It will be 6 years since Canonical officially released snap packages. They promised us that they would be the best of the best, but back then flatpaks were also taking their first steps, and I think few of us doubt that they are winning this battle. It's possible to find some snap package that isn't on Flathub, but developers prefer flatpaks, and many users do too. And because there is some software that is only like snap, there are tools that convert them to other formats, like unsnap.
The most curious thing about this tool is who created it. This is Alan Pope, who was part of Canonical in the past. That may be why unsnap is the best tool for convert snap packages to flatpak, because its developer knows snap packages well. On the other hand, it also seems significant that someone who worked with them has created a tool to somehow make them their competition.
unsnap is easy to use
Right now, unsnap is on pre-alpha phase, and that means we shouldn't use it. Considering the meaning of these nomenclatures, the beta version is intended for anyone who wants to try the software, but the alpha is only for a small circle of the developer. So you can imagine what pre-alpha is: we can use it because it's available on GitHub, but just born.
The thing to do to use unsnap is to open a terminal and type these commands:
The first will clone the repository; the second puts us in the directory; and the third one runs the program, which will check the snaps we have, flatpaks and so on. If we execute ./unsnap auto, we will execute all of them at once, and they would be the following:
- 00-backup
- 01-install-flatpak
- 02-enable-flathub
- 03-install-flatpaks
- 04-remove-snaps
- 99-remove-snapd
The tool must be used with care, and make a backup of the most important data that we have in any application that is as a snap package, for what can happen. if we don't like them, it is best not to use them, but if there is a program that is only in this format, unsnap can give us a cable.