeofday said in Flatpak support:
Could you please stop denigrating people about not upvoting an obscure forum post? You have been doing this for months, and it is not constructive.
You misunderstood my post. I want more user upvoting post #1. But my fear is that 178 user are not so relevant for Vivaldi Linux devs to create Flatpak.
I have made progress on what is blocking an official Vivaldi flatpak. I will post again with the details of that, and how it can move forward. If you can help me get in touch with Ruari or someone else working on Linux at Vivaldi, I would greatly appreciate it.
Nice to read you have some success to reach the target of a Flatpak.
I will ask Ruarí internally if he das spare time to contact you. //edit: I pinged him. -
@DoctorG I appreciate the clarification. I did misunderstand, and I am working on bringing awareness to this forum post whenever I encounter Vivaldi users on Linux. Between that, collecting usage statistics, and bringing in the expert on these things as a consultant, I am hopeful.
Thank you for contacting Ruarí! I can make time if and whenever he does have spare time.
If we get past the technical issues, I can also contact someone who can help with flathub and the (optional) verification process to make the flatpak truly official.
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@atimeofday Huh, i am not the Bad Gal here
I am a dragon, but not from the evil group.
I try to help and be one little link to internal dev team.I always appreciate users helping to create a Flatpak so Vivaldi will spread to more Linux distries
I am so curious what will come.
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Here's what I've got so far:
There was a Mastodon thread on this back in September https://social.vivaldi.net/@jon/111054317115404701 which got some of the right people together but fizzled out. Cassidy Blaede is an advocate and professional consultant for the flatpak format, and helped make an official Discord flatpak happen within the past month. The other person who chimed in, refi64 (Ryan Gonzalez), developed Zypak and a more refined version of its Chromium patches. They maintain the unofficial Chromium Browser flatpak with these patches.
I got in touch with refi64 directly and traded a few messages. They hadn't heard about this since September, so neither of us knew whether the Vivaldi Linux devs had heard about that thread, or whether they have made progress on it. In this thread, I saw that Ruarí was concerned about whether Chromium can run in a Flatpak without compromising the internal inter-process sandboxing and security. I confirmed with refi64 that their patches generally shouldn't compromise that, although there may potentially be low-risk edge cases. They said they would be happy to join a thread with someone from Vivaldi to share their expertise, help review the Chromium flatpak patches, and evaluate whether a fully secure Vivaldi flatpak is feasible.
Refi64 stated that the Chromium flatpak patches are a lot cleaner and simpler than Zypak, and directed me to three files prefixed with flatpak- in this repo which contain those patches: https://github.com/flathub/org.chromium.Chromium/tree/master/patches/chromium. For reference, these are: 1287 lines of code, 81 loc, and 299 loc, totaling 1667 lines of code. I believe this is likely to be viable for the Vivaldi team to review, especially with some outside assistance. I am hopeful that we can get a thread going with the right people to iron this out when they have time.
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Hey! @DoctorG pinged me.
and thanks @atimeofday for the offer of help. I might take you up on that at some point but not …yetThe timing is interesting. I already put out a flatpak. Today actually, albeit in my name rather than as Vivaldi for the time being:
https://flathub.org/apps/com.vivaldi.Vivaldi
When we have had time to better consider the changes and patches suggested we'll consider making it official.
This thread might be interesting if you want more of my currently thoughts https://social.vivaldi.net/@[email protected]/111415799080900979
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