Feat: use official sources for proper Package deployment in Linux

[mbgevers]

As of issue #14

As Flatpak is not a full Package-manager and not an Official one many Packages are unofficial or single Person maintained, it would be better to use the Distro Package manager. Let me give an example, especially in Enterprise environments if you have support from Ubuntu/RHEL/Suse often you only get support if you use a Package from their official Repository. Also taking Flatpaks or Appimage may be a high Risk in terms of Security, because there is no review/QA/Testing from the Distributions, thats why "use at your own Risk" is there a particular reason not to use apt/apt-get/aptitude on Deb-based and Yum/DNF on RH based Systems?

kind regards

Mike

[mbgevers]

To show a bit the difference, there are 50k Debian Packages and only 2500 Flatpaks

[mbgevers]

A good overview from this discussion on Reddit and the guy is absolutely right:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1bq9d3b/comment/kx1mfmx/

here's the page on becoming a flathub contributor. there is no vetting of individuals, and you do not have to use your real name:

https://docs.flathub.org/docs/for-app-authors/submission

here's the page on becoming a fedora contributor. you have to first interact with the developer mailing list, and use your real name:

https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/package-maintainers/Joining_the_Package_Maintainers/

And Debian requires a Debian developer to sponsor you in most cases, and after a while you become trusted enough that the sponsorship is not required:

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMaintainer

Before becoming a Debian Maintainer you should have a history of contributions to Debian as a Sponsored Maintainer where you can meet and establish a level of trust with other project members.

Ubuntu requires contributions over a protracted period of time before you can be a maintainer, as well as approval by a committee:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NewDevelopersAndMaintainers

Arch Linux, one of the loosest serious distros, requires that you be an active community member in good standing, and then they vote on you:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Package_Maintainers

[doncicuto]

Hi @mbgevers, thanks for raising the issue.

Absolutely, OpenUEM will support the use of packages from official repositories.

There are two issues #176 and #177 that hopefully will be added to next 0.10.0 release which will allow you to install packages from official and custom repositories. Once the support for those sources is added, the deployment tab for an agent will probably change so you can select if you want to use repos to install packages from official repositories or flatpak.

My intention is to have parallel or similar support for agents no matter the OS, so as Winget was used for Windows package management, Flatpak was used for Linux and Brew for MacOS. These tools indeed have less packages but as they grow popular in several environments that's why they're part of OpenUEM.

[mbgevers]

Hi @mbgevers, thanks for raising the issue.

Absolutely, OpenUEM will support the use of packages from official repositories.

There are two issues #176 and #177 that hopefully will be added to next 0.10.0 release which will allow you to install packages from official and custom repositories. Once the support for those sources is added, the deployment tab for an agent will probably change so you can select if you want to use repos to install packages from official repositories or flatpak.

oh great, sorry i did miss them!

My intention is to have parallel or similar support for agents no matter the OS, so as Winget was used for Windows package management, Flatpak was used for Linux and Brew for MacOS. These tools indeed have less packages but as they grow popular in several environments that's why they're part of OpenUEM.

[doncicuto]

No worries! thanks again for raising this issue to improve the project. I'll keep this issue opened as others can find useful this conversation

[mbgevers]

Hi,

I am sorry i can't find #176 and #177

[sej7278]

@mbgevers open-uem/openuem-console#177 and open-uem/openuem-console#176

I'd also like to vote to remove flatpak as an agent dependency, especially as there isn't always a package available e.g. ubuntu 16.04

[doncicuto]

Thanks @sej7278 I've opened an issue about our discussion on dependencies