 For the last few years there has been a war between snaps and flatpacks over which one of them will be the predominant package management system for Linux and when this War first started Many people assumed that it would be snaps that actually ended up winning the day simply because they were backed by canonical which is the developer of the largest Linux desktop distro Ubuntu and They also assumed that because flatpacks kind of started out behind and they were a little bit more nerdy that Snaps were easier to use therefore snaps would win a few years later. I think we can Fairly conclude that everyone who thought the snaps would be the victor in the war. It was wrong Flatpacks have won like the only people who still think snaps have a chance at being The winner here is canonical itself and even they I have a feeling probably see the writing on the wall now Why do I say this? Why do I think flatpacks have have won? Well, one of the reasons is that if you look at the vast majority of Popular Linux distributions almost every one of them have chosen flatpacks Oversnaps now some of them have decided to go both ways But most of them when they have made a choice have chosen flatpacks things like Linux Mint Zorn OS things like that and When we talk about this we really kind of have to figure out why they've made this choice Some of it is because canonical has been very pushy when it comes to snaps and how snaps are to be implemented Also, they haven't done a very good job of actually developing snaps. They're still slow. They're still the stores still closed source and Snaps have also had problems with theming and versioning and a whole host of other problems over the last two years That really haven't plagued Flatpacks a lot of times snaps feel like they've taken a few steps forward and then they've taken a few steps back With flatpacks while they obviously still have their problems It feels like they've constantly marked forward and gotten better over the time another reason why I think flatpacks have One is simply because more and more companies are choosing flatpacks to host their software on companies like OBS Have chosen flatpacks as the official package for their software on Linux now while there are still some companies that have chosen snaps I think that a lot of them are choosing flatpacks as well and on top all that Flatpacks have simply just gotten way better than snaps. They don't have the problems with slow loading They while they still have the problem with themes there seems to be fixes for that problem Whereas flat whereas snaps still have those problems and haven't decided to fix them. There has also been a community adoption effort around the flat pack protocol where we've seen applications that are Enabling more and more control over what flatpacks actually do seem things like flat seal are around I think that's what it's called and what that basically allows you to do is control all the permissions for flat packs And that's awesome. That's not something you really have seen yet with snaps now all this being said I don't think that flat pack is perfect. I still think it has some problems the syntax for installing Flatpacks is kind of confusing because there's multiple ways of doing it if you go to flat hub and you copy the String of text that is required to install something. It's something like flat pack install comm dot whatever dot whatever and that's not great But you can actually use flat pack install blank and it will work just fine I think that if they really want to see more and more adoption, they'll have to kind of Settle on a standard syntax that actually is human readable in order for that to be they should make that kind of default Instead of having this alternative way that which looks like you're feeding a long command into the terminal So the question is has flat packs things how we've Talked about why they've won have they solved the problem that they set out to solve and In order to ask that questions We really need to know why they were created and one of the reasons why they're created is because dependencies on Linux are kind of horrible the idea of Installing a program but not having all the things you need to run it is not a great System to run and it's worked for years, but you've always run the risk of something breaking So if you installed something like audacity or something like that and you needed a certain version of a certain dependency and those versions were out of sync or Maybe that dependency wasn't available or something the whole package wouldn't run right? that's the risk you take when you have the traditional Linux model of a One binary that relies on a whole bunch of other smaller libraries and packages in order to have it run at all In that sense flat pack and snaps have solved the problem because neither one of them have dependencies all the dependencies are baked right into the main package, but because flat pack doesn't have the Problems the snaps have a lot more distributions are adopting flat packs a lot more companies are adopting flat packs And the momentum is there for them to be the most popular package management system on Linux Now the question then becomes Does this mean traditional package managers can go away? This one is a little bit harder because everyone knows that my pride and joy is the a you are like I have fiercely clung to Arch Linux simply because I can't stand the thought of leaving the a you are behind and I highly enjoy using Pac-Man Pac-Man is my favorite package manager By far I guess not even close and I know a lot of people are also similar fans of apt like they really like apt I know a lot of people who use void Linux who like xbps or whatever it's called so a lot of people are fans of certain package managers and The thing is is that despite the fact that Flat pack has Kind of succeeded There's still the idea that it's not complete There's still things that you might want to download That aren't available through flat pack like they're just not packaged in flat pack form And you have to get those through a traditional package manager things like alacrity for example aren't packaged as Snaps or flat packs. It's just not done. So you have to either build that or get it from a traditional package manager Or a traditional repo. There are many different Examples of that where the package that you're looking for is just not available through flat pack So you still have to have an alternative source So that's the reason why I don't really think that traditional package managers are really ever going to go anywhere because there's still going to be Cruft that they can pick up that isn't actually covered by Flat pack. So in the end, I really do think that flat packs have won I think that there is enough momentum here to Conclude that flat pack is the standard that most people have settled on and I think that that's a good thing because I think technologically and community-wise Flat packs are superior to snaps in almost every way and I think that at the end of the day It's a good idea for Canonical to kind of see this and maybe give up on snaps. I don't think that that's actually going to happen But I think if they were smart they would just go ahead and adopt Flat packs as their own as well and start contributing upstream to it and everyone kind of Get behind flat packs to try to make it even better and like I said, I don't think that that's going to happen I think that they're very Stubborn I also think that they've invested a lot of time and money into snaps and I think that Eventually it probably will wither and die, but I don't think that that's going to be anytime soon I think that they will throw as much effort into it as they possibly can and and at the end of the day Ubuntu probably the Ubuntu flavors will be the only desktop distros that will actually use snaps Every other distro will use flat packs. Now, there will be the outliers that still use snaps You'll probably find something like Arco that includes snaps by default Just because it includes everything by default, right? You'll find the one distro maintainer that really likes snaps that distro will have snaps But for the most part the vast majority of the popular distros will just choose snap or will just choose flat packs So that is it for this video if you like flat packs or disagree with anything I've said leave those comments in the comment section below You can follow me on Twitter at the Linux cast you can support me on patreon at patreon.com Slash Linux cast if you haven't hit the subscribe button make sure you do so We really are getting very close to 10,000 subscribers. So if you have subscribed already, thank you so much If you haven't what are you waiting for? Linux content every single day of the week and it's just good stuff for the most part At least other people think so. I'm still up in the air But you never know eventually Let's just say one out of seven videos really good If you think that's good enough hit the subscribe button before I go. 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