Technology

I'm using Cosmic, which apes Gnome but is not Gnome. I'm being a total purist though & keeping as much KDE & Gnome out of the DE as possible.

That said, Cosmic has no problem updating the menu when Flatpaks are installed. I also don't tend to run software from a script just for funsies, it's usually to do with an automated process. Another issue is sometimes, a script will call on a hook for software, like a browser for example, & flatpaks can cause problems with the scripts locating or sharing data with the scripts due to the nature of the sandboxing.

I still have plenty of flatpaks installed because they are pretty good, even with (what I consider) flaws. Imo flatpaks are kind of like Docker in that they're great & everything, but also kind of a pain in the ass.

As far as appimages, I guess it doesn't bother me to update manually once in awhile and, as I just explained, I actually usually want software to have access to everything. I installed Ghostty via appimage, for example, & I use it all the time, but it's not critical that it gets updates, so I just check manually on occasion.

Anyways, I 100% agree with you on the rest. I've never considered the AUR as a giant repo but yeah, that's a good way to think of it.