Different between flatpack Deb and Snap packages in GNU/Linux

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In the world of GNU/Linux and distros, I know there are different ways to get software. What I do not understand is the major differences and, for example, why is everyone talking about Flatpack lately, or why they say snap is not ideal… A little background for a noob like me would be appreciated 🤔

In: Engineering

Anonymous 0 Comments

Developers would like to have a seamless user experience, like they have on Windows or MacOS. Alas, Linux is a very diverse and moving target. There are many distros and each has their own quirks and parameters. A program that could figure all this out would be very helpful, but it would be a lot of work, so nobody has done it yet.

Flatpak (no C) has a couple of pretty interesting features. It can run the new software in a sandbox, where it doesn’t interact with the rest of the system. Users really like this because it can be tricky to “undo” some installers and restoring from a backup is a major pain. Maybe it will take over, time will tell, but this is a hard problem.