Flatpaks are quickly becoming my favorite. I've rarely had issues with App Images, but they are clunky and messy. Flatpaks are where it's at IMO.

Snaps are pewpy.

none of them. I don't like the idea of putting security updates in the hands of the developers of each individual application I use.

Oh your app only works with an old broken insecure version of the library? Fuck you then, you can't just decide to install and use the insecure version.

Flatpaks. On Mint, the GUI update tool updates both Flatpaks and natively installed packages. It's fantastic.

Flatpak is my preference since it supports multiple remotes (repos) and sandboxing. With flatseal tweaking the sandbox is also easy.

Snaps work great on Ubuntu and support cli tools as well as system components. But their sandboxing doesn't work on many distros and the one and only repo is controlled by one company. If I'm not on Ubuntu, I don't see any reason to choose it over flatpak.

Appimages are great for putting on a USB stick or keeping a specific version of software. But I want to install software from a trusted repository, which Appimages support at best as an afterthought.

Pacman > Flatpak > won't use it

I prefer Flatpaks by a wide margin. This presentation by openSUSE's Richard Brown is a great watch for those looking for a thorough comparison.

As far as I know, Flatpaks have the best foundation currently, there are a number of issues, but they are fixable and not entirely by design. And with Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite and OpenSUSE MicroOS you can really see how native debs/rpms/whatever isn't really that good of an idea for the average user and Flatpak is a solution to that.

Appimages at a glance seems like a perfect solution for apps that for some reason or another needs to be kept outdated. But there is (was?) an issue of it not really bundling everything it needs, it looks and behaves as it is portable, but as far as I'm aware, it really isn't.

And then there's Snap. Yeah, that one is just weird, it honestly just doesn't feel like a proper solution to any of the problems it tries to fix.

None. I prefer native packages. AUR usually has me covered and hasn't broken my system...ever, really. Yet, anyways. (Well, it might have broken my Manjaro install, but it is Manjaro, so i probably sneezed wrong)

....but, if I had to pick one? Flatpaks. Outta the three, they've given me the least trouble and just work right out the gate. Still prefer native packages tho

Nix.

Flatpak for sure, appimages are okay in certain circumstances and snaps are trash.

Flatpak -- It's not without it's own issues, of course, but it does the job. I'm not fan of how snaps are designed, and I don't think canonical is trustworthy enough to run a packaging format. Appimages are really just not good for widespread adoption. They do what they are designed to do well, but I don't think it's wise to use them as a main package format.

Flatpacks give me the least trouble so I guess those. All though appimages seem alright too. Snaps however seem to never want to install. I like the idea of easy one click installs for every distro but I think we are a few years away from that.

pacman or from source 😎 (i am superiour because i make it harder for myself)

For personal use, Flatpak when there's no native option, in most cases. They always seem to work and with Flatseal, you can more finely control permissions and local filesystem access of them.

For servers, if it's a single-purpose VM (like I do with my PiHole/AdGuard servers), I'll also go native. Otherwise, Docker for compatibility and ease of management.

Flatpak and Appimages. Flatpaks are the best solution IMO, just better than snaps in about every setting except servers. Appimages are great simply because of their easy portability, just being a single executable. I like having GUI apps in Flatpaks because it separates the updates for those applications from my package manager.

Neither. I exclusively use Nix packages. If I had to pick, AppImage because I can easily extract it to package for Nix :P

Flatpaks for graphical apps and guix for CLI programs and libraries.

Although I mostly use native software, I find AppImages useful for testing beta software, since they're one file and easy to try out.

For example: I've been using it with the Krita 5.2 beta and I have also used it before for Godot betas.

I use Flatpak when the native package doesn't work properly or isn't updated at the rate I'd like, although there are cases where I will use it for other reasons, like sandboxing when I don't want an app to have access to everything.

I have never used snaps.

Flatpak is the best one imo. Never used appimages, and snap is pure trash (close source, slow, made by canonical). Overall, native packages are imo the way to go, but flatpak is also fairly good.

AppImage is a nice idea, and avoids some of the performance overheads from containerised systems, but lacks a reasonable self update mechanism, lacks code signing and the desktop integration (having icons show up in the start menu) is poorly implemented.

Snap is essentially a Canonical-proprietary apt replacement with some very serious drawbacks around performance and desktop integration (themes).

Flatpak has some drawbacks but it largely achieves it's design goals, and actually provides some advantages over installing things via the system package manager.

Snaps is too well controlled by Canonical and does have it's limits.

Flatpaks can be very secure, and works in most distros. It is one of my favorites.

AppImages are real easy, and is designed to work on most distros. The only problem is that many apps aren't current. So I don't recommend it unless an app provides it on their own sites. AppImages are often made by somebody else.

I've only used flatpak and I honestly see no reason to try anything else. The only issue I've encountered is that Steam games launched by the Steam flatpak occasionally act strange (sometimes they can't locate graphics drivers or connect to online services).

I prefer flatpacks. There's nothing wrong per se about snaps, it's just that they are kinda slow, and Canonical is untrustworthy.

Appimages are to be avoided, imo. They are no better than downloading random crap like on Windows.

debs

Flatpaks because their updating works (compared to my experience with Appimages) and the Apps starting instantly (compared to my limited experience with snaps). But sadly, a lot of production software doesn't want to support either of this package formats? I haven't seen support from Davinci Resolve or Mari, as an example.

None