Consider distributing a flatpak for Linux

[loukamb]

Currently, only a few Linux distributions are supported: Debian, Elementary OS (Debian), Ubuntu (Debian), Mint (Debian), Arch, Fedora, and OpenSUSE. A lot of other distributions of Linux are not currently targeted by MEGA, which is expected since providing first-party support for every distribution is an unrealistic task for any project.

However, more and more Linux projects today mitigate this lack of compatibility by distributing a flatpak of their software. Because flatpaks run in a sandbox that provides a separate, ABI-stable version of all common system libraries, they can run on virtually any Linux distribution whatsoever. This had led to a lot of applications officially supporting flatpak, with some even opting for flatpaks as the primary packaging and distro-specific packages becoming secondary.

Now, currently, there is a unofficial flatpak of MEGAsync being distributed on flathub. A lot of Linux users rely on this flatpak for their use of MEGAsync since their distribution is not officially supported - case in point, you even have people report dozens issues on the flatpak in this very repository. However, the unofficial flatpak is buggy and outdated, and there is currently a conflict between the current author of the flatpak and a prospecting new one.

I would suggest that MEGA considers distributing an official flatpak of MEGAsync. This would not only provide support for a lot more distributions and extend MEGA's reach to tens of thousands of new users, but it would also resolve packaging woes that some people have when they try to target MEGAsync for their distribution. For example, Void Linux does not package MEGAsync for their distribution because of licensing concerns involving patches. As another example, many people face problems trying to package MEGAsync for Gentoo and therefore it is only available through overlays that are buggy. An officially distributed flatpak would resolve all of these problems, all at once.

If MEGA developers are interested, I highly suggest checking out the flatpak documentation. It's really not that hard to port your application to flatpak - if third parties can unofficially port MEGAsync to it, so can a big team of people. Earlier, I mentioned a prospecting new developer that wanted to takeover flatpak maintaining for the unofficial one; they have been working on their own fork of the flatpak updated for the latest desktop application, if you want to take a look: https://github.com/jasongodev/nz.mega.MEGAsync/

[archisman-panigrahi]

Also, with flatpak, it is easy to enable aarch64 builds, which will help Raspberry Pi and Asahi Linux users.

[aednichols]

Atomic distros like Bazzite are reaching new-to-Linux folks who go looking for Flatpaks. Agreed that it would be great to have an official one.

[lautome]

Yes, please!

[migtorr]

yes please