Snaps, Flatpaks and AppImages Do Very Different Things! (Each Has Its Purpose)

Linux users love to debate the merits or lack thereof regarding Snaps, Flatpaks and AppImages. One of the things that really bothers me is that so many Linux users don't understand that Snaps, Flatpaks and AppImages DO NOT do the same things. They are very different and thus, each has its reason to exist.
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[@jotix2570]

flatpaks can be installed in user space without any aditional permissions

[@nezu_cc]

Here is the AUR land we take your snaps, flatpacks, or whatever, unpack them, and re-package them as a native pacman package. And this is beautiful. Everything is a native package, and everything integrates well with the system. And almost everything is in the AUR. I don't have to worry about what is where, If it's not on the AUR it will be in a few hours once I finish making the PKGBUILD for it ;)

[@francesay8478]

The backend for snaps is entirely proprietary and canonical is currently engaging in anti-competiitve practices vs flatpaks. I don't care who you are, there is no reason to ever defend either of these behaviors.

[@peterheggs512]

As an individual, I prefer using Firejail as a sandboxing tool and manually packaging applications that are not readily available. I do not find any practical application for using flatpaks, snaps, or AppImages in my personal usage. However, this is simply a matter of personal preference. It is one of the reasons why I have a fondness for Linux, as it affords me the flexibility to make such choices.

[@rhiethreal]

You're missing something very important. Ubuntu is pushing snaps on a desktop distro. Even when people enter a command to install it as one thing in terminal, Ubuntu is ignoring that and installing something else. You completely ignored this fact though. Curious.

[@theretromillennial]

Interesting. I already understood the different use cases for AppImage packages, but never realized that Snaps were geared toward the server. That actually makes a lot of sense. Thanks DT.

[@mahdi7d1rostami]

I didn't have any problems with any of the three until Ubuntu somehow decided to ship with Firefox as a snap. And guess what? The suggested method for installing Gnome extensions doesn't work with this snap package.

[@flyinghippo5767]

"We just need to calm down a bit" is a universal truth, whether it's about packaging formats, distros, game consoles, politics, or anything else.

[@master138]

3:45

[@OSSMaxB]

I would still argue that canonical should drop Snaps for Flatpak, but only for desktop applications. In my opinion that would be a win-win situation because they can fully focus on making snap the best it can be on the server and rely on existing community efforts around flatpak in the desktop application space.

[@Zephyroths]

snaps really makes sense when you look it from server perspective. the argument about snaps having slow startup time? for a server that you wouldn't turn off for a long time it's a very minuscule annoyance compared to when it happen on desktop. if that doesn't tell you where Canonical focus lies on, I don't know what will

[@JustinGeekNerd]

great video and I will share something I recently learned. I absolutely hated Canonical and snaps because of of their data selling policy (canonical) and snaps because of how long it takes firefox to load, which they preinstall as a snap on ubuntu. Almost like forcing snaps on you. NOW, I decided to try my hand at making my own nextcloud server recently. OMG! After watching a million over-complicated tutorials and failing numerous time, this channel showed me that "snap install nextcloud" was actually a thing and it was that easy! I have a whole new respect for Canonical and snaps, now, and this video has given me even more reason to respect their team as I am learning more about how servers work. I got certified on Linux Network Administration and was trained on CentOS, but I totally think Ubuntu Server is next level and makes everything so much easier. I know, TLDR. Keep in mind I'm half-assed leaning over a laptop while typing and really only doing this so DT knows what an impact this video, and his channel in general, have made in my Linux career. If you read this comment all the way through I hope it help in your journey. And thanks DT for keeping it real and not just trying to tell people what they want to hear

[@krishna-tiwari1]

Nix is a great option for universal package management. Not just only big apps, nix has a great selection of small packages as well that snaps, flatpaks or appimages don't ship. As a desktop linux user I prefer nix over anything else. I strongly recommand every linux user to try out nix as a package manager.

[@jonspoonamore3721]

Hey DT! Old Network/System Admin here. I'm still using your recommended PACSTALL manager for all of my missing software needs. It still is working great. For me personally.... I just stay away from SNAPs, Flatpaks and AppImages. (1) I hate to lose drive space if I can help it. (2) In the SNAP world, the slower and fewer CPU cores/threads you have the more time SNAPs take to start up. I generally use older hardware. So.... No SNAPS for me. (3) I will not be ready to support a global package manager until "ONE" is chosen to rule. I guess we will all have to wait until someone comes up with a way to make the most money from the endeavor!!! As for SNAPs, Canonical's track-record for new technologies is about as good as Microsoft's. It's doomed to fail. LOL!!!

[@jenreiss3107]

I wish nixpkgs had a nice user facing gui frontend. It's a fantastic, sandboxed packaging system that has made my dev job much much easier and cleaner

[@mars1450]

Always bringing reason-ability to the FOSS and open source movement. Thank you Derek! I was slow to warm up to snaps, but they totally remove any argument for most window users not to try and switch to Linux. While also being incredibly practical. You can keep things neat and tidy to specific programs without having the clog the system with many settings. The settings are all in the snap!

[@chaslinux]

Great video DT! Going to point to this URL in some of our docs. I love AppImages because they make it easy for the few people we have who don't have Internet to switch to Linux. I can download the programs they need and give it to them on a flash drive. Glad to see the coverage of updates in this discussion. We use a few snaps in our image. While there are things I don't love about snaps, they definitely have their uses. Heck, the odd program I'll compile if I really want it. Thanks again for the great video.