Exploring the new Flatpak and Snap package formats

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© Lead Image © Jill Battaglia, 123RF.com

© Lead Image © Jill Battaglia, 123RF.com

Article from Issue 201/2017
Author(s):

The new container-inspired package formats Flatpak and Snap have landed in the territory occupied by conventional Linux package systems such as RPM and Dpkg.

Linux distributions are subject to constant change. One of the most recent victims of this constant quest for self-renewal is the classic init system, which most distros have now replaced with systemd.

Another central feature of most Linux distributions is the package management system. The most common package systems are RPM [1], which is used with Red Hat, and Dpkg [2], which is favored by Debian and Ubuntu.

The RPM and Dpkg systems have both benefited from changes and improvements over the past few years, and the idea of completely replacing one of these package management systems with something else has never been seriously considered – until now.

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