I like Flatpaks in principle. But precisely the *only* problems I have had with them is in "development" tools, which often require breaking out of the sandbox.
Computers are unnecessarily complex. My perception is that Linux is a viable operating system for general purpose computing (and even offers perceivable advantages over macOS and Windows), but for introductory software development I still run into too many papercuts.
Visual Studio Code offers a wizard to set up Java. It detects there's no JDK and prompts to download one. This means invoking the browser to download a .tar.gz and... that's it, 0 indication of what to do with the download.
Pop!_OS, in the latest supported version 22.04 has a valid OpenJDK 21 package that could be easily installed instead.
At least, once installing JDK 21 from the Pop!_OS package repositories, the Visual Studio Code "Extension Pack for Java" that is offered has a decent experience in getting a Spring Boot application started using Spring Initializr.
(Not ideal because it creates a completely empty application that just displays an error, but otherwise the process is reasonably intuitive.)
Well, Visual Studio Code is in the Pop!_OS repositories as a .deb too. Only defaulting to that in the Pop!_Shop is an issue. Once you install the JDK and VS Code using the terminal and apt, there are few issues.
Graphical applications to install software on Linux have always been a source of pain.
