Exactly a year ago, after having had a discussion with another user about the diffusion/adoption of self-contained packaging, I decided to collect some data over time both for personal curiosity and for being able to have “objective” information that I could use to reply or support some topics that are often presented in the debates that often arise on these packaging systems. After a first year of data collection this is what I get:
| Date | Tot | App | Framework | OEM | OS | Kernel | Gadget | Probable SNAP Garbage (hello or test) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29/04/18 | 1450 | 1411 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 10 | 27 | 223 |
| 29/05/18 | 1509 | 1469 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 10 | 27 | 224 |
| 29/06/18 | 1585 | 1544 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 10 | 27 | 242 |
| 29/07/18 | 1641 | 1600 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 10 | 27 | 246 |
| 29/08/18 | 1728 | 1687 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 10 | 27 | 264 |
| 29/09/18 | 1771 | 1730 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 10 | 27 | 267 |
| 29/10/18 | 1831 | 1789 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 10 | 28 | 282 |
| 29/11/18 | 1907 | 1868 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 10 | 25 | 302 |
| 29/12/18 | 1983 | 1944 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 10 | 25 | 312 |
| 29/01/19 | 2063 | 2024 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 10 | 25 | 324 |
| 29/02/19 | 2144 | 2105 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 10 | 25 | 323 |
| 29/03/19 | 2209 | 2170 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 10 | 25 | 331 |
| 29/04/19 | 2317 | 2278 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 10 | 25 | 342 |
In a Year the number of Snap has grown, with a linear trend, of more than 860 units:
In the same period of time, on Flathub, this is what happened:
| Date | Tot Flatpak on FlatHub |
|---|---|
| 29/04/18 | 255 |
| 29/05/18 | 276 |
| 29/06/18 | 307 |
| 29/07/18 | 329 |
| 29/08/18 | 379 |
| 29/09/18 | 404 |
| 29/10/18 | 425 |
| 29/11/18 | 459 |
| 29/12/18 | 476 |
| 29/01/19 | 483 |
| 29/02/19 | 507 |
| 29/03/19 | 527 |
| 29/04/19 | 563 |
So over the course of a year there was more than a doubling of the number of Flatpaks with an almost linear growth too.
We can therefore assume that over the last year the adoption of snap and Flatpaks by packagers and developers has not slowed down but has remained constant.
The number of download packages is not available for Snap and/so the UAppExplorer, used by me to collect the Snaps data, doesn’t have a rank with the most popular snaps. We are helped by FlatHub which has a collection dedicated to the most popular Flatpaks
From the comparison of the lists of applications we see how in the Snap store there are 6 of the top 10 applications (7/10 if we also consider GreenWithEnvy which, not yet being on the stable branch, does not appear in the list of available Snaps) and this would seem to contradict some claims that the developers of the main desk applications would not find in Snap a valid packaging system.
Unfortunately, we have not access on the number of downloads so we can not say anything about the adoption of these packaging systems by the user base.
I avoid making any Snap vs Flatpak comparison both because I do not want to burst a flame war and because there are several aspects that prevent from consistently evaluating the data, the main of which is the fact that there is only one Snap Store that collects practically all the available Snaps while in the Flatpak packaging system FlatHub is only one of many stores and is known of some distros that have their own store with dedicated Flatpaks.
