Snaps, Flatpaks and AppImages Do Very Different Things! (Each Has Its Purpose)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2024
- 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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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.
Well, trying to be geared towards all kinds of Linux platforms desktop, server iot... and not JUST desktop, witch is the case with the other 2
Yea snaps are general pavkage manager which is what makes them not great at anytbing and thats not a bad thing
@@bigpod snap do manage failed upgrade. It is designed to be able to upgrade software, and not needed to rebooting.
It is also designed to manage errors like write protected file system or running out of space when upgrading, and still have a working system. That is, it is transactional package managers. Either you get a successful upgrade, or nothing happened. That is, the system never ends upp in a state between before and after successful upgrade.
That is the nice thing about snap.
Other then that, my preference is native packaged formats, as I don't run IoT or our other stuff like that, which need transactional package managers.
@@AndersJackson while this transactional function can be built in flatpak (maybe Canonical want to contribute) the problem that people have with snaps is that they push it hard for ubuntu desktop not server which the majority of complainer are (desktop users) ah your firefox takes more time to launch now well of course silly that's on purpose we replaced the native package which still exist with the snap one and it make it hard for you to go back
that just sound like google or microsoft with fewer steps how is that a better user experience or a good pr for Canonical or Snaps?
Then they can push snap on the server versions of Ubuntu, keep that crap off of the desktop versions!
I've been using Mint for years, and every app I'd ever want is in the Repository either natively or as Flatpak.
I tried Debian this weekend on a spare machine with the plan to put all the apps on it that I use in Mint and then alternate between the two systems each couple of days to see which I like better.
It went mostly okay, with the exception that I had to use the terminal to install Flatpak support.
Once I got Debian to offer Flatpaks in the Software Manager, I got all the same apps on Debtian that I have on Mint (Eclipse, Steam, Minecraft, and a few others).
A total n00b might have had problems getting all his favorite apps on Debian, and gave up and stayed on Mint, but both systems are comparable now except for the look of the graphics.
That's all 🙂
As a heavy Ubuntu and Ubuntu-derived distro user, I use all three. Flatpaks have let me down far too many times with apps that I need for me to not use Snaps too. I have also used some great appimages, but there so far isn't much of a selection of them for the apps that I need.
So none of them meet your criteria for universal package management, which is precisely the problem that exists here - and, unfortunately, it's not a problem for the knowledgeable part of the Linux community that has just learned Linux properly, chosen a distro, stuck with it and understands how its native package manager works.
There is no substitute for just putting in the necessary time and effort properly - if some Linux users just sit there waiting for someone else to give them "easy Linux" without understanding that there's a different perception amongst those users what "easy Linux" actually is, then what you get is the "clown show" package manager war that is happening right now.
@@terrydaktyllus1320 It's good for the normie user and will probably lead to more people converting in the future. You have to dumb it down for most people. They don't want to know how stuff works under the hood. It's sad but it will never change.
@@joeschmoe3815 I don't care about other users, they can do what they want to just as much as I can do what I want to.
I want nothing "dumbed down", I want people learning how to use computers properly and how to protect themselves on the Internet.
It's the same reason that I don't want the driving test "dumbed down" because a lot of people in my country complain that it's too difficult.
The more "dumbed down" something is, the more idiots appear.
We all came into this world knowing nothing.
@@terrydaktyllus1320
That's the most ego-centric way of thinking imho. I'm sorry little Timmy, but the world doesn't bend to your will. We all have different sets of knowledge and you must respect those differences.
You might know computers very well, savvy even, but you might have zero idea about medicine, farm, business, etc. Those other guys who know them will explain it "dumbed down" so that you somewhat understand the gist of it. If they have the same mindset of yours they might see you as a big idiot for not knowing those topics that they thought everybody should have understood.
Try seeing in other people's perspective to exercise sympathy.
@@cmaxz817 "That's the most ego-centric way of thinking imho."
And that's the point I stopped reading because we're not here to discuss a topic you know nothing about - namely, me.
So run along now and take your "amateur Internet psychologist" skills with you - there will be no "psycho-analysing" me today for you, sonny.
Next time we meet, do try to keep up and stay on topic - I am here to talk about stuff I know a lot about, namely Linux and computers.
It's therefore important that you engage me in such topics from the outset, rather than your irrelevant "aerie-faerie" nonsense that probably just indicates how little you actually know about the core topics of Linux and computers anyway.
There's a piece of me psycho-analysing you that you can have for free too, you're welcome.
Discussion closed, mind how you go.
Exactly!
Flatpak does not do server.
I use both desktop and server, so for me, the snap's automatic update saves me a lot of work and as it was first, I tend to be more familiar with snaps. It is true that flatpak path names are crazy so I tend to only use flatpak for gui application that I have no need ti interact with through the terminal.
But basically, who cares about packaging formats. Use what ever serves your needs.
You can install flatpaks in user space with the "--user" flag. I've even installed flatpaks on a Chromebook's Debian container.
Thanks for the overview, makes a little more sense now. I just got back into Linux a few months ago and i find it annoying having three different stores and sometimes it's just for one program.
I have problems with both snap and flatpak but both are more or less nitpicks (snap being proprietary, flatpaks making accessing other drives outside of your main drive a bit of a pain due to sandboxing limitations), in the long run though each has their use, though my stance might come from being more of a arch distro user and thus having access to the AUR.
That being said, i love flatpaks for certain situations, namely programs i want sandboxed due to privacy concerns (looking at you discord), i'm aware sandboxing doesn't defend against everything but it's still better than nothing.
Snaps arent proprietaty only server side of the store is
Well if you like having that package maintainer has root on your system go ahead and use arch packages and aur i dont
@@bigpod what even is the problem of having packages be installed as root i never understood that its not like its running the program itself as root or any ultra custom scripts
@@dj-no postinstall can run any commands
Great video bro!! I was a snap hater now I am a snap lover lol! Running Ubuntu and Fedora on my lab (3 Fedora -1 server and 2 37 - and 4 Ubuntu - 2 LTS servers and 2 desktops - and Blackbuntu on and additional pc for pentesting) and I love all of them! No hate just peace fellows!!!
There are two Derek's in your family? That must be confusing.
In the end, we only got a bigger fragmentation then before.
Personally i'd love if if Canonical overnight decided that snaps were now only meant only for server and cli apps and they started pushing for and contributing to Flatpak for desktop apps but since this is not very likely i'm ok with it too.
I stepped away from Linux for over a decade so I missed all of this. Thanks. Your "rigid" video explains why I stepped away - well that and I developed other Hobbies.
let's be real and honest. no average user (the ones who use the PC to be productive, or work, or whatever reason except those who are linux nerds) would mind and don't care how the app ships, as long as they can use it and install it in the most easy way possible.
have you ever heard an android, ios, windows, mac, chromeos, or whatever use say "hmmm, I don't like this app because it's an msi file instead of exe file"?!?! no! because all they care about is to have the app that pays the bill
Great video man, very compact on the core explanaiton of each one
I'm curious if anyone thinks that Flatpaks will lose steam due to RedHat's recent actions.
I was always angry about this whole mess around snaps. This packaging format is great for server purposes and the only one that works. Maybe its not ideal for desktop apps usage, but its not the case to call it s$it...
Life is too short and precious to spend being angry about computer software.
I have given up using Flatpacks. The download and install process is just so slow and tedious. Tried using them on lots of Linux distros but always encounter the same issue.
Flatpak has been working quite well (fast) for quite some time for me on Fedora.
maybe you should switch your flathub source provider. Pretty sure that's the reason for your slow download.
Thanks for explaining all of the, so clearly. Cheers.
It shouldn't include any of them by default. It should give us the choice to add them in or if they want to include one they shouldnt remove the deb versions of software like firefox from the repo.
I refuse to use a program that's only packaged as a .exe ;-)
you may need to give it permission to run but after that its self contained
Me who has never used anything other than AUR 😂.
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.
Sorry I know this comment is from a year ago, but could you explain more on how canonical with snaps are engaging in anti-competitive practices?
@@anoobplays386 closed source backend of the snap store because their launchpad failed
He got paid by Canonical. Distrotube is a sellout
@@anoobplays386 The big one is that snap only supports a single store, the Snap Store hosted by Canonical, there are no other stake holders. Contributing to snap also requires signing a Canonical CLA, which many FOSS developers don't like as CLAs let projects re-license the project to become proprietary or different licenses. Snap also relies on AppArmor for confinement, so they don't work as well on Fedora and soon Tumbleweed as they're moving to SELinux.
@@lightyear3429 "paid by canonical" y'all have no brain.
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.
The main reason they don't do that is probably because they want to earn revenue from companies selling their proprietary applications via the snap store.
On the server side it's going to be interesting to see what will happen, but Canonical might be fighting a loosing battle with Snap because OCI has basically won and that is what everybody supports. There are definitely issues with OCI containers in that they are kind of a mismatch with a classic server setup with systemd for example, but that gap is also getting closed with things like podman's quadlet etc.
this would increase the maintainence burden, which canonical is aiming to reduce ;)
3:45 Flatpaks don't need root permission
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
flatpaks can be installed in user space without any aditional permissions
correct. he was wrong to say flat pack requires sudo to install
So you're saying that they are insecure then?
@@terrydaktyllus1320 how would that make them insecure?
@@johnq4951 I don't know, I don't use them, I don't need to use them. I am asking him to explain why believes the lack of additional permissions is a good thing as someone who works in cyber-security on Linux servers.
Perhaps if you stopped question the person asking the question and sat patiently to see if they answer, you too might learn something.
You have two ears and one mouth for a reason.
@@terrydaktyllus1320 He never said it was a good thing. He only corrected Derek in saying you need root permissions. You do not need root permissions to install as a user. If you think installing an application as a user is less secure then a system install then you can explain(or not I don't care).
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
Soydev.
Snowflake OS actually has a GUI package manager for Nix that they've been working on.
Nix package manager is only part of the whole Nix experience and Nix pushes reproducibility of packages and Development build aystem first and package containment is also possibility with sandbox possible using Nix language itself or with docker.
NIX is so much more than what snaps, flatpak, and appimage were created for; but can replicate what they do thanks to its functional language.
Not really in the same category
"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.
You do what you like but I don't instructions from strangers on the Internet and I enjoy discussions on these topics. If you do not then don't read them, but it's extremely self-entitled of you trying to impose your "editorial standards" on everyone else.
This is a public messaging system and only TH-cam gets to enforce their standards here, not you.
Thank you so much. I've been telling that to people for years. But nobody is listening. And honestly if Flatpak doesn't drastically change direction and starts supporting server use cases then the only packaging format that can actually replace everything else is and will be Snaps.
And I hate when people start hating on Snaps and like telling Canonical to divest from that tech instead of using all of that negative energy to actually do something good and yell at the Canonical as loudly as possible to open source the backend and actually make snaps more distributed and completely foss.
Stop hating, start thinking. They are endusers not server users and for endusers the FOSS idea is more important than the fact it is good for server usage. Time to treat valid criticism like an adult and not like 7 year old who calls you a meany because you don't like his teddybear.
@@worldhello1234 then think again. Linux is mostly used for servers and IoT. Flatpak doesn't support primary linux use case.
I will say that when it comes to flatpaks, I guess it all depends on the distro you are using. Linux mint for example has turned flatpaks 100% rootless right out from a fresh install. Tightly integrated with the software manager center and update manager all without having to touch a single command. You could even backup the whole entire flatpak framework to restore for just in case without having to redownload all those apps again.
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!
One has to give huge credits to Canonical for what it does for the Linux community.
@@ArniesTech I had my doubts, but with skepticism you get the assurance of certainty by giving it time with the community.
@@ArniesTech I give credit to Canonical for what they do for people that use Ubuntu - but they do nothing for me as a Gentoo user of 20 years.
Linux is about choice and if Canonical do for you what Gentoo does for me then we're both happy - but please don't pretend it's a "Linux community" thing, it's just a proportion of it. Linux would still exist if Canonical did not.
I love appimages and use them extensively. But the theme thing is really a hassle. The program naming thing is the main reason I avoid flatpaks
A bash script with awk/cut/sed with a for loop that iterates the contents of ~/.local/share/flatpak/exports/bin, removes the first and second fields from the names and save them in an alias should be all that is needed to not have to run the huge names in the terminal, but I don't have a problem with this, flatpak for GUI, snap for command line
Very well explained DT. I like the way you explained the three package formats by way of comparison.
It really brought the concept behind the creation of them into focus for me. Great video as always.
I really want to like appimages despite how the maintainer just keeps dropping the ball time after time again.
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.
I've never seen a snap to be run on server and I would never put any production package on my server through snap. Not that I hate snap, I quite dont care, but autoupdates and not to be able to host your own source repo is quite a deal breaker. Last thing I want is to have a production package update breaking a service on a whole fleet of machines, possibly on hundreds or thousands of servers serving huge number of customers. Similar reason, why Debian is golden standart for production servers
Removing snap from my desktop ubuntu installation has cut my OS boot time in half. I only had the preinstalled snaps like firefox and have never installed a snap myself.
Snaps run a lot of stuff at boot, they are proprietary, they come preinstalled and they take over the package manager. Doing "apt install" will sometimes install the snap and purging snap from your system is a long and complicated process if you want to get rid of every trace of them.
Snaps also take more time to open, but thats just the least of my concerns with them. They might be okay for ubuntu server but dont force desktop ubuntu flavors into snap. It really sucks for desktop use and should not be a thing for those kinds of distros.
I tried out Ubuntu a few days ago and I was shocked on how fast snap was! Better than PoP OS for sure
PyCharm flatpack is so sandboxed that you can't change the python version that comes installed with it. It comes with 3.10 and you can't use 3.12 that was installed on the system. That is really a show stopper for me. I was very happy with Suse micro-os with AEON desktop, but this problem with PyCharm forced me to change back to Ubuntu
For me is native packages for 99% of my software, or appimages if I want to lock a specific version of some program.
I just don't get the case of use flatpak and snaps solve. Sandboxing every application you run is a waste of resources.
If I want to run something I don't have access to the source code (like a windows videogame) I just log into another user and run it there. Which by the way is gonna run better, bypassing the compositor (gamescope).
Note: I should add, never run a appimage that has not been compiler by yourself.
11:30 That's exactly what I think when I see some linux users say "I will only use apps / games / any other software if it's available for linux". Seriously? How do you use a phone, routers, TVs, game consoles or any other electronic equipment that has proprietary software as the only option? Would you just not use them and go back to the stone age? That's the most stupid argument I see all the time from linux users
I personally am a big fan of flatpaks. recently distro hopped to fedora and the native firefox had codec issues for twitch and whatnot.
i just removed that and installed the flatpak version and boom, everything is working again! Since they bundled everything in the sandbox,
I didn't have to worry about any missing dependency at all.
Antifa scum.
Have you wondered WHY the 'native firefox' in Fedora had 'codec issues' while the flatpak doesn't?
@@apo.7898 i think my installation was missing some but i used flatpak mostly so it was not an issue for me to move to flatpak version from the default installation of rpm firefox.
@@apo.7898 I do know why, but I don't give a shit. Most users don't.
Ubuntu should just drop.
arch fanboy detected
No, let's do the Linux way and make a new package manager that's better than both of them and then fork that as well. As a matter of fact, screw Linux too, let's make a new better open OS
I never like those universal packages. Like AppImages, Snaps and Flatpak. They mess up the theming on my system. I rather stick to the native packages like .deb and .rpm.
I am on Opensuse Tumbleweed and Sparky Linux Semi-rolling. Things are going well for me on those 2 distros. Those native packages works just fine for me.
Tumbleweed and Sparky are both underrated distros.
@@folksurvival That is why I am using it and promoting it. Even though it is underrated. It doesn't matter. What matters is that I am happy with what I am using. That what switching to Linux is all about. It is about being contented with what you use.
Flatpaks require extensive code changes for Java applications because of the mandatory sandboxing. The Flatpak 'portals' work for C or C++ code, but require using a Java Native Interface for programs written in Java. As a Java developer, I will do an AppImage installer (if I can figure out how to do it), or perhaps even a Snap package installer, but not a Flatpak.
Your comments about Canonical / Ubuntu focusing on the server market... are kinda funny. Canonical originally decided to do Ubuntu for two reasons if I'm remembering correctly. 1) Mr. Shuttleworth really liked Debian and thought that its development cycle was too slow and wanted to improve it by providing something with a much more rapid development/release cycle. 2) Red Hat had recently announced they were dropping Red Hat Linux and focusing on their new product, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (and Fedora didn't exist yet) as they didn't believe there was a way to be successful with a desktop targeted Linux. Canonical was going to focus exclusively on the desktop in response to Red Hat pivoting to the server space. But obviously, times change, eh?
IMHO snaps has the best theme integration. Running Chromium as flatpak and setting theme from OS is a nightmare.
TBH I use a capable PC and won't notice that slow startup of snap packages. I mean Windows wasn't any better right?
Linux community needs to calm down, everyone brings their talent and make a solid distro that is capable of doing everything. That's why people still revert back to windows and Mac
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.
Package AppImageLauncher in rpm
ya I generally have no problem with the distro packaging anywhere. I'm not terribly fond of deb because I had problems before, but being able to handle a tar.gz is an important skill. I want gui apps to help me build... standardize any system's process. It shouldn't be mind-numbing, just moving files and adding configs, but it is :/
Linux Mint has flatpaks tightly integrated with their DE environments. In the last week the updates for these flatpaks is approaching 8 gig of downloads. At the beginning of this week one of the updates was 4G of flatpaks. The original ISO that I used to install the entire system was no where near this size! I have yet to install a single flatpak on this system. This is all Linux Mint system software. This is approaching the nonsense of Microsoft updates. It must be nice to sit in your ivory tower and call people idiots who don't want to use snaps/flatpaks/app-images. If I want the latest and greatest and it's not out there for one my systems, I simply compile it. Instead of trying to use shaming tactics on Linux users, try to make videos that are of use to the community. You used to do that. What has happened to you?
how did you manage to get 8 gig of download, I have bunch of flatpaks installed with only about 1 gig
no matter what extra package system you use they should only be in addition to the distributions repository
Yes, but learning your distro's package manager properly is too difficult for "Linux babies" who just want to download their software from some potential malware site somewhere and double click on it to run it.
Do you really think these babies have enough computer knowledge to be able to detect malware sites from the real ones? At least if you go to your distro's package manager, it's protected with certificates and keys to make malware almost impossible.
I disagree with you. let the app devs carry about the app, the shipping, versioning, testing, etc. let the distro devs take care about the distro. microsoft doesn't maintain the apps, neither does apple or android. so, why should the distro mantainers and dev care about the apps?
this is wrong from the ground.
Great video. I don't think the debate witch one is best will ever go away. I'm on Arch and a lot of times the AUR will not build what I want and Spotify is a big one that's hard to get. I always have flatpaks installed on my system. I have wondered what the difference is between them all and you have answered that
DT won't install a package JUST BECAUSE its packaged as an exe
you can install flatpaks as user if you want. ends up in your home folder. also, the last 2 minutes.. preach brother!
"Self-contained, program, ready to run": welcome to the macOS world 😁
The problem with snaps is they flat out not work for desktop but they want you to use them for desktop. So until they fix that, snap is simply worse
they have no purpose existing because everybody understandably just uses docker images, so snaps aren't even good for the server either.
Yes this. Exactly this. I've been saying this for a while now. Thanks for explaining this in a video dt!
I would add they don't have to do the same thing, they serve different purposes, and that's ok ;)
Absolutely. They are tools in a tool box. Each being awesome for its purpose.
@@ArniesTech yupp, this is also why you can't really compare them xd
What makes these kinds of debates doubly pointless is that you are perfectly free to remove snaps and install flatpaks, no matter your distribution.
I don’t use snaps on Ubuntu. I always seem to have trouble with snap installed software not communicating with hardware or some other part of my network. I could probably fix every problem manually by researching what permissions to add and manually installing missing dependencies or I could just download the flatpak version and get back to work.
Agreed... I am using microceph and microk8s snaps in my Ubuntu servers to spin up kubernetes clusters with ceph storage and nothing comes close to ease of use, upgradeability and stability. Ignorant Linux newbies should stop trash talking against snaps and being brainwashed by other ignorant TH-cam Linux wannabe "experts"!!!!!
I don't like snap because I run Kubuntu.
I update the software and the OS via Discover and snap applications like Firefox and Chrome don't get updated.
Instead, once in a while a pop up comes out saying to refresh.
I have to open the terminal and run some obscure command.
The other problem was that once in a while, Brave would not launch from the quick Start menu. This is bc the update relocates the EXE file.
I got rid of Firefox snap and installed with some obscure command lines to have a normal install.
I did the same for Brave.
There is a lack of quality testing on Linux.
I'd however STRONGLY recommend flatpak finally to get their p***s back in and not only focus on GUI apps. It's a shame IMHO to actively ignore TUI/CLI apps as well as daemon software. I - as a software developer - would highly appreciate that, as it makes package maintenance for me A HELL(infinite exclamation marks here) easier. 🙂 Also shame on all the distributions, even after that many decades of Linux existence, to not have finally converged to a sub-5 packaging format count. As a software maintainer, this is suicide. And then one wonders why commercial apps prefer iOS and Windows. :)
I finnaly find a person who really understand things.
Thanks for sharing really good and qualityfull video.❤❤
You can simply purge all snaps and replace them with fltapak alternatives, i did it on my Ubuntu 24.04 desktop installation without any issues.
I understand Flatpak for desktop apps and Snap for services but why?
Is it because flatpaks have extra components? Are they harder to write generally? And it is only worth it when a gui is needed?
From the user perspective I do not see much difference, I presume the main difference is for the developer.
If you are installing terminal emulators and shells and filesystems via anything other than the native format, what the HECK are you doing!?
No. Snaps are ugly
I think it's disingenuous minimise people's concerns with snaps.
The speed thing, admittedly I haven't tried in a while, was a very big issue on my older hardware and I don't think it's reasonable to expect people to have to upgrade their hardware just to get rid of start-up lag for packages. My experience has been slow and that's why I try to avoid snaps if I can.
The proprietary store is another massive issue for many people, and while "i" don't care (I use the Microsoft store lulz) it's a valid concern for FOSS people.
I also didn't see you mention that Canonical recently made its partnered (or official) distros not include flatpak by default on install and I think that's a dick move and shows the community why a single company can't be trusted to be the sole proprietor of software packages (not only that, what if the store shuts down). Flatpak and appimage doesn't have this problem.
If available, I install the OS native version, then if needed, I look for Flatpak or AppImage updated versions and install them. I have the best of both worlds...
The biggest advantage using this method is I don't crash my system anymore trying to install newer version not currently supported by the OS...
This was a really good and informative video. I though I knew a lot about this topic, but apparently I was mistaken.
I think ubuntu knows its code and dependencies etc etc better than any individual developer. If they recommend snaps then its always going to be better than any alternative. Flatpaks are getting way too bloated and big
Steam native is 250mb on apt
Steam flatpak is 2.03gb
I have low disk space so flatpak is huge L
I LOVED the old good days when Ubuntu was good distro, but now things have changed to the other side. I came to a conclusion that every distro that is run by a company or sponsor by one is getting worst and worst compared to distro that are driven by the community. That is why I’m going back to rock solid Debian !!!!
Flatpak doesn't need root either. Install to the userlevel, just like appimage.
Didn't you recently complain about people reusing your content? You made the exact same video as the Linux experience ^^
I haven't seen his video. I didn't record this video this morning. Heck, I didn't record it this week. I doubt Nick recorded his yesterday either. Most content creators record videos days or even weeks before publishing. Nick and I recording the same video topic is just coincidence. It happens. Had I saw him release his, I might have delayed the release of mine for a week or two, but I didn't catch it. Oh well.
11:43 totally agree with this, I don't understand what's up with this cult-like behavior around freaking packaging formats, like really guys? Really?
I'm pretty sure I don't need root privileges to install flatpaks. I'm not going to go out of my way to install a flatpak just for the sake of checking this, but I'm convinced that of all of the times I've installed a flatpak, I never typed my root password once.
Thanks for your insightful review. It adds a depth of clarity regarding these three formats!
I use mx linux and i am also a commodore amiga user too and i decided to install fs-uae amiga emulator...it would not work correctly via a debian file but works great with the flatpak version...
absolutly not, flatpack packeges are huge, where snaps are small and light...
app image is stand alone, I'll use it if I need to. snaps and flat pack require I install some other software first, from what I understand. I'm not installing this whole system with a marketplace and all this other stuff, to run one program, which would load slower than it should. count me out, I'll stick to old school, what just works.
No, with flatpak you don't need root permissions to install a package, see `--user` flag.
Four freedoms for Gnu-Linux, but no freedom for choose in Ubuntu. Sudafrican's Apartheid mode?
the idea of snap packages are pretty good, i hope canonical keep the research development of this, and this growing. :)
I dont know who does Canonical PR but they really dont seem to know how to engage with the community at large. Never mind Snaps on Ubuntu Server infact more power to them it works well for it. Ubuntu Desktop is another story. When users are forced to use Snaps for some applications thats the issue. If Snaps were better then people would use it more than flatpaks on the desktop they havnt and so are rightly annoyed that when something becomes standard on most other distros its suddenly removed leaving an inexperoenced Linux user with more hurdles to go through to get it. Or be forced to use a snap instead even if performance and stability of the app were inferiror to the previous flatpak package they used. This is a corporate decision and yet again the community has rightly called Canonical out for it.
I've seen a number of projects having official AppImages on their websites.
Are you still maining Arch (or a variant, I cannot remember the name)? I remember in a video a while ago you mentioned you may switch to NixOS because of it's configurability. Have you pursued this further?
Flatpaks + Homebrew and never looked back. 😎
In terms of desktop applications, Ubuntu should give it up.
"Each Has Its Purpose" Come on dude at ome point you gotta choose it's like saying each distro has its pupose, sorry but I disagree
I think "snap is for servers" is pointless since snap packages are mostly gui programs(flatpak/appimage can replace those). And for the all-in-one packages like nextcloud there is docker which is really superior. And don't get me wrong, use what you want/enjoy/like, it's totally up to you
Snaps can be anything tho
I used to be anti snap/flatpaks/app image, but I've come around some. I still prefer distribution packaging, but I do make use of some flatpaks and app images
AppImage has to be the cleanest and easiest to use ( no install ).
I'm not aware of a Theme or other problems with it ( seems easy to fix ).
Thanks for breaking this down DT! I didn't know the differences between them. I do like AppImage, but there are some funky things that I haven't figured out yet.
Why does he take 1 minute repeating the same thing? It just makes me stop watching the video.
1:35 Snapaks are my favourite packaging format!
Compare Snaps with Docker, not Flatpak and AppImages then you see the problem with Snaps.
If we uninstall snap with sudo apt purge snapd, do we are free of it?
In short:
- flatpaks for workstations
- snaps for servers
- appimages for former windoze users
Canonical should keep snaps on Ubuntu Server and not forcing it on the desktop version.