[SOLVED] Snap, Flatpack and Appimage

[oldgeek]

I would like some user feedback on the uses of snap, flatpack and appimage. I have avoided snap and flatback so far, and have installed appimages for Digikam, Etcher, Openshot and GIMP. So far these programs have worked well, but I don't know if snap and flatback offer better user experiences. Snap seems to be the way to go in Ubuntu, but I'm not sure just which of these three formats are better. Any comments?

[chimak111]

Snaps don't yet integrate well in terms of appearance: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1000...ok-more-native. I don't know about flatpacks. AppImages look just like your other applications.

[sithlord48]

AppImage is completely stand alone. Snap and Flatpak use repos and the programs installed this way have dependencies. You can think of both Snap and Flatpak as a similar system to the currently package system the difference is that the packages are not made by your distro but instead made by the someone else. Snaps and Flatpaks can be installed via discover once you have added repos. I have made both Flatpaks and Appimages the Flatpak is always smaller but it may need dependencies from flatpak repo. My one project has about 1GiB of dependencies for the 800kib flatpak, The Appimage for this same application is about 50MiB. AppImages are not intergrated with discover so you need to manually check (or the application checks) for a new version if you want a newer version. Flatpak and Snap will provide updates like normal system applications. Hopefully this has been helpfully but if you have more questions feel free to ask ill do my best to answer.

[GreyGeek]

AppImages do NOT depend on the existence of libraries pre-installed on the system and do not touch the system aside from the directory you make and install it in, IF you create a directory for it. I created a directory under Downloads titled AppImages and put all of them in there. I mark them executable (as they are, not unzipped) and create links to the menu for them. All the documents an AppImage creates, if it creates any, are stored inside the image. Delete the image and all traces of the app disappear. When an AppImage is not running no system resources are consumed. Snap requires that snapd be run as a process all the time. Flapack is similar. Nice way to spy on you.

[jpenguin]

I prefer flatpak to snap, appimages are close to the way classic Mac did apps. Snap & flatpak are sandboxed, which can be annoying when not needed. Flatpaks store user data in $HOME/.var

[oldgeek]

Thanks to all who answered. I think I'll stick with appimages.

[GreyGeek]

IF you need a sandbox around an AppImage program you can run it using firejail.

[oldgeek]

Thanks, but I'm not really sure what I would need it for, as I don't understand the concept very well. I use Digikam and Open Shot fairly extensively when I come back from a trip, and so far they both have worked without problems. So does Etcher, which is very easy to use.

[GreyGeek]

The only thing I'd use it for was an app that *required* an internet connection before it would work, like a browser or Minecraft .... Firejall would sandbox that app and when you were done it would delete the chroot environment that it created for it and thus delete any cookies, trackers, bots, spys, etc....

[kc1di]

I've been using appimages for a couple programs that I need and they have worked very well here.

[jglen490]

I've never tried snap or flatpack. I have tried an appimage of etcher. At first it worked just fine, but after downloading an updated etcher appimage, it failed miserably. I don't know why, but it's gone and I'm O.K. with that as there are plenty of applications in the traditional repos that work quite well.