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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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What's your opinion on Snap/Flatpak, and why? (self.linux)

submitted 1 year ago by IUsedTo to c/[email protected]

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I know snap is fairly unpopular in the Linux community, and I've seen mixed responses regarding Flatpak. I wanted to know, what's the general opinion of people in this community regarding this 2 package managers?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Seriously, I really wonder if the opinion about Snap/Flatpak is really that strong outside of the echo chambers of the Linux online communities.

Concerning Snap, I saw people upgrade from Ubuntu 18.04 to 22.04 w/o even noticing it. (AFAIK that was after Canonical invested some time in the performance problems.) Of course, I can also understand Ubuntu users which where unhappy about performance degradations with Snap packages.

I run openSUSE MicroOS/Aeon on my entertainment system with Flatpaks, and for my use case, flatpaks / immutable Linux distributions are brilliant: Automatic updates on reboot and I didn't have to bother with anything after the first time setup.

On my work desktops I run Debian and I am quite happy for some applications packaged as Flatpak, which would be hard to get in updated versions otherwise. At the same time, development environments in Flatpak are - at this moment - more trouble to me than it is worth it (integrating with toolchains/build systems and the operating system).

In general, my opinion is that Snaps/Flatpak provide a great solution distributing software in the Linux ecosystem and I would prefer, if distributions focus more on their core operating system instead of the redundant work of packaging the same software again and again and again. Of course, Snaps/Flatpaks will always have some drawbacks compared to a package integrated into your system (a little bit more disk space and perhaps a little bit more memory). OTOH a lot of problems we see now will hopefully be solved in the short/long run (theme integration, sandboxing, integration in the rest of the system).

The best thing that could possibly happen is, that the maintainers of several distributions which do redundant work team up on the flatpak packages and make them really awesome.

Looking really forward how things will develop in the next few years, and I especially look forward how openSUSE Aeon will develop. Linux is getting interesting again. ;-)