Linux AppImage -> FLATPAK notes in 2.8.1-rc1

[eduncan911]

A serious caution about the Flatpak note for Linux users in the latest 2.8.1-rc1 release notes.

By design, Flatpak purposely does not have access to the standard XDG config directories - where all PrusaSlicer config profiles live and are stored today. E.g. ~/.config/PrusaSlicer. There are a few decisions to make when switching to Flatpak, and this issue is opened to start those discussions publicly so we can have a word in how this is developed. :)

Basically, we are hoping to avoid the ugly additional steps such as:

flatpak run \
  --filesystem=xdg-config/:create \
  --filesystem=xdg-cache/:create \
  --filesystem=xdg-data/:create <pruaslicer-app-id> 

But to keep PrusaSlicer sandboxed, that may be an acceptable upgrade path to those with previous prusaslicer installs. And one that should be noted in the release notes.

Other users may have some other gotchas, but that's the biggest I've ran into over the years.

[buhman]

This could be best solved by implementing #12968 , keeping AppImage builds, and disabling webkit by default on AppImage builds.

[CRCinAU]

Ya know, I've sang Prusa's praises for keeping AppImage around and making it a small, self-contained package that 'just works' everywhere.

It's be a shame if it came to relying on flatpak due to developer laziness. It pulls in entire ecosystems of stuff that's already on systems in package format.

[Pitel]

I also thought that including WebKit was just a quick hack to integrate PrusaConnect (which I'm actively using). But the next step should be to implement the proper API, so we don't need this huge library just to upload a file and show some icons. From what I remember, when integrating OAuth login, you'd just need to temporarily run a local web server to receive the tokens.

[novaplusplus]

My own 2cents... I decided to try the flatpak version after being disheartened by the news appimage was going away (appimage is my preferred way of getting and keeping software on linux, I like having a drive full of applications I can just load up anywhere without needing to worry about repositories and such)

So... to set it all up properly, I had to figure out a few things. First it took a while to get it rendering in a dark theme, I ended up installing Flatseal to change an environment variable that it seems to have set at first. Eventually I found where the config folder ended up (more my fault, I forgot there was a menu item to open it). But I am also still trying to figure out why it can't network properly, I assume some flatpak permissions thing... it doesn't seem able to access zeroconf .local addresses like my klipper host uses.

In other words: Please don't get rid of the appimage... if it comes down to "we can't offer prusa connect in the appimage version" then so be it.