>there's far less emphasis on creating native distribution packages for third-party software in 2025. Flatpaks, Snaps, and AppImage packages seem more popular with desktop-application developers these days. A lot of server-side software is now expected to be deployed as a container—or a group of containers run in Kubernetes—rather than installed as a package.

Are CLI tools or low-level, privileged software (e.g. anything that requires root) also distributed using flatpak or snap these days?

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creatonez 3 days ago | parent [-]

Ubuntu distributes some system daemons and even the kernel image as Snaps. The Ubuntu Server interactive installer nags you to look at a list of server software (such as nginx) to install using Snap.

Flatpak hasn't really taken the same path, it doesn't have much utility for anything other than desktop apps.

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bonzini 2 days ago | parent [-]

There is toolbox, see https://github.com/containers/toolbox.

	▲	creatonez 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Toolbox and Distrobox are not based on Flatpak, though. They're more just nicely packaged docker-like container tools, targeted for development use cases.
	▲	2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
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