Traditionally, Linux distributions have relied on package archives maintained by groups of trusted maintainers. While this works well, users often end up looking to third party sources for newer versions or software missing from the main archive. This can reduce the security of a system, since traditional packaging systems place a lot of trust in the package maintainers (e.g. running scripts as root during package installation).

This talk will look at the snapd packaging system, which is inspired by the confinement strategies used for smart phone applications. In particular, it will look at how it is used on the Ubuntu Desktop.