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Alternative to Flatpak and to the counterless adhoc Repositories, what's the most reliable source for getting apps installed under Debian?

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The Debian repositories. Debian isn't really trying to lead the charge on making it possible to install arbitrary apps. In fact they're mildly hostile to the idea. The project is trying to build an integrated deb-based operating system.

> Debian isn't really trying to lead the charge on making it possible to install arbitrary apps. In fact they're mildly hostile to the idea.

I, for one, welcome our Debian overlords, taking care of stupid users such as myself to protect them from both "arbitrary" applications and from non-obsolete versions of non-arbitrary applications.

And yes-yes, this curated walled-off garden is fine, unlike all others walled-off gardens, because its maintained by "the community" (of Debian maintainers, that is).

Are the Debian devs preventing you from running software on your machine? They even document how to create your own packages, and running your own repositories.

Nix, which works very well under Debian and gives you instant access to the huge nixpkgs repository.

You can also design your own simplified Flatpak-style sandboxing for it using nixpak. There’s other approaches but it’s easy. https://github.com/nixpak/nixpak

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