We’ve chosen Flatpak as the overall winner. Obviously, most Linux distributions require a system-level, traditional package manager, but when it comes to installing the latest version of an application, a system such as Flatpak makes a lot of sense.
It has good command-line tools for listing and updating the applications that it is managing on a system, and we liked the way that Flatpak handles the installation of system-level components, such as graphics card drivers, on a system like OpenSUSE. Parallel installation of apps is a really useful feature. It lacks an official GUI front-end, which is a point against it, but the shop-type application on many distros lists Flatpak packages along those of the native package format.