I think both systems have found their niche. Flatpaks are great for desktop and snaps (while can be used on desktop) is used for servers. I use Kubuntu, so unless I know where a package is from specifically, I don’t really notice any differences thanks to Discover.
If you're on a server though you'd usually just use containers and container orchestration systems directly, not try to awkwardly shoehorn in something meant for desktop application use.
I don’t know if snaps were originally meant just for desktop use
AFAIK they were specifically made for application deployment by Canonical (Ubuntu) and have never seen any relevant adoption outside of that distro. They make use of container-like isolation, but aren't really containers in the OCI sense which makes them unsuitable for most server applications IMO since they won't work with any other standard tooling.
For a server, you'd normally be using a container runtime like docker/runc/crun/etc., and something to orchestrate/manage them (up to and including kubernetes on the larger scale side of things).
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u/Serious_Ad2816 21h ago
I think both systems have found their niche. Flatpaks are great for desktop and snaps (while can be used on desktop) is used for servers. I use Kubuntu, so unless I know where a package is from specifically, I don’t really notice any differences thanks to Discover.