I figured it might be right to have an appreciation thread, where people can share their personal success stories.
Now let’s kick the story off with myself. I’ve dabbled with Linux over the past ten years, but I only started to use it as main driver about 3 years ago. Back then, many things were new and over time I learned a lot about Linux, and tech in general.
Somewhere in that path of growing and learning, I made my own silly GUI for a famous application: Cowsay. Then, I reached out to flathub on how to publish it, and with some help and a few nudges, I brought GUI to the masses! More importantly, I found out that packaging applications is a nice way of contributing to a cause that I like: Over the past year, the elegance of Flatpak and Flathub allowed me to publish quite a few apps. Some of whom are even useful.
It’s a well-centralized and accessible platform, with a low barrier to entry. While there are various legitimate criticisms of Github, using Github as the staging ground for all your project management makes it accessible to those who previously worked on software, but whom might be new to the complete FLOSS landscape. Then there is the manifest format: While initially a bit intimidating, I’ve grown to love its structured nature and I now prefer it over RPM’s format. Last but not least, Flathub represents a forward looking approach to package management in terms of security and stability.
There are certainly a few points of jank (like branching of new-pr), but on the whole I think this environment is quite good and it would be cool to see it grow over the next couple of years. As we continue, integration and support within applications improves, making Flathub the future of package management.
So keep up the good work. And others, feel free to share your stories here as well 