Ubuntu Has Started Work On A New Desktop Snap Store

[jo-erlend]

True. Is Snap integrated with the system's package manager?

It _is_ the system's package manager on Ubuntu Core, where you run on a read-only filesystem and hence cannot use dpkg/apt or any other traditional Linux package manager for that matter.

Quick side note. The Ubuntu community now has two distinct systems called Ubuntu, which I think is confusing. If I think, as I do, that regardless of history, we should now distinguish GNU+Linux from non-GNU Linux-systems, I also think it is both fair and sensical for us to start referring to the two Ubuntu systems as Ubuntu Debian and Ubuntu Core.

So Ubuntu Debian now has two system package managers, apt and snapd, but they don't conflict in any way. You can have one Gnome runtime for your Debian packages and one or more Gnome runtimes for snaps. I am certain there must be bugs in the interaction between these two systems, but bugs are there to be fixed and Snapd is designed to not conflict.

Both PMS' are supported transparently in the software store. Personally, I feel that Snapd should immediately replace PPAs for as many things as possible, because PPAs are designed to be Personal Package Archives, meaning security is irrelevant since you are the developer of the package you're installing. PPAs are extremely horrible as an app delivery system, since all packages and hence PPA owners, have root access to your system. That's at the very least as bad as Windows XP _prior_ to SP2, which I'm sure we all agree made WinXP significantly less horrible.

Just because I've obviously captured your attention so far, I'd just like to add a couple of things. 1) Flatpak and Snapd is only concurrant systems in the case of desktop app delivery. Flatpak is not designed for things like delivering kernel updates. Snapd is. Hence, there is no point in talking about replacing Snapd with Flatpak. 2) Flatpak and Snapd does not conflict, hence there's no reason to pick a side. 3) There is a third point wrt AppImages and security, but I realize a lot of people would find them irrelevant, so I won't make a point of it.