Flatpak is the standard universal package format for Linux. Traditionally app developers targeted distros but now they target Flatpak.

Named after Ikea’s flat packaging. The author is Sweedish (where Ikea started).

Prioritizes convenience at the cost of a medium amount of bloat. RPM etc will still be used long term because they are more optimized for the distro but less universally user friendly.

Features:

• Backed by Redhat and various big projects such as Gnome and KDE.
• Sandboxing, security, automatic updates, integration in app stores.
• Pulls (shared) dependecy Flatpaks from the Internet.

Flatpak can use several repositories. Usually that’s just flathub.org.

Snap is Canonicals crappy do it themselves approach.

AppImage is for single file no setup.

DEB and RPM are the two most common formats for low level packages. By a lot.

RPM is a bit more polished in 2026.