Canonical and Google enable Linux desktop app support with Flutter through snap

It has long been our vision for Flutter to power platforms. We've seen this manifest already at Google with products like the Assistant so now we're thrilled to see others harnessing Flutter to power more platforms. Today we are happy to jointly announce the availability of the Linux alpha for Flutter alongside Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu, the world's most popular desktop Linux distribution.

I welcome any additional investment in Linux or other operating systems that aren't the macOS or Windows, but this one has a major downside: it's all tied to Canonical's snaps and Snap Store. In case you are unaware - snaps are quite controversial in the Linux world, and Linux Mint, one of the most popular Linux distributions, has taken a very proactive approach in removing them. Their reasoning makes it very clear why snap is so problematic:

Applications in this store cannot be patched, or pinned. You can't audit them, hold them, modify them or even point snap to a different store. You've as much empowerment with this as if you were using proprietary software, i.e. none. This is in effect similar to a commercial proprietary solution, but with two major differences: It runs as root, and it installs itself without asking you.

On top of all this, the snap server is closed source.

Snap is simply a no-go, and I'm saddened Google decided to opt for using it. Then again, Google has never shown any interest whatsoever in desktop Linux - preferring to simply take, but not give. None of their applications - other than Chrome - are available on Linux, and opting for snap further demonstrates Google doesn't really seem to understand the Linux ecosystem at all.

All they had to do was release a source tarball, and for a few extra brownie points, maybe a .deb and/or .rpm, but that isn't even necessary. If your tool is good enough, it will be picked up by distributions and third parties who will make those packages for you. Google opting for snap instead indicates they have little faith in their own product being good and valuable enough to be embraced by the Linux distribution community.

And if they don't have any faith, why should I?