For those in the Avogadro community that use Linux, it has been possible for a while now to get Avogadro in three different ways – from your distro’s package manager, as a Flatpak from Flathub, and as an AppImage.
The latest features and fixes are only available in the nightly builds though, and on Linux these have always been restricted to the AppImage format. No longer though, as we now have a beta
branch of the Flatpak up and running.
As of today the beta
has no known remaining bugs that are specific to the Flatpak (), so it’s ready to go for anyone who wants to try it! If you’re interested, the website now has a short section about the Flatpak, including instructions for setting up Flathub’s beta repository.
This “beta” is cutting edge, just not quite nightly. It’ll stay reasonably close to the current builds (envisaging updates every 1–3 weeks, depending on the speed of development).
The AppImage meanwhile won’t go anywhere, as the different formats have different strengths and use-cases; I would say though that the nightly/beta user experience is likely to be best had on Linux with the Flatpak going forward, as it adds automatically to your app launcher, allows for easy updating to keep abreast of the newest stuff, and has far fewer dependencies on your system making for a more consistent experience between distros.
The stable
branch of the Flatpak will continue to ship the normal, main releases (1.99 etc.). This is of course complementary to the traditional packages available from distro repositories, which for main releases will continue to suit a lot of people better.
Note: For users who do not already know or use Flatpak it may pay to be warned that it is not an ideal solution for those with restricted storage space, who are likely better off with the other formats. Although the installed Flatpaks on a system share runtimes between them, a fresh install of Avogado (205 MB) on a system with no other Flatpaks will also install the KDE runtime and freedesktop.org openGL extension (1.4 GB total on disk).