🧩 1. Canonical’s Strategic Control
Snap is fully owned and controlled by Canonical, including:
- The Snap Store (the only official source for most Snaps)
- The server-side infrastructure
- The publishing and update systems
By contrast, Flatpak and Flathub are community-driven and decentralized.
Canonical sees Snap as a way to:
- Keep control over the packaging and delivery ecosystem
- Ensure a consistent experience across Ubuntu flavors and derivatives
- Create a monetization path (e.g. enterprise Snap management, IoT, Ubuntu Core)
In short: it’s a business and ecosystem lock-in strategy, similar to what Apple does with the App Store — but in the Linux world.
⚙️ 2. Technical Motivations (from Canonical’s POV)
Canonical argues that Snap offers:
- Atomic updates and rollbacks (transactions are all-or-nothing)
- Strong sandboxing and confinement (using AppArmor)
- Universal packaging for desktop, server, and IoT devices
- Automatic background updates to improve security
However, most of these features are also available in Flatpak or OSTree, and Snap’s implementation has drawbacks that make it unpopular among desktop users.
🚫 3. Why Users Dislike It
Here are the most common complaints:
| Issue | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Slow startup times | Snaps mount as squashfs images; startup often lags behind native or Flatpak apps. |
| Centralized store | All Snaps must come through Canonical’s store; there’s no real alternative. |
| Huge disk usage | Each Snap bundles dependencies, and multiple revisions may remain installed. |
| Opaque updates | Background updates can’t easily be disabled or scheduled. |
| Poor integration | Theming and file dialogs often mismatch with the desktop environment. |
| Developer friction | Developers can’t easily host or manage their own Snap repositories. |
For users who value openness, transparency, and efficiency, Snap feels bloated and authoritarian compared to the more community-friendly Flatpak.
🧱 4. Comparison to Flatpak
| Feature | Snap | Flatpak |
|---|---|---|
| Control | Canonical (centralized) | Community (Flathub or custom remotes) |
| Update model | Automatic background | User-controlled |
| Sandboxing | AppArmor | Bubblewrap/OSTree |
| Startup speed | Slower | Faster |
| Store independence | No | Yes |
| Popularity (desktop) | Mostly Ubuntu-only | Widely adopted (Fedora, openSUSE, Arch, etc.) |
Flatpak has become the de facto universal app format for Linux desktops, while Snap has found a niche in servers and IoT (Ubuntu Core).
💼 5. Why Canonical Won’t Back Down
Canonical has invested heavily in Snap for:
- Ubuntu Core (IoT/embedded systems)
- Server snaps (datacenter and container images)
- Enterprise support contracts
For them, Snap isn’t just a desktop packaging format — it’s part of a commercial ecosystem. Abandoning it would mean rewriting their IoT and enterprise offerings around something like Flatpak, which they don’t control.
🧭 6. Community Response
Many Ubuntu derivatives (like Linux Mint, Kubuntu, and Lubuntu) have either:
- Disabled Snap by default, or
- Replaced Snap-based apps (e.g. Firefox) with native or Flatpak versions.
In short, the Ubuntu desktop community has largely rejected Snap, even as Canonical doubles down on it.
🧠 Summary
Ubuntu sticks with Snap not because it’s technically superior — it’s not — but because:
- It gives Canonical full ecosystem control
- It aligns with their commercial interests
- It supports their IoT and enterprise products
- It reinforces Ubuntu’s “vertical integration” from desktop to cloud
For most users, however, Flatpak + Flathub is faster, freer, and better integrated — which is why Flatpak has become the community standard while Snap remains a Canonical outlier.