@HerraBRE I would say snaps, but I'm an Ubuntu member. And I worked on Snapcraft for a while.
The big reason is that even though Flatpak exists in my distros it's not setup with repos by default. So users still can't find your stuff.
@ted That's an interesting point.
I've already got automated Debian packaging sorted, so Ubuntu is kinda already taken care of. Flatpak might give me more bang for the buck.
This is all just idle pondering at this point, I wasn't aware of the repo complication, thanks for pointing that out.
@squeakypancakes @HerraBRE I don't know stats, but I imagine the number of people that have the flatpak handles for websites to be really small.
For instance, that wouldn't work on my machines because I use the upstream Firefox snap and it can't install stuff in my machine (a good thing).
@ted @HerraBRE You can host the flatpak file on your site as they're really small (libreoffice is only 3.9kb) and have it point to flathub or another repo.
Even if you are sand boxed in you still prolly have you Downloads folder exposed if you need to download something. You should just be able to click on them and let Gnome software or Discover install it from there.
@HerraBRE it sounds like you're thinking about them as packaging formats, which they are, but that's not the most interesting part. The biggest change is converting to a confinement model for your application. It puts a lot of pressure on developers for a huge user win, though developers get wins too in a more direct access to their users.
For instance, you can make a snap from a deb really easily. But it may not work.
Also, I don't expect my next Ubuntu desktop to be able to install debs.