For years, Canonical has been nudging — and sometimes shoving — Ubuntu users toward Snap packages. The company’s proprietary packaging format became the default delivery mechanism in the Ubuntu App Center, sidelining the venerable .deb packages that had been the distribution’s backbone since its inception. Now, with Ubuntu 26.04 on the horizon, Canonical appears to be reversing course.
Traditional Debian packages are coming back to the App Center.
The move, reported by It’s FOSS, signals a meaningful concession from Canonical after years of community friction over its Snap-first strategy. A merge proposal submitted to the ubuntu-app-center project on Launchpad makes the intent clear: .deb packages will once again be browsable and installable through Ubuntu’s graphical software store, not just through the command line. The change is targeted for the 26.04 release cycle, codenamed Questing Quokka, expected in April 2026.
This isn’t a small UI tweak. It’s an acknowledgment that the Snap-only approach in the App Center created real usability problems for a significant portion of Ubuntu’s user base — from desktop newcomers who couldn’t find familiar applications to system administrators who preferred the deterministic behavior of .deb packages in production environments.
The Snap Experiment and Its Discontents
Snap packages, introduced by Canonical in 2016, were designed to solve genuine problems. Dependency conflicts, the difficulty of shipping applications across multiple Linux distributions, sandboxing for security — these were legitimate engineering challenges. Snaps bundle all dependencies into a single package, run in a confined environment, and auto-update from the centralized Snap Store that Canonical controls.
But the execution generated persistent backlash. Snap applications are notoriously slower to launch than their .deb counterparts because they mount as compressed filesystem images at runtime. They consume more disk space. And the Snap Store itself remains closed-source and exclusively operated by Canonical — a sore point for a community that prizes openness. The competing Flatpak format, governed by an open infrastructure, became the preferred alternative for many Linux users and several rival distributions, including Fedora and Linux Mint.
Linux Mint, one of the most popular Ubuntu derivatives, went so far as to block Snap entirely in 2020. Its developers wrote at the time that they objected to Canonical’s decision to replace the traditional Firefox .deb package with a Snap version without adequate transparency. That decision became a flashpoint. When Ubuntu 22.04 shipped with Firefox as a Snap by default — and removed the .deb option from its own repositories — users reported significantly longer startup times and integration quirks with desktop themes and system trays.
The complaints weren’t confined to forums and Reddit threads. Enterprise users raised concerns about Snap’s auto-update mechanism, which doesn’t allow administrators to pin specific versions easily or control update timing with the granularity that .deb packages and APT provide. For servers and workstations in regulated industries, that’s not a minor inconvenience. It’s a deployment risk.
So Canonical finds itself in a familiar position for platform companies: having pushed a technology strategy that made architectural sense on paper but generated enough real-world resistance to force a tactical retreat.
The merge proposal on Launchpad, as noted by It’s FOSS, doesn’t suggest that Canonical is abandoning Snaps. Far from it. Snap packages will likely remain the default recommendation when both a Snap and a .deb version of an application exist. But the App Center will no longer pretend that .deb packages don’t exist. Users will be able to see them, choose them, and install them through the same graphical interface — something that was possible in the older Ubuntu Software Center and GNOME Software implementations but was stripped away when the current App Center launched with Ubuntu 23.10.
That removal was jarring. Users who upgraded found that applications they’d previously installed via .deb were invisible in the new store. The only way to manage traditional packages was through the terminal using apt — perfectly fine for experienced users, but a barrier for the desktop-oriented audience Canonical has long courted.
What This Means for Ubuntu’s Direction
The timing matters. Ubuntu 26.04 will be a standard interim release, not a Long Term Support version. But it sets the stage for Ubuntu 26.10 and, more critically, for Ubuntu 28.04 LTS — the next major release that enterprises and institutional users will adopt at scale. If .deb support in the App Center proves stable and well-received in 26.04, it will almost certainly carry forward into the LTS.
Canonical’s founder Mark Shuttleworth has historically been unapologetic about Snap’s direction. In various public comments and blog posts over the years, he has framed Snap as essential to Ubuntu’s future, particularly for IoT devices and cloud deployments where consistent, atomic updates and confinement are genuine advantages. And he’s not wrong about those use cases. Snap’s architecture is well-suited for embedded systems and server appliances where the trade-offs around startup time and disk usage are irrelevant.
Desktop Linux is a different animal. Users expect applications to launch quickly, integrate with their chosen theme, and behave like native software. They expect choice. And they have it — Ubuntu competes not just with Windows and macOS but with Fedora, Arch, openSUSE, and the dozens of Ubuntu-based derivatives that have flourished precisely because they offer alternatives to Canonical’s defaults.
Recent community discussions on platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and the Ubuntu Discourse forums reflect cautious optimism about the change. Some users have expressed hope that Canonical will go further and offer Flatpak support in the App Center as well — something the company has resisted. Others are skeptical that the .deb integration will be anything more than a second-class option buried beneath Snap recommendations.
That skepticism isn’t unfounded. When Ubuntu previously offered both Snaps and .debs in its software center, the Snap version was often presented first, with the .deb option harder to find. If the new implementation repeats that pattern — technically offering choice while practically steering users toward Snaps — the goodwill gesture could backfire.
There’s also a technical dimension worth watching. The current App Center is built on Flutter, Canonical’s chosen framework for its desktop applications. Integrating PackageKit or direct APT support into a Flutter-based application presents different challenges than the old GTK-based GNOME Software, which had mature .deb handling baked in. The quality of the implementation — how well it handles dependency resolution, update notifications, and package conflicts — will determine whether this is a genuine restoration of functionality or a checkbox feature.
For distribution maintainers downstream, the change could reduce one of the major pain points of basing a project on Ubuntu. Distributions like Linux Mint, Pop!_OS, and Zorin OS have each had to work around or replace Ubuntu’s App Center to provide the package management experience their users expect. A more inclusive upstream App Center could simplify that work, though these projects may well continue shipping their own solutions regardless.
And for the broader Linux desktop market — still a small but growing segment, now hovering around 4% of desktop operating systems according to StatCounter data from mid-2025 — Ubuntu’s willingness to listen to its community matters. Ubuntu remains the most widely recognized Linux distribution. Its decisions ripple outward. A more flexible, user-respecting approach to package management could help sustain the modest momentum Linux has built on the desktop, particularly as Windows users frustrated by Microsoft’s AI integration and advertising strategies look for alternatives.
None of this means Snap is going away. Canonical has invested too heavily in the technology and its server-side infrastructure to walk it back entirely. The Snap Store processes millions of installations. IoT and cloud deployments depend on it. But on the desktop, where user choice and application performance are paramount, the company appears to have recognized that a monoculture approach was doing more harm than good.
The .deb package format, maintained by the Debian project for over three decades, has survived every attempt to replace it. It survived the rise of Flatpak. It survived Canonical’s own efforts to make it invisible. And now it’s being invited back into the one place where its absence was most conspicuous.
Sometimes the old ways persist for good reason.
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