Okay while I'm still not sold on flatpaks _generally_, here's one thing that was stupid easy thanks to them: hybrid graphics on this laptop.
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Okay while I'm still not sold on flatpaks _generally_, here's one thing that was stupid easy thanks to them: hybrid graphics on this laptop. Most of the time the dGPU caboose is powered off and everything runs off integrated graphics. But because Godot is installed as a flatpak, I was able to load up its permissions in flatseal and add DRI_PRIME=1 to its environment. And voila, now when I launch Godot, the gGPU fires up and Godot (and only Godot) gets to use the chunkier horsepower.
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And sure, it's _possible_ to do without flatpaks, just have to set the environment up properly. But flatpak made it effortless and the permission travels with the application from that point on. It's half a step away from "right click -> run on chonky GPU" in terms of smooth UX.
... In fact, is nvidia still being a special weirdo snowflake or do they also react to DRI_PRIME=1 these days? Maybe this should just be a toggle option in flatseal...
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@danderson I would say it's as effortless with native packages if you edit the .desktop file for the application. For example I had to add an environment variable to KMail so that it doesn't have a bug with fractional scaling on Wayland where QtWebEngine frames get blurry text, so I just opened Menu Editor on Plasma and added the environment variable.
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@LordRishav_ Fair! I've spent the last decade or so in tiling managers and so haven't been exposed to the details of freedesktop stacking WMs as much as I'd like. Thanks for the education!
