Exploring the new Flatpak and Snap package formats

Conclusions

Flatpak and Snap shake the foundations of the package management system principle, causing tremors among the stalwarts of all current Linux distributions. At first glance, the idea behind these upstart package systems makes good sense: If you are constantly dealing with backports, or if you have to resolve package dependencies manually, provisioning independent containers with applications is certainly an appealing concept.

On closer inspection, however, it turns out that the principle still has some rough edges. Snap and Flatpak are pursuing similar goals and are basically competing approaches. Fedora, the driving force behind Flatpak, insists that their system is more at home on desktops, and Canonical, maintainer of the Snap, touts the benefits of Snap as a tool for server rooms.

The user groups forming up around the Flatpak and Snap communities seem eerily similar to the split between RPM and Dpkg that has inconvenienced the Linux world for decades. It might be more sensible to agree on a common approach and to pursue it. But this hope seems futile given the dynamics of the open source world.

Infos

  1. RPM: http://rpm.org
  2. Dpkg: https://wiki.debian.org/dpkg
  3. Flatpak: http://flatpak.org
  4. Snap: https://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/snappy
  5. Cgroups: https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/cgroup-v1/cgroups.txt
  6. Namespaces: https://lwn.net/Articles/531114/
  7. Docker: https://www.docker.com
  8. LXC: https://linuxcontainers.org
  9. Flatpak backport für Debian Jessie: https://packages.debian.org/jessie-backports/flatpak
  10. Flatpak for Open Suse Tumbleweed: https://software.opensuse.org/package/flatpak
  11. Hello World D-Bus example: http://media.wiley.com/product_ancillary/30/04717761/DOWNLOAD/776130code12(freedesktop).tar.gz
  12. Other Flatpak examples: http://flatpak.org/developer.html
  13. Snappy Ubuntu Core: https://developer.ubuntu.com/core
  14. Snapcraft: http://snapcraft.io
  15. Installing Snapcraft und Snapd: http://snapcraft.io/docs/core/install
  16. Snap documentation: http://snapcraft.io/docs/build-snaps/
  17. Snap interfaces: http://snapcraft.io/docs/reference/interfaces
  18. Snap Store: https://uappexplorer.com/apps?type=snappy

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