App installation using Zorin

As a beginner, it's very daunting to see a long list of options for installing or updating an app. Which form (deb, flatpak etc) is best?

As a general rule of thumb, I'd recommend using .deb packages. It's the native package format used in Debian-based distributions, such as Ubuntu and by extension Zorin OS.
They all have pros and cons, but this will give you the best stability as they are thoroughly tested and frozen at a specific version.

If you need some program at a higher version than what's available in the default repositories (where the Software Store downloads packages from) you can opt to use the Flatpak version instead. One benefit of Flatpak is that they are kept much more up to date since they operate in isolation from the rest of the system.
The main downside is that they take a lot more disk space, and thus take a bit longer to download and update. If you have a good internet connection this won't be that much of a problem, however.
Another issue that you might encounter is with permissions. As mentioned, Flatpak packages are isolated and need to have permissions assigned to them in order to do a lot of common things like reading files from the system. If you install any Flatpak packages at all, I strongly suggest you also install something called Flatseal, which will help managing permissions.

This is a very big topic, you can read more here:

2 Likes

I can suggest 2 Videos for that who explains the formats a bit. Maybe this is something for You:

1 Like

Thanks.
I was going to ask how to save this, but found that, after clicking the downbutton, it opens up and can be saved as a PDF

1 Like

Thanks2

1 Like