For end users, it seems like everybody is mostly content with all the options available except Snap.

I like Flatpak and despise Snap (on a personal computer, it's tolerable on a server) enough to sudo apt remove and purge snapd from a new installation. The startup time is slow and I hate having snaps as mountpoints. It doesn't help that Firefox is by default a Snap on Ubuntu - it feels as if you're starting it on a mechanical HD with a Core2Duo processor and you can really appreciate how stupid having such a core app as a browser is as Snap when you add the PPA and install it as a deb package. Don't even get me started on the asinine "we update when we want to" that makes you restart your browser at most inopportune times. I hate Snap so much it's unreal.

I use traditional packages and Flatpaks... with "user apps" being preferred as Flatpak. This is potentially safer as the OS itself can't be affected by installing or removing these applications, and also can mitigate dependency hell as apps that require different versions of the same dependency can coexist peacefully, with each one using its own bundled version of that dependency.

I also have a couple of appimages that aren't available as a Flatpack, and I'll simply find an alternative to anything that is only distributed as a Snap due to the performance issues, mount clutter, and proprietary nature of the Snap distribution back-end.

I'll be honest, I kinda hate snaps on Ubuntu. They work well enough, but things like updates are never automatic and generally just a pain in the ass. I'm at the point where I really want to experiment with bedrock Linux to have ubuntu's kernel for built in ZFS and have debian repos for less shit decisions.

On my steam deck, I've become fond of flatpaks and similar experiences because they help preserve the software across updates ensuring I don't have to constantly reinstall things but that's a niche issue given the nature of how steam manages the os on a steam deck

From what I've been reading on the internet, mostly from other people, Ubuntu is leaning heavily into making everything a Snap. Any official flavour of Ubuntu is expected to follow this. Other Ubuntu-based distros, like Mint, are avoiding Snap as far as possible. So, there's options for anyone that doesn't like Snap at least.

Apt is still widely used, especially for system packages. Some distributions mainly rely on flatpak for gui apps and suggest containers for services (docker, podman, ...) and user cli tools (distrobox).

Snap is different and can be used for packaging anything (e.g. gui, cli, services), including the kernel and the snap daemon.

Canonical is moving towards snaps and is expected to release a snap-only immutable Ubuntu distribution in the next year or two.

With snap being able to install gui and system apps it does what immutable Fedora uses rpm-ostree and flatpak for.

I personally don't like that Canonical tries to push snap as a distro agnostic packaging sustem as it lacks features on many non-Ubuntu distros. Flatpak is especially useful for proprietary apps because of simple sandboxing or apps not packaged yet. It's also the main way to install packages on many immutable distros. It also works on NixOS which formats like appimage don't support by default (no fhs).