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Snap out of it: Canonical on Flatpak friction, Core Desktop, and the future of Ubuntu
(www.theregister.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2025
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Isn’t base Ubuntu losing marketshare?
I know it’s not comprehensive, but the Steam survey shows Mint skyrocketing and Ubuntu dropping like a rock. And I feel like Snap doesn’t matter in server deployments or business machines. So… who’s this for?
Snap absolutely matters in server deployments FYI. Its advantages are pretty clear in that space, and arguably more suited to it.
The only reason I can think of to use a Snap is that you're using Ubuntu, and some package you expected to be available through apt is now only available as a Snap. The better solution is to not use Ubuntu, and rely on Docker or Podman to get anything not available as a system package.
They do? Why?
Oh, that's interesting. And from what I know about Flatpak, I can see issues there.
...If snap (and base Ubuntu) basically diverge to, and specialize in, server usage, that seems fine.
The more important metric to Canonical however is corporate / paying customer marketshare - I am guessing it hasn't suffered too much otherwise they would have backed down on some of their decisions regarding snaps.