[mikewhy]

Anybody's guess.

Seriously, .deb or .rpm is okay, but what users will really want is a proper apt/rpm repository, which is for sure more effort.

I honestly prefer zip or AppImage. Distribution independent, and it's super easy to get auto updating in Electron.

[probonopd]

Since an AppImage is just a compressed filesystem, you can also extract its content very similar to a zip file. But you then will miss out on the easy binary delta updates using AppImageUpdate, and have an extra step of unpacking, and will need more storage space.