App Outlet
Version: 1.2.0 Web: https://github. com/app-outlet/app-outlet
You might have heard that the GNOME Software developers recently decided to remove Snap support from their application. This doesn’t come as much of a surprise, as GNOME Software has been developed mainly by Red Hat employees who advocate everyone should use Flatpaks.
From our point of view, there’s not much sense in picking a specific side in that packaging war since you can freely use Flatpaks, Snaps or Appimages in any combination. This all has just got a little easier thanks to App Outlet, the universal application store for Linux. App Outlet will work fine provided that your Linux system has been configured to install packages from Flathub and the Snapcraft store (and Appimages work just fine without any preliminary set up).
So we picked a couple of Linux distros that run neither Flatpaks nor Snaps out of the box (opensuse, Arch) and used them as test beds for App Outlet. The results were mostly positive, even though App Outlet is very much a work in progress. Currently the best integration has been completed for Flatpak, which represents the largest share of what is available in App
Outlet. Pick some software, click ‘Install’ and hold on for a while; that’s virtually it. If you come across a Snap package, there will be no Install button; instead you should follow the link below the app’s description and go the appropriate Snapcraft web page. There you can find instructions on installing that app, probably something like this:
$ sudo snap install
Anyhow, App Outlet is an amazing catalogue of Linux software grouped by type and equipped with quick search. Most apps have pages with screenshots and helpful annotations, versions and quick links to their homepages. We’re not sure if App Outlet is the future of Linux app packaging, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.