It took me a while to figure out what was going on with the program packages. At first I thought services like Flatpak or Snap offered the same packages as other services. Finally I found out that there are packages made by official distributions that are tested and guaranteed and third-party packages.
When I added the Flatpak source to Discover, I got a message informing me that OpenSuse cannot guarantee the functionality of the programs installed from third-party sources.
It is clear that for stability I should turn to the official sources. The options I use are:
openSUSE Software - ymp files - Expert Download
Discover, sometimes Synaptic
I also use the terminal. I guess a command like sudo zypper install gimp installs the program from the official sources. I have a txt file and I copy&paste a big command with about 20 programs into the terminal. I don’t know other way to do it, but I like to have something like a one-click file to do it for me.
FLATPAK AND SNAP
Programs installed via Flatpak and Snap may have errors and look slightly different. As far as I know, Snap is making its own ecosystem. I ran into this problem trying to copy some brushes into Gimp (I couldn’t find the usual folder in /home). I decided to use only the official programs and install some programs via Flatpak or Snap only if I really need it.
The advantage of a rolling-release distribution would be that the official programs can be updated to the newest version, unlike a point release, where they can only be installed from other sources.
@valc_2024 Don’t use ymp files (1-click), don’t use opi (well maybe for codecs, but that would be it) don’t use snap packages, don’t use development repositories on your system.
Follow the lead of MicroOS, look at using flatpaks for generic applications (install ALL as your --user), then the out of scope ones, look at using distrobox.
To add @malcolmlewis post you can use yast2 (the graphical interface) to search for your applications from the official repositories that was created by the opensuse tumbleweed installer for you.
One Click is not a proper install method for TW. You end up with excessive packages not really required, and possibly, [added] Repos or Patterns not really needed.
No, openSUSE as a project cannot guarantee anything about applications or runtimes you get from flathub. It would be folly for the project to make the claim. That being said, it is also functionally impossible to package everything in the openSUSE Tumbleweed repositories. There just aren’t enough maintainer and packagers to do so.
For FOSS software on flathub, the visibility is basically the same as it is for the Tumbleweed repositories, you can look at the build documents and see what sources they are using, by checking Flathub · GitHub for the flatpak in question, if for some reason you are concerned about the “safety” of an application you might be using from there.
Obviously, this isn’t necessarily true for the Proprietary/Closed Source software that is published on Flathub, but that would be true no matter what source you’re getting the software from, including the publishers. But as an example, While you can’t see the sources for Discord, the flatpak is maintained by Discord developers, and if you “trust” the package you download from discord.com, there’s no good reason to not extend the same basic “trust” level to the flatpak.
It’s a matter of a user making the decision who, or what they trust. Just as it always has been.