Appimages, snaps and flatpaks, which one do you prefer and why?
None of the above. Native debs/rpms/whatever for desktops, docker images for servers.
but what about the apps that are not in the official repository?
for example tuba the mastodon client
package myself; I chose Gentoo (and previously Arch) in part because its reasonably easy to package things there.
Most build systems are covered by eclasses ( libraries) that handle the repetitive minutia every package that build system needs.
Here’s the tuba ebuild for example (from GURU, the Gentoo equivalent of the AUR), 90% of it is just listing the dependencies and telling it to use a few eclasses to handle everything else.
Oh, and here’s the lemmy back end ebuild, the giant wall of crates is automatically generated/updated from a tool that reads the cargo files. (needed because Gentoo doesn’t allow internet access during the build for normal packages so crates are downloaded ahead of time)
I hope you turn on DCT because docker image downloads are totally insecure by default.
i use arch just so i don’t have to use any of these
None of them
None
Appimages are good for downloading off sketchy websites, Snaps are good for server CLI apps, Flatpaks are good for GUIs
But honestly they all solve the main issue pretty well
