Snap vs APT: What’s their real difference?Solved

Hey, 
I have some experience with dabbling with them. Here’s a quick breakdown from my experience: 

APT is basically the traditional package manager for debian-based systems. It uses .deb files and depends on shared system libraries. It’s generally lightweight and fast. 

Snap, on the other hand, bundles all dependencies into one package, so it’s more portable, you can run the same snap on different distros without worrying about compatibility. 
But the problem is, snap apps tend to start slower because they’re compressed and mounted at runtime. Also, they typically take up more disk space since they don’t share dependencies with other applications. 

To add to what @tommy mentioned: 

One of Snap’s advantages is that it updates automatically in the background, which is nice if you don’t want to think about it. Apt updates are manual unless you configure auto-upgrades. 

From a security perspective, snap applications run in a sandboxed environment with their own set of permissions. This isolation helps limit potential damage in case a vulnerability is exploited. 

When using Snap, one thing to watch out for is that not all snap packages are maintained by the original developers. There have been a few cases like in 2018, when two Snap apps were found to contain crypto miners. They ran silently in the background while the app was in use. Canonical (the company that developed Snap) removed them quickly, but the incident raised many questions about trust in the Snap ecosystem. 

Yeah, I remember that incident. The fact that Snap allows any developer to publish directly to the store is both a strength and a weakness. It’s great for indie devs, but it also means users need to be more cautious. 

Since then, Canonical has tightened things up a bit, but I still make it a habit to check the publisher before installing anything from snap. If it’s not from the official developer or a verified source, I usually skip it. 

Thanks, everyone! I didn’t realize the 2018 incident was that serious. Makes sense now why people are bit cautious with Snap. 

I’ll probably stick with apt for most things, but I can see the value of Snap in certain cases. Just have to be a bit more mindful of where the packages are coming from.