I'm on Ubuntu and mostly use debs (apt), I'll use Snaps if that's the easiest way to get an update. I use Appimages for some ephemeral stuff or when that's the only way developers release it (some 3d printing stuff). I haven't installed Flatpaks at all because it doesn't jibe with the distro overall.
There are about half a dozen cross-distro packaging schemes for Linux, including Nix, Guix, AppImage, Flatpak, Snap, and 0install.
However two are mainstream and supported by large vendors: Flatpak is from the GNOME organisation and is backed by Red Hat and Fedora, and Snap is a Canonical project and part of Ubuntu, the single most widely-used distribution by a considerable margin.
You, kind of, don't have much of a choice. There's thousands of packages and it's a ton of work. In addition, as Linux continues to get more popular, more vendors are releasing software that doesn't care to work with newer libraries, so Flatpack handles this nicely.
I only use Linux on servers, so the kind of stuff I need is always traditional apt-get, but yeah I always assumed using it on a PC would involve tons of snap or flatpak apps where they don't want to deal with the complexities of dependencies.
Ok, I do have one spare Linux laptop in my garage that I barely use, and I'm pretty sure how ever I installed Chromium used snap.
I mostly use Linux on my laptop. I thought you server folks needed this kind of functionality—you guys have to, like, serve stuff, be visible on the network, install weird software for business needs, right? As an individual, I can crank up the firewall, trust all of the people who use my laptop (it is just me) and not install sketchy software.
I'm not a server pro, I just use some dev servers at work and have home servers. Most I did was administer the dev servers for small startups where I was mainly a SWE. So what I mean is, I've mostly only used Linux remote+headless and not on my laptop/desktop.
