Interested in Flatpak package?

[TingPing]

I've made a Flatpak package of PMP and wanted to know if you would be interested in it being a supported package. Flatpak is a cross-distro solution that should be fairly supportable. I can add it to Flathub for hosting and easy discovery for users.

[LongChair]

Hello we apreciate your work, but currently I don't think there are any plans to support anything else than the current distros :)

Thanks.

[beelzetron]

@TingPing please add it to Flathub anyway!
@LongChair Flatpak is cross-distro, no need to support any exotic Linux flavour ;-) .

I am a lifetime pass user, i would really like you to support flatpak-ed PMP.

[beelzetron]

https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/319076/linux-flatpak-ed-plex-media-player#latest

[TingPing]

@TingPing please add it to Flathub anyway!

How their build system is designed takes a bit of work to update so I'd really prefer upstream involvement.

[TamasBarta]

The reason I’d love to see this player in Flatpak is that it crashes with current Qt versions. With Flatpak (I believe) it would be possible to ship an older version of Qt as well, and avoid crash both of PMP and my system. see #743

[TingPing]

The reason I’d love to see this player in Flatpak is that it crashes with current Qt versions. With Flatpak (I believe) it would be possible to ship an older version of Qt as well, and avoid crash both of PMP and my system.

Correct, currently the Flatpak uses Qt 5.9 (latest LTS release).

[redxtech]

I think that this would be a great idea of it helps support other platforms and not having to downgrade to older versions of qt

[mseeley]

Hi folks, thanks for continued comments. I'll re-open to discuss with folks at Plex much more skilled in building than I. Making it easier for Linux users and taking heat off of the Qt upgrade, #743, both seem like great wins. I'm unsure what it entails but will speak with folks. :)

One of the challenges for upgrading Qt is our Chromium patches. Will need to make sure that's accounted for.

[danarnold]

Anecdotally, I've seen more AppImages lately than Flatpaks, although it seems to be a similar idea. Maybe that's worth consideration?

[TingPing]

Flatpaks have much stronger guarantees of portability, they are sandboxed and cannot interact with host state, services, or libraries by default. This ensures a reproducible and supportable environment for the developers. AppImage instead pulls in a mixture of host state and thus requires developers explicitly test against all distros it wishes to support.

It also has integration with stores like Ubuntu's Software Center (GNOME Software), Plasma Discover, Linux Mint's store, etc where it can be discovered, managed, and updated.

[Tithis]

So far building TingPing's Flatpak is the closest I've gotten to running PMP again after the AppImage stopped working after a graphics driver update and the ongoing issue with QT versions.

[hcoohb]

Is there a build flatpak for the PMP available anywhere at the moment?

[TingPing]

@hcoohb

flatpak remote-add tingping https://dl.tingping.se/flatpak/tingping.flatpakrepo
flatpak install tingping tv.plex.PlexMediaPlayer

[erenfro]

@TingPing This is what I get trying to run that flatpak:

libGL error: No matching fbConfigs or visuals found
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast
libEGL warning: DRI2: failed to authenticate
libGL error: No matching fbConfigs or visuals found
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast
Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_nvidia.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Qt: Session management error: None of the authentication protocols specified are supported
libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile
Logging to /home/psi-jack/.var/app/tv.plex.PlexMediaPlayer/data/plexmediaplayer/logs/plexmediaplayer.log
libGL error: No matching fbConfigs or visuals found
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast

[erenfro]

flatpak install flathub org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia-390-48
Fixed the above issue.

[Deus-Rex]

The flatpak image seems to be slow and can become unresponsive. It also doesn't look like it supports subtitles (complains about vobsob?) and transcodes media that would be directly played on the non flatpak version.

I installed it running the commands suggested by @TingPing. Is there something else I should be doing?

[Deus-Rex]

My bad. I got here via the #743 issue regarding QT support causing the Linux version of PMP to pretty much get dropped. A lot of the users there suggested using this as an alternative, and seemed to think it was fully working, so I had hoped I was just forgetting something.

[mseeley]

The flatpak image seems to be slow and can become unresponsive. It also doesn't look like it supports subtitles (complains about vobsob?) and transcodes media that would be directly played on the non flatpak version.

@Deus-Rex, @TingPing just a note that the vobsub issue was fixed in PMS. I believe the fix will be available in PMS 1.13.7 and later.

[rijnhard]

Not gonna lie, this would be great. I can concur that flatpaks are easy to use, and well integrated. I prefer flatpaks over ubuntu snaps for ease, and specifically for media related applications. (I'm running RetroArch in a flatpak with no issues)

Flatpaks are also managed via repos, where AppImages aren't, which is basically like going back to the archaic days of Windows where you have to explicitly download the update yourself. Seriously I don't feel like being a pleb on Linux.

It's just an overall win win in terms of use. And cross distro deployment.

[nomego]

https://knapsu.eu/plex/ also has flatpak

[Preisschild]

Please add this Plex. Lifetime-Pass owner here and this would make distributing PMP across various linux distros easy.

[EduCampi]

I believe this is for the player?
I would be interested in a flatpak for the server.
Would be easier for the user compared to setting up the docker

[Preisschild]

@EduCampi yes, this is for the player. Flatpak isn't really supposed to be used for servers though. For servers you should really look into docker.