Appimages, snaps and flatpaks, which one do you prefer and why?

  • MrBubbles96@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    None. I prefer native packages. AUR usually has me covered and hasn’t broken my system…ever, really. Yet, anyways. (Well, it might have broken my Manjaro install, but it is Manjaro, so i probably sneezed wrong)

    …but, if I had to pick one? Flatpaks. Outta the three, they’ve given me the least trouble and just work right out the gate. Still prefer native packages tho

  • Kalcifer@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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 wide to use them as a main package format.

  • chickenwing@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • Rhabuko@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • Rega@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Flatpak is the best one imo. Never used appimages, and snap is pure trash (close source, slow, made by canonical). Overall, native packages are imo the way to go, but flatpak is also fairly good.

    • KotoWhiskas@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Snap isn’t really closed source, it’s common misconception, the closed source is only backend (canonical servers), the snap core itself, which is installed on Ubuntu, is fully open source

      Edit: snap definitely sucks tho

  • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Appimages are good for downloading off sketchy websites, Snaps are good for server CLI apps, Flatpaks are good for GUIs

    But honestly they all solve the main issue pretty well

  • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Flatpaks are quickly becoming my favorite. I’ve rarely had issues with App Images, but they are clunky and messy. Flatpaks are where it’s at IMO.

    Snaps are pewpy.

      • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        You have to use a separate application to manage them, otherwise they act as portable .exe files in windows, just laying around in a folder you have to manually link to or navigate to to run. You have to set them as executable manually otherwise you can’t run them in certain distros, or they force you to click through the prompt. They aren’t listed in the general packages installed on your system.

        They are often bulky in size, and depending on the distro and software, sometimes they don’t work properly. And again, without independent management software, they have to be manually updated independently.

        They aren’t bad, they just arent as good as other options IMO. I like App Images for random small programs, or some games too, they aren’t a problem. But for large programs I want to use frequently, they are just less convenient.

  • RegalPotoo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    AppImage is a nice idea, and avoids some of the performance overheads from containerised systems, but lacks a reasonable self update mechanism, lacks code signing and the desktop integration (having icons show up in the start menu) is poorly implemented.

    Snap is essentially a Canonical-proprietary apt replacement with some very serious drawbacks around performance and desktop integration (themes).

    Flatpak has some drawbacks but it largely achieves it’s design goals, and actually provides some advantages over installing things via the system package manager.

  • Sonotsugipaa@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    I’ve used Flatpak, it feels somewhat sluggish;
    I had once upon a time used Snap (unwittingly), never again;
    Appimages… with a lack of options, they seem to run well, although the two I’ve used seem to take away quite the chunk of memory.

    But if it’s a reasonable choice, I’ll always go with natively distributed or locally compiled binaries. They may be janky sometimes, but in my opinion they beat the “just ship the entire computer br0” philosophy that clearly comes from the Windows ecosystem.

    • Lucky@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      How does that philosophy come from Windows? Windows was all about tying your application directly to the host OS via the old .net framework and COM. You had to wait for the OS to update before your app could, or the OS could randomly update and break your app

      Containers as a technology are almost entirely a Linux thing as well, Windows ships with a full Linux kernel to support it now.

    • Random Dent@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Same here. I don’t really like Appimages because (AFAIK, unless there’s some tool I don’t know about) you have to just check each one individually for updates which feels old fashioned, like Windows.

      Snap is just a worse version of Flatpak as far as I can tell, so I don’t bother with it.

  • Lolors17@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    Definitly Flatpaks. Although snaps have improved since I last used them. But of all I still prefer the good old shell based Package manager.

  • TheHawaiianKoala@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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.