Appimages, snaps and flatpaks, which one do you prefer and why?
Flatpacks give me the least trouble so I guess those. All though appimages seem alright too. Snaps however seem to never want to install. I like the idea of easy one click installs for every distro but I think we are a few years away from that.
yes flatpaks are great but their only downside is the download size of an application
And, uhh, security?
Flatpak – It’s not without it’s own issues, of course, but it does the job. I’m not fan of how snaps are designed, and I don’t think canonical is trustworthy enough to run a packaging format. Appimages are really just not good for widespread adoption. They do what they are designed to do well, but I don’t think it’s wise to use them as a main package format.
As far as I know, Flatpaks have the best foundation currently, there are a number of issues, but they are fixable and not entirely by design. And with Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite and OpenSUSE MicroOS you can really see how native debs/rpms/whatever isn’t really that good of an idea for the average user and Flatpak is a solution to that.
Appimages at a glance seems like a perfect solution for apps that for some reason or another needs to be kept outdated. But there is (was?) an issue of it not really bundling everything it needs, it looks and behaves as it is portable, but as far as I’m aware, it really isn’t.
And then there’s Snap. Yeah, that one is just weird, it honestly just doesn’t feel like a proper solution to any of the problems it tries to fix.
I prefer flatpacks. There’s nothing wrong per se about snaps, it’s just that they are kinda slow, and Canonical is untrustworthy.
Appimages are to be avoided, imo. They are no better than downloading random crap like on Windows.
Well to be fair you can also download random flatpacks or debs or what from a website
The vast majority of flatpaks are not made by the developers of the software. I could fork any software that is not in flathub, make modifications without permission, bundle a flatpak and distribute it as the official version. You would be none the wiser about it.
For me it’s Flatpaks at the moment. Adhering to FOSS means that I try to avoid Snap. AppImages are pretty good, since it’s just an executable (and I think there’s an AppImage updater as well?), but Flatpak is preferred for me since I like the idea of having containerised systems because it’s easily manageable under this sort of central manager, i.e. Flatpak. I typically just install everything using Flatpak and update through that.
I found AppImages to be slower than anything else.
Flatpaks because their updating works (compared to my experience with Appimages) and the Apps starting instantly (compared to my limited experience with snaps). But sadly, a lot of production software doesn’t want to support either of this package formats? I haven’t seen support from Davinci Resolve or Mari, as an example.
those softwares are released with their own installer ( davinci resolve for example )
Appimages could’ve been great if they had a store front like Flatpak, so while I do not always prefer Flatpak (because of how big the first download is) I use it the most.
there is a store for them called appimage pool which is written in flutter and its also an appimage itself. https://appimage.github.io/AppImagePool/
Wow, thank you for this.
Appimages are nice, self-contained apps and I do like that they’re super simple to install and run. Downside is that they’re often a bit bigger in size and not all apps can be packaged as appimages. Oh and the guy who runs many appimage repos is a dick.
Snaps have good security, OS-integration (on Ubuntu at least) and can run CLI apps well. Downsides are that Canonical controls the technology and repositories, which end users may enjoy because higher curation of apps, but the system is less open and reliant on Ubuntu for its existence.
Flatpak imo is the best compromise. It’s an open standard which works well across various distros without hassle. Downsides are that it’s not super integrated into your OS very well and it’s larger than a native app. For one, I have a couple flatpak apps that don’t respect my system’s themes yet.
That being said, these are issues being worked on by flatpak, and being worked on openly! I prefer to go with Flatpaks where I can, but AUR and Pacman when those aren’t available. If I only need an app to do one thing and then can discard it (ie. flashing a USB with balena etcher) appimages are nice because they don’t leave an impact on the host system.
The biggest problem with Flatpaks and Snaps is the sandboxing; I’ve had so many sandbox related issues, specifically around trying to get system libraries talking to IDEs. I wish developers could choose to not sandbox specific things, one size does not fit all!
True the sandboxing sucks, but it’s good security practice – It just needs to be implemented better. Even now you can sort the issues with sandboxing via flatseal.
Like, Flatseal is awesome but it could be better integrated into DEs by default - especially ones like GNOME and KDE that focus on the less technical users. I think Flatpak contributors are working on a lot of the pinch points with Flatpak UX.
Some sensible defaults wouldn’t go amiss so you didn’t have to manually configure apps later on. Or a mobile-like permissions system for accessing these resources. Beyond my pay grade though.
None
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None of the above. Native debs/rpms/whatever for desktops, docker images for servers.
but what about the apps that are not in the official repository?
for example tuba the mastodon client
package myself; I chose Gentoo (and previously Arch) in part because its reasonably easy to package things there.
Most build systems are covered by eclasses ( libraries) that handle the repetitive minutia every package that build system needs.
Here’s the tuba ebuild for example (from GURU, the Gentoo equivilant of the AUR), 90% of it is just listing the dependencies and telling it to use a few eclasses to handle everything else.
Tuba is in the AUR
aur is limited to arch based distros only
aur is limited to arch based distros only
And rpms are for redhat tree, so ?
OP said
None of the above. Native debs/rpms/whatever for desktops, docker images for servers.
Your example package is readily available in my distro in native was my point. If your distro doesn’t have it then maybe you need to change distros.
Do you check packages you install from the aur? I ask, because it seems like people don’t. I did, and it was a pain in the ass, and that’s why I stopped using arch and arch based distros.
Then a tgz that I unpack to /opt/ or somewhere in ~/
IME Appimages often don’t work cause they don’t actually bundle everything they need (not sure if this is a fault of application developers, or some limitation). When they do work I actually prefer them to Flatpaks, which are honestly too complex IMO.
Snap kinda sucks
Flatpaks for graphical apps and guix for CLI programs and libraries.
Why guix and not nix?
I feel that Guix has a better UI, and I prefer using existing languages like Scheme, instead of inventing new DSLs.
Flatpak and Appimages. Flatpaks are the best solution IMO, just better than snaps in about every setting except servers. Appimages are great simply because of their easy portability, just being a single executable. I like having GUI apps in Flatpaks because it separates the updates for those applications from my package manager.
The advantages you speak about AppImages quickly fade away when you consider how much slower apps launch.
True, I barely ever use them (Yubikey manager is most easily offered via AppImage). I only actively use Flatpaks. I think AppImages should exist though, as the portability aspect could be useful (Syncthing syncing a directory with all your applications to different machines, etc.)
I’m not really incredibly up on the pros and cons outside of user experience, but as a user just trying to use an app, for me flatpak has always seemed the most user friendly. I can install and update them on Pop_OS using the included app store tool, as well as install them from outside the tool. To my memory, snap always requires CLI and hasn’t felt smooth, and appimages have felt sketchy AF to me. And like someone else said, updating them isn’t smooth or automatic at all.
The arch repos are enough for me except two softwares so I downloaded them as appimages. Appimages are enough for my small needs.
