With almost every app that I use regularly, I end up rpm-ostree installing them rather than using the available Flatpak, due to some quirk that makes the Flatpak version difficult to use. Most recently, I’ve run into issues where Flatpak versions of apps cannot have their windows resized by grabbing and dragging the edge of the window. Is this some sort of Wayland bug? Other apps (e.g. 1Password) are not well-integrated with the OS. I’ve even moved Chrome to rpm-ostree because it works much better than the Flatpak. Am I the only one suffering with Flatpak apps, or is this widespread?
I’ve not seen this myself, but I see lots of apps with absolutely razor thin regions for where you need to click and drag to resize. Literally just one pixel thick, which on a 4K display is infuriating to try and grab.
I ended up teaching myself the keyboard shortcuts for resizing, which is super+right click drag.
1 Like
Does the packaging format affect the window resize thing?
I guess it depends on the app, I’ve been flatpak-only for years and everything is working great here, hard to tell without details. Chrome’s working fine here.
1 Like
Does the packaging format affect the window resize thing?
It seems to, yes. As a recent example (which prompted this post), the Anytype app is not resizable as a Flatpak but installing the AppImage (via GearLever) fixes the problem.
Have you tried with extensions disabled?
Have you tried with extensions disabled?
I haven’t, though I don’t use many extensions. Will give it a try though.
Before using rpm-ostree, I prefer to install them in a container. But so far I have had no problems with flatpaks.
Before using rpm-ostree, I prefer to install them in a container.
Interesting – I had not even considered that. So, via BoxBuddy?
Exactly! You take a distro that fits your needs and install the programs you like. With distrobox-export —app ‘name of app’ you than can export the app to use it on the host.
While there are workarounds, like layering or using distroboxes, they shouldn’t be needed. Basic things like resizing windows should just work, as they do on other people’s systems.
2 Likes
I have seen the same behaviour (for months) in “Teams for Linux” and “VSCodium” flatpaks.
Like @pauldoo, I started using the windows resize keyboard shortcuts to get by.
Eventually the flatpaks got fixed by their developers.
BTW, it looks like a bug has already been filed for Anytype flatpak: Resizing window on Linux/wayland does not work for flathub version #1337
Thanks for all the input, everyone. I’ve just added it to rpm-ostree for now and will wait for an updated FlatPak.
I use Brave (Chrome based browser) and I finally turned off the “Use hardware acceleration if available” setting. It wasn’t buying me anything that I noticed and constantly brought scrolling to a crawl.
With it turned off all is good.
Like j0rge, I have been using Flatpaks for years and prefer them.
But, I have had bad eyes my whole life. Large monitors just wear out my neck and shoulders - they are not ergonomic for me at all. I do not own a monitor anymore.
I use a 15"-16" laptop. All the apps I run are full screen; and most in their own workspace.
I never try to resize windows, for obvious reasons.
If I need side-by-side comparison across apps I rely on Super-Left / Super-Right to pin them to the sides.
So my situation might be a little different than yours.
FYI.
where Flatpak versions of apps cannot have their windows resized by grabbing and dragging the edge of the window.
Yeah, I‘ve had that with Vencord too. Sadly can‘t provide a general solution, but switching to Equicord removed those issues and I haven‘t found any app with that problem again so far.
The one problem I have with flatpaks is they offer no mdns support…so you can’t access .local files from a flatpak. This makes using something like Brave less appealing in a flatpak.
From what I understand this limitation is because no mdns support in the various runtimes being used by flatpaks. I’m unclear on why the runtimes don’t provide mdns…is there some security issue?
The alternative though is to just run it in a distrobox and export the app.
In my experience, those problems were with apps based on Electron, such as Teams for Linux and VS Code.
The problem I had was blurry text, which I later identified as caused by using fractional scaling of my laptop monitor (I use two 24 inches external displays and the 15 inches laptop screen is too small at FHD). I had found a fix: setting the ELECTRON_OZONE_PLATFORM_HINT environment variable to auto (in the .bashrc/.zshenv or in the flatpak permissions with FlatSeal), or using the --ozone-platform-hint=auto option when launching the Electron-based app.
At the time (last year), Electron was using X11/Xorg by default rather than Wayland and that switch enabled Wayland support in those apps.
But this caused the loss of resizing functionality. I prefered clear text and used the keyboard shortcuts. This was on EndeavourOS (KDE Plasma 6). I haven’t experienced this problem in Aurora. Yet I still have ELECTRON_OZONE_PLATFORM_HINT=auto set in my environment variables.
As for fractional scaling… I avoid it now, after reading advice against it (because of the issue mentioned). I set my laptop display to a smaller resolution but the same ratio.
References from my personal wiki:
2 Likes