Want to migrate over from Snaps to Flatpaks on your Linux machine? Well, unsnap is a new tool in the early stages that will help you do just that.
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From the description at the link I was thinking that this actually converted snaps into flatpaks, but clicking through to the project’s readme I see it actually only replaces installed snaps with equivalent flatpaks in cases where a flatpak already exists. Still useful I guess, but less wow.
Flatpak is superior in general, however Snaps can be integrated as system components, which Flatpaks cannot do.
Flatpaks are good for software that can run independently with bundled dependencies, good for long term software preservation and usage.
Not all snaps are available as flatpaks, Firefox is one I can think of.
firefox is one of the first things you see on the flathub homepage because it’s top of the popular apps along with spotify…
Really?
Is there a consensus on snaps vs flaks?
Across the board, everything Snaps do Flatpak does, and then Snap is also trash for a bunch of reasons
in what ways are snaps trash?
Proprietary servers. The only place you can get snaps is from Snapcraft.
who’s paying the bills for Flathub?
There are currently six companies listed here, but, the important thing is that the flatpak client software can install things from places other than flathub (and the server-side software running flathub is free software).
The snapcraft server-side software is closed source, and even if someone reimplemented it they would also need to fork the snapd client software as the snapcraft URLs are hardcoded and not reconfigurable.
I’m surprised not to see Valve there, given how important Flatpaks are for the Deck.
I also didn’t see a donate button. Any way we can pitch in or help?
You could ask on their forum or matrix channel. I just noticed that neither GNOME Foundation nor RedHat are listed on that about page, both of whom iirc are actually very involved. This post says “GNOME has a donor who is interested in supporting financial sustainability for app developers and removing barriers to an inclusive ecosystem. Flathub would like to use these funds to work with a contractor for a short-term project and make steps towards supporting application developers being able to request payments (whether donations or subscriptions).”
edit: reading more of that thread, I see another recent funder (possibly the aforementioned GNOME funder?) is “Endless Network”… inventors of “The World’s First Pay-As-You-Go PC” 🤦
As much as I dislike snaps…it’s not true that everything snaps do can also be done with flatpaks. snaps can be used for system updates (system libs, kernel, drivers…)…something flatpaks can’t do (and are not meant to do). (Sorry, best link I can find in a short search…but it doesn’t get in very many details :()
Would be nice if you’d elaborate in those reasons ;)