There is nothing wrong with using your distro’s app center. Often it will save you extra steps by updating things like Flatpaks as well, if you use them (or Snaps, if you’re an insane person).
I also like graphical frontends because there I can see screenshots of the software, because there’s a lot of software out there with really bad UI and UX.
System packages: not viable for the majority of packages because the distro devs don’t have time to manually package everything
AppImage: even worse integration (like no desktop shortcuts on install). Developer has to guess what libraries need to be included and which ones are already installed by the user. No sandboxing. Probably worse SLSA scores.
AUR: even worse security. No sandboxing. Packages are often compromised by hackers.
Snaps I agree just because there is no open source snap store and it’s impossible to set up a 3rd party store.
Flatpaks though? They let install packages with weird / rare / not available requirements on any distro. All open source with a really nice sandbox. I think flatpaks are great.
There is nothing wrong with using your distro’s app center. Often it will save you extra steps by updating things like Flatpaks as well, if you use them (or Snaps, if you’re an insane person).
I also like graphical frontends because there I can see screenshots of the software, because there’s a lot of software out there with really bad UI and UX.
Flatpaks and snaps are two examples of deliverables with terribad integration and low SLSA scores. They should be considered toxic.
Let’s look at the alternatives:
Snaps I agree just because there is no open source snap store and it’s impossible to set up a 3rd party store.
Flatpaks though? They let install packages with weird / rare / not available requirements on any distro. All open source with a really nice sandbox. I think flatpaks are great.
Immutable Linux users didn’t like that
Unless you use openSUSE Tumbleweed, right? Then it’s “sudo zypper dup”, from what I’ve heard.
OpenSUSE used to use yum and then briefly dnf. Zypper is fairly recent in the last several years.