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Snap (Snapcraft)

Canonical's universal application packaging system.

Snap is Canonical's universal application packaging system. Snap packages bundle an application and its dependencies into a single squashfs image that runs sandboxed on any Snap-capable Linux distribution. Auto-update is on by default — refreshes download in the background and apply when the application is not running — which suits Canonical's positioning of snaps as a "deploy and forget" packaging mechanism.

Snap is preinstalled on Ubuntu and a few derivatives (Kubuntu, Lubuntu, etc.); on other distributions it is available through the snapd daemon. The Snap Store, which is operated by Canonical and is not (currently) federated, is the only official source of public snaps — a point of contention in parts of the broader Linux community that prefer Flatpak's more distributed Flathub model.

The client tools (snap, snapcraft) are GPL-3.0; the Snap Store backend is Canonical's proprietary service. Snap and Flatpak coexist in the Linux ecosystem, with each having genuine strengths: snaps are common on Ubuntu and have first-class support for daemons (system-wide services), while Flatpak is dominant on Fedora and most other non-Ubuntu desktops.

Already on Ubuntu. Other distros:
  Debian:    sudo apt install snapd
  Fedora:    sudo dnf install snapd
  Arch (AUR): yay -S snapd