[Beowulf] flatpack

[Chris Samuel]

On 22/7/19 10:40 pm, Jonathan Aquilina wrote:

> So in a nut shell this is taking dockerization/ containerization and
> making it more for the every day Linux user instead of the HPC user?

I don't think this goes as far as containers with isolation, as I think 
that's not what they're trying to do. But it does seem they're thinking 
along those lines.

> It would be interesting to have a distro built around such a setup.

I think this is targeting cross-distro applications.  With all the 
duplication of libraries, etc, a distro using it would be quite bulky.

Also may you have a similar security as containers have, whereby when a 
vulnerability is found and patched in an application or library you end 
up with lots of people out there still running the vulnerable version.

This is why distros tend to discourage "vendoring" of libraries as that 
tends to fossilise vulnerabilities into an application whereas if people 
use the version provided in the distro the maintainers only need to fix 
it in that one package and everyone who links against it benefits.

All the best,
Chris
-- 
  Chris Samuel  :  http://www.csamuel.org/  :  Berkeley, CA, USA