Ubuntu – What are the differences between snaps, appimage, flatpak and others

appimageflatpaksnap

I have been getting this question lately from students and although I have a lot of information to offer, I have not found a source that I can point people to where they can read an update answer (I have found a lot of misinformation and obsolete information). So, some of the questions I have for package formats like snap, appimage, flatpak and others in this evolution of universal packaging systems are:

Who created the package format?
What features does it offer?
What features are unique to it? (That the others do not yet have)
Who supports it?
What Distributions use it?
What focus does the package have? (For Desktop, Clouds, Mobile, etc..)
Which are more actively developed?

Best Answer

Here is a long tabular comparison of AppImage vs. Snap vs. Flatpak features. It is from the AppImage Wiki on GitHub:

https://github.com/AppImage/AppImageKit/wiki/Similar-projects#comparison

Note that this comparison is mainly from the perspective of AppImage, although it tries to represent each project fairly.

AppImage vs. Snap vs. Flatpack Comparison

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Updating snap, flatpak and appimage through Ubuntu(Gnome) Software and unified cli

The unified interface you're talking about is called PackageKit, and it's actually what powers GNOME Software on all distributions. It's a middle-layer software that sits between the package system of a distribution and front-ends like GNOME Software or KDE Discover.

Flatpak and Snap aren't yet supported by PakageKit. However, you can install plugins for GNOME Software to manage, install, and update Flatpaks and Snaps through GNOME Software (apt install gnome-software-plugin-flatpak gnome-software-plugin-flatpak).

If you disable PackageKit background service, your system will stop updating packages automatically.

Ubuntu – From what url snaps are downloaded

The first two hosts it will hit are api.snapcraft.io and dashboard.snapcraft.io. However the snaps are delivered via a content delivery network (two in fact, I believe) so it's not as simple as one host.

If you'd like to help debug speed issues when downloading snaps, here's some steps you can try to get more information.

Enable debugging in snapd.

$ sudo systemctl edit snapd.service

[Service]
Environment=SNAPD_DEBUG=1 SNAPD_DEBUG_HTTP=7

Restart snapd
```
$ sudo systemctl restart snapd.service
```
Install a large snap such as libreoffice or vscode
```
$ sudo snap install libreoffice
```
Then inspecting the logs using
```
$ journalctl -xeu snapd
```

I'd recommend starting a thread on the snapcraft forum in the store category, where the store admins and developers hang out. They're the only ones who can debug this, honestly.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Updating snap, flatpak and appimage through Ubuntu(Gnome) Software and unified cli

Ubuntu – From what url snaps are downloaded

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