Flatpak support
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@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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@Ruarí It's great to hear from you! I think we're all used to asynchronous contribution and development, so no rush, just let me know if or when I can help coordinate
I read through the thread, and it was indeed interesting, as was the timing of all this. I'll make sure refi64 is aware of it and the unofficial flatpak. Edit: done.
I and a few others I know have already installed the flatpak for testing, and I know it's been posted in a few discord servers.
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I added a further comment here because I felt like people might think I am knocking refi64's work and
- That is not my intention.
- I would not be qualified to. I am not even a dev.
- I would not want to knock anyone who steps up and takes on such a task. Hats off!
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@Ruarí That was the impression I had, it is good to see it reinforced.
I reached out to them because I thought they might be able and happy to help explain their work, expedite the review process, and address concerns. It sounded like they would be
Something I'd like to note/reiterate from a conversation with them just in case - I believe the patches for the Chromium Browser flatpak linked/described above are a bit different from Zypak, or at least more condensed and refined, and therefore hopefully easier to review in full.
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@Ruarí said in Flatpak support:
The timing is interesting. I already put out a flatpak. Today actually, albeit in my name rather than as Vivaldi for the time being:
That was a big surprise!
I have already installed it!
What about Snapshot version?
Now we want Vivaldi Snapshot Flatpak!
Offtopic:
I am not often install a fresh Vivaldi version. The UI does feel busy, so many things need to configure.. And I am especially not fan of centered Address Bar items with empty spaces
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I am not often install a fresh Vivaldi version. The UI does feel busy, so many things need to configure.. And I am especially not fan of centered Address Bar items with empty spaces
Sync your settings from your other install.
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@Ruarí said in Flatpak support:
Sync your settings from your other install.
Yes, I can do that, but prefer manual customization...
I also don't use sync feature for several reasons -
You could also copy your settings over?
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@Ruarí said in Flatpak support:
You could also copy your settings over?
Probably (never tried that), I wish there was a single config file I can copy/import/export to.
But I can pretty quickly customize Vivaldi as I know where all important settings are, so it's not a big problem for me
I wish that default UI settings would be better.
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@Stardust There is a single config folder you can copy; it doesn't include chromium flags, your background, or your CSS folder if you have one, but it should include everything else. Edit: for anyone else who may be reading, note, there may be some risks to this, although it worked for me - see the next few messages.
If you go to the address vivaldi://about it is the Default folder at the end of the profile path. For example, here is the path for where I copied it to in the flatpak: /var/home/atimeofday/.var/app/com.vivaldi.Vivaldi/config/vivaldi/Default
Default settings could maybe be better, but that's a resource-intensive thing to refine because it is necessary to test with real new users.
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@atimeofday I am trying to avoid a potential borked Vivaldi when copying profile folder between different Vivaldi versions - stable and snapshot and now also flatpak. Also my system Vivaldi version could have different version than Vivaldi Flatpak.
And who knows, maybe some bug could emerge later after several updates, and the cause of this would be something to do with manual profile replacement I did earlier.
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@Stardust you saved me the trouble of writing to point out that exact danger, heehee. however there's some individual files imo it's safe to copy between versions, eg, bookmarks, notes, dictionary, then possibly also history, favicons, top sites, web data. the one file definitely NOT to copy, which is a great shame as it holds most of your customisations, is preferences.
in olden days i always had good results copying my session files, but these days i dunno how safe that'd be. a workaround idea would be to save all open tabs as bookmarks, which then will come across by copying that bm file, then reopen that particular bm group to basically rebuild your session.
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@ybjrepnfr IIRC downgrades are not recommended, so I assume it also not safe to copy profile from the latest Vivaldi version to the older one.
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@Stardust @ybjrepnfr Understandable. I copied mine from stable to snapshot to flatpak with no detected issues, but there are definitely some risks to it, and at some point it may be good for me to take the time to set up a fresh copy. I'll edit my recommendation to note the risk, in case anyone else stumbles across it
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@Stardust said in Flatpak support:
I have already installed it!
What about Snapshot version?
Now we want Vivaldi Snapshot Flatpak!Yes Please Snapshot version would be nice.
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@Ekhceed said in Flatpak support:
@Stardust said in Flatpak support:
I have already installed it!
What about Snapshot version?
Now we want Vivaldi Snapshot Flatpak!Yes Please Snapshot version would be nice.
Snapshot flatpak version would help to test new features!
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We need Snapshot
