> Can Flatpak be used on servers too? Flatpak is designed to run inside a desktop session and relies on certain session services, such as a dbus session bus and a systemd --user instance. This makes Flatpak not a good match for a server.
Whereas Snap documents say:
Package any app for every Linux desktop, server, cloud or device, and deliver updates directly.
I wish the next generation of linux has a single package manager :(
Also; in the case of CoreOS, the base image is still built using a package manager (portage). Not sure about that other guy.
* apt/dpkg will remain the base packaging software on desktop and server. They're well-tested and familiar.
* flatpak will become the primary format for installing desktop software outside of repo. This'll be nice for some large open-source projects that cause grief for distro packagers, and will also give companies a single target for major Linux desktops. Flatpak is too narrowly-targeted to replace snap in all cases snap was designed for.
* snap will become a mechanism for image-based application deployment, primarily IoT.
* docker/lxd/whatever will be used to target immutable deployments, primarily servers.
Package management used to be my biggest frustration with computers. A couple years ago, I switched to nix [1][2] and now use it across all my unix-like systems (not sure how well it works on Windows, I haven't tried). Most under-rated piece of software I use, I'm surprised it hasn't blown up yet.
[1] http://nixos.org/nix/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10714102
Let me flip this question - what does nix have that snap or flatpak does not ? From what I have read, they are pretty much the same.
I haven't used flatpak or snap before, but the comment I linked outlines a lot of the benefits I see with nix. Conceptually it's more like Make + a package manager, if Make were a (well designed) pure functional language and wasn't afflicted with grotesque generated code.