Michal Parusinski (Site under construction)

Instead of comparing the number of applications distributed as Snaps, FlatPaks or AppImage as a measure of success, let’s see how many existing Linux software has moved to Snap, FlatPak or AppImage. It should give us an idea of how successful these new packaging formats are with old open source projects.

Disclaimer: Now I must be honest, answering this question is difficult and easily subjective. I tried being impartial and accurate but you should take everything I state with a grain of salt. Try researching on your own.

Because counting on my own whether each piece of software on Linux is or not available as a Snaps, as a FlatPak or as an AppImage is time consuming, I decided to take a subset of popular Linux applications. To avoid putting personal bias in the list I choose the set of software listed on FossMint. I excluded Google Drive and Evernote as they are not official packaged for Linux. This should give us a rough idea of the percentage of applications moving to universal packaging.

Using this list, I searched for the following:

• Are the projects officially adopting AppImage, FlatPak or Snaps as a means of distribution? In each case I checked the project’s official website.
• Is the software distributed either as AppImage, FlatPak or Snaps? Regardless whether the project official supports any of the format.
• When distributed as an AppImage, FlatPak or Snaps, is the latest version being shipped?

Using the list, I obtained the following statistics:

• About 14% of projects official distribute their software either as AppImage, FlatPak or Snaps. Meaning that adoption is slow (the youngest of the three is 4 years old). Of the 14% ~ 10 of applications which moved to universal packaging, 40% ~ 4 have adopted FlatPak, 40% ~ 4 have adopted AppImage and 20% ~ 2 have adopted Snaps. However because the sample of applications officially distributed AppImages, FlatPaks and Snaps are so small, one should not conclude yet that FlatPak or AppImage is being more successful.
• Concerning whether software is being made available as Snaps, Flatpaks or AppImage, AppImage appears to be last with about 37%. Snaps and FlatPak are ahead with respectively about 46% and 47% adoption rate. This discrepancy can be explained by the AppImage project’s insistence on upstream packaging.`. Overall this means Snaps and FlatPaks are being more successful but only because volunteers (not officially associated with open source software projects) package popular Linux software as Snaps and FlatPaks.
• Concerning whether we have the latest version packaged as either format we see a big lead for Snaps. About 60% of Snaps provided ship the latest version, 53% of FlatPaks provided ship the latest version and only 37.5% of AppImages ship the latest version. AppImage has such a low number because most AppImages have been created by probonopd one of the main developers behind the AppImage project, and he has not been updating them for more than a year. The numbers are healthier for Snaps and FlatPak but it is still far from 100%. Many volunteers who originally packaged software as Snaps, Flatpaks or AppImages have stopped updating the software meaning a lot of the software is out of date.

Based on this list I don’t think one can claim Snaps is way ahead if anything it appears to be strongly in competition with FlatPak. One should not conclude AppImage is losing steam either, AppImage is doing well with 634 applications distributed as AppImage according to AppImageHub and many developers choosing AppImage as the official format for Linux. It is striking that a lot of software is distributed today as Snaps, as Flatpaks and as AppImage by enthusiasts, and not because projects are officially adopting either formats. This means will still need to rely on maintainers to distribute and maintain software as Snaps, Flatpak or AppImage.

What holding back either Snaps, FlatPak or AppImage?

What stops developers from using Snaps, FlatPaks or AppImages? I searched various forums and GitHub for answers. Here are some of the main reasons:

• Lack of time, resources or motivation: This is one of the main reasons for not seeing a package format being adopted. See for instance the following links 1, 2, 3, 4, … . This should not be surprising because most software is developed by hobbyists and they don’t necessarily have the time to learn/build for a new packaging format.
• Not even packaged: I was surprised to see lots of software projects not even packaging on Linux to begin with (for instance rsync and tmux). These projects just assume maintainers will package
• Software no longer developed: Lots of software are no longer being developed. For instance, Frozen Bubble was last updated in 2010 whilst Banshee was last updated in 2014. It is hard to expect projects with no developers to magically create a Snaps, FlatPaks or AppImages.
• Lack of agreement over which format to use: This is not frequent but fairly telling. If Snaps, FlatPak or AppImage are supposed to be the Universal Package Format how come we have 3 of them. RStudio could not agree over which format to use.

Lots of people in the Linux community criticise Snaps, FlatPak and AppImage on technical ground and disagree with the philosophy of universal packaging, but ironically this didn’t show up much as a reason not to support Snaps, FlatPak or AppImage. I think the people complaining about universal packaging are usually not the software developers, I think criticism comes more from system administrators, Linux distribution developers/maintainers and users who choose Linux for its security.

Conclusion

At first it seems Snaps are the clear winner but the number 4100 is generous. It counts many applications people won’t install and it seems to count Snaps for different architecture separately. A fairer comparison would put all three on par. Overall traditional Linux software appears reluctant to adopt Snap/Flatpak/AppImage.