oh, snap!
I’m just sitting here having no problem with the few snaps I use
Am I wrong for ignoring snaps and just using apt-get still?
Some packages are snaps underneath though. Like firefox.
Not if you install Firefox from Flatpak. ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/wkzhi0djdQs?si=u_jrA4TozhmT1mH0
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
It makes me unreasonably happy that I knew what channel that is because I knew that animal from the main channel
Just use Debian or Linux Mint Debian Edition and call it a day.
I just started tinkering with Ubuntu a week ago. What’s wrong with snap?
This computer idiot would also like to know why snap bad.
For computer idiots it’s not bad at all. It mostly just works if you don’t mess with it and Canonical relies on it to ship software for Ubuntu. It’s one of those you should know what you’re doing situations if you’re using standard Ubuntu and messing with it. If you remove it, you will have to figure out what’s shipped via snap and how to supplant it if you want it working, among other potential headaches.
No, it does not just work. It removes the option to install updates manually through GUI. If Firefox was running, the only GUI solution is to close it and wait 6 hours or whatever.
My wife was perfectly fine installing updates from the tray with Synaptic. The PC is always connected to the TV with Jellyfin left open in Firefox where she was watching.
So I switched to Manjaro to have a pretty OS that isn’t getting rid of their package manager controlling the most used program.
Ever since the fix for the “Pending update” notification, updating Firefox has been as complicated as closing it and reopening it when you see the notification. The pending update is installed immediately after closing it. It just works for my wife. ☺️
Also I wouldn’t leave her dead without automatic updates.
I’m glad yours enjoying Manjaro. 👌
I didn’t know they fixed it now, good to know.
Yup. Actually I should have said implemented instead of fixed. The implementation was sizeable. I saw some of the PRs. From a user point of view it was a defect fix but in reality it was a non-trivial implementation. I guess that’s why it wasn’t there from the get go.
Those are all valid points, but there’s one more. As a person who is just coming back to Linux after 25-30 years and relearning it all from scratch, I just don’t want the hassle.
Sure, there’s overlap between distros, Linux is Linux, and any knowledge I might glean from Ubuntu would also largely apply to any other distro – but why should I bother with investing time into a product that is already heading toward future politics and regressive policies when I can just install [NotUbuntu] and swerve the entire mess?
There are hundreds of distros from which to choose these days, literally. Why start with one that’s already obviously moving toward the dark side? For all that I could just stay on Windows. I’m trying to get away from triple-E and paywalls and gatekeeping, not just find different ones.
Right now I’m testing out over a dozen distros on an old laptop in my spare time, and I think the only Ubuntu related one in my list is Pop!_OS, and it’s there only because Pop!_OS doesn’t rely on snap.
It’s one of those you should know what you’re doing situations
And I absolutely DO NOT, so that’s that, lol. These days every brain cell counts, so damned if I’ll waste any time wading into that mess.
I hate it for the refresh nag messages alone.
The default Firefox in Ubuntu is a snap and I only knew that because due to nagging and having to restart constantly while I was using it and had to learn about snaps and how to install Firefox without them on Ubuntu.
If something exists in native form, use that. If it doesn’t or you want some sandboxing (and there is at least some argument for a containerized version that brings all its needed dependencies, for developers not having to test for every linux for example) there’s flatpack or appimage. Snap is just Canonical’s proprietary alternative to flatpack. And also worse in basically any aspect. So they shove it down their users throat instead. Even for stuff that would be available natively and should just be installed via the normal package manager. And to make really sure, nobody is avoiding their crap, they also redirect commands, so for example using apt to install your browser automatically redirects your command to snap install…
The main reason is that it is completely controlled by Canonical, with no way to add alternative repos.
It’s worth noting you can bypass the repo, and install snaps that you downloaded from some other source - see https://askubuntu.com/questions/1266894/how-can-i-install-a-snap-package-from-a-local-file.
That doesn’t give you a separate “repo,” but it does allow you to install snaps from anywhere.
You can, but that completely negates the reasons why you’d want to have a repo system in the first place. You gotta do the legwork to get updates, for example.
This isn’t necessarily true - a developer choosing to not include their app in a repo can always opt for a self-updating mechanism.
Don’t get me wrong - repos and tooling to manage all of your apps at once are preferred. But if a developer or user wants to avoid the Canonical controlled repo, I’m just pointing out there are technically ways to do that.
If you’d question why someone would use snap at all at that point… that would be a good question. The point is just that they can, if they want to.
It’s a bad, slow and inefficient solution for a problem that is already solved. And because nobody would use their proprietary shit over flatpack, they force the users to use it. Even for things that exist natively in the repositories and would need neither snap nor flatpack.
Best explanation of snaps and their problems i’ve ever read.
It’s slow, forced by Canonical, and starts a pointless format war with Flatpack.
I still don’t even know what problem snap and flatpak were intended to solve. Just apt or dnf installing from the command line, or even using the distro provided store app, has always been sufficient for me.
Modern Linux distros tend to have configuration and dependency issues where certain packages if installed the “Linux Way” doesn’t completely work as desired at times depending on the distro or even a desktop spin (which might have different default libraries installed than the “main” one). Flatpak is a single configuration meant to work one single way across all distributions and has become more of a standard, usable way for Linux applications to just work.
Use Flatpak. Easy to install and easy to tweak from flatseal or similar GUI Flatpak permission tweakers if you want more flexibility at the possible cost of security.
Flatpack isn’t without its own quirks and flaws. There is no One True Way. Being open-source, there shouldn’t be one.
It is definitely slow though, mostly on first run.
Gotta be honest, as a dev I tried to make a Flatpack of my app and gave up. Making a snap was much easier. Of course, I also offer it as a .deb, .rpm, Pacman package, etc. too
Being open-source
Yeah, that. That’s exactly the problem. To quote @Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever above, who put it much better than I could:
. . . the main issues boil down to concerns over some parts of the Snap ecosystem being closed source, Canonical’s ongoing efforts to try to get some of the Red Hat “premium linux” money, and arguments that other solutions (e.g. flatpaks and appimages) are “just as good, if not better”. And it doesn’t help that Canonical/Ubuntu is increasingly pushing snap as “the only solution” for some applications.
When you speak of no single One True Way and things being completely open source, Canonical/Ubuntu have already left the chat.
There should be one way for sandboxed shit, since the alternative of package managers already exists
We don’t need snap, app image, flatpak all to compete. We need shit that just works
The way you get “shit that just works” is through iteration and competition.
If we just decide that the first solution to get any market share is the solution for all time? Uhm… hello Windows?
Okay, we tried appimage and it didn’t work, so the second iteration as flatpak is mostly functional
you don’t need ENDLESS competition of formats
There’s a bunch of different package managers too. It all just kinda works.
cuz flatpak better
If snap had another store, eg Fdroid to play store, all would be fine. So that’s that!
Its a packaging model to pseudo-sandbox applications and avoid needing to install all of their dependencies locally… mostly.
There are performance implications but for actual performance critical operations, you are generally willing to install the dependencies (and would likely just run in a container/VM).
But the main issues boil down to concerns over some parts of the Snap ecosystem being closed source, Canonical’s ongoing efforts to try to get some of the Red Hat “premium linux” money, and arguments that other solutions (e.g. flatpaks and appimages) are “just as good, if not better”. And it doesn’t help that Canonical/Ubuntu is increasingly pushing snap as “the only solution” for some applications. Even though users can still just add the appropriate repository to use that with the package manager/sandbox solution of their choice.
Personally? I don’t like the ongoing push. But I also dislike how many applications are basically only supported as appimages (and to a lesser extent, flatpaks). My main issue with canonical that eventually made me switch to a different distro is that they are increasingly advertising their premium repositories. Theoretically, it is the same update frequency for the pro and free repos. Theoretically, I have a bridge to sell anyone who believes that.
Canonical is doing the same thing Microsoft is doing with Edge - using its dominant position to push its other products and force out competition, and to lock users (and potentially developers) into its own ecosystem.
…
Edge is chromium. If anything, it is MS providing an alternative to Chrome. Personally? I like having a browser that is not associated with my google account. Because sometimes you don’t want to have to do the twelve activation steps for a porn site every time you want to rub one out and having a different browser that nobody uses that you can keep a few cookies active in.
And considering Google already HAS that dominance and more or less have defined the ecosystem (to the point that reddit’s WYSIWYG was actively broken in Firefox for months, if not years)… that is a horrible example.
For future reference: A better argument is to reference chrome and the google assistant on an Android. Or siri and safari on an iphone.
Saying that Edge is Chromium is like saying that Manjaro is Arch or diamond is just coal. They’re related, but there’s significant material difference.
When it was introduced in Windows 10, Edge had an immediate and massive surge in its adoption rate. That wasn’t natural growth based on the application’s merits – it was simply a result of Edge being present in new installs.
and avoid needing to install all of their dependencies locally
Wait, but doesn’t it result in more copies of the dependencies being installed locally because they’re duplicated for each application?
It sure does
But the advantage is that you don’t have to worry about installing some obscure version of a library because this application that was written ten years ago. Even though the vast majority of these are using pretty standard libraries anyway.
Its probably still a net good but I am very much the kind of person who would rather just run a few
aptordnfcommands.It’s actually less about the library being obscure, and more about version conflicts, which is actually more a problem with common libraries.
For example, let’s say you want to install applications A, B, and C, and they each depend on library L. If A depends on Lv1, and B depends on Lv2, and C depends on Lv3, with traditional package management, you’re in a predicament. You can only have one copy of L, and the versions of L may not be compatible.
Solutions like snap, flatpak, appimage, and even things like Docker and other containerization techniques, get around this issue by having applications ship the specific version of the library they need. You end up with more copies of the library, but every application has exactly the version it needs/the developer tested with.
Even a decade ago? Full agree and that is the source of a lot of my grey hairs.
These days? People understand these problems… in large part because the devs are dealing with them too. So there is a much bigger focus on backwards compatibility within a given major (if not minor) release and version tagged libraries so that you can have libfoo.so.1.2.3.4 and libfoo.so.2.4.6.8 installed side by side with no issues.
There are still definitely problem points and that is WHY containerization is more or less required for a production environment.
But in the consumer environment? It is nice and good practice but it is nowhere near as important as it used to be.
The age and obscurity of the library is irrelevant - you could always include libraries bundled with the app, if they didn’t exist in system repos. For example, in deb packages, you could include it in the data.tar portion of the package (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deb_(file_format)).
Libraries with version names baked in are one solution to the dependency hell problem, but that requires support from the language/framework/tooling to build the application, and/or the OS (or things get hacky and messy quickly).
If you read that dependency hell page, you’ll see another solution is portable apps, which specifically mentions Appimage, Flatpak, and Snap.
Additionally, if you read the Debian docs on How to Cope with Conflicting Requirements, the first solution they give is to “Install such programs using corresponding sandboxed upstream binary packages,” such as “Flatpak, Snap, or AppImage packages.”
Bin the consumer environment? It is nice and good practice but it is nowhere near as important as it used to be.
This is incorrect. The target audience for Flatpak is desktop users: https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/introduction.html#target-audience. Flatpaks are explicitly for consumer, graphical applications.
Installs Ubuntu.
It is Ubuntu.
Gets angry.Gort is not angry. Gort is calm.
Portage has everything I need. Especially with overlays, only ones I’ve added were for steam and librewolf.
I AM GORT
Idea: snap installer called crackle that just unpacks everything (relatively) normally. Should be primarily for pop os. Snap, crackle, and pop.
I need Gort in my life
Next time, Gort will install Debian and save himself the trouble
The current most popular distribution is MX Linux (based on Debian Stable), which I use. You certainly don’t have to, but I would say least start with a distro that respects you and adheres to FOSS standards…
Edit: context
I wish I could have it as easy as Gort. I miss my debian but I want that ZFS built into my kernel.
You’re looking for Gentoo.
I run Debian with ZFS the package is in the repo’s.
There is so many distros that are just ubuntu without snaps, is just a matter of picking one of them
can you name a few?
Pop os, linux mint, linux lite, etc.
The first 2 may do a lot pf changes to the base but that’s what make them better them ubuntu in my opinion
Well, you won’t have that much longer.
Help me understand. Why would you install a distribution, just to gut what’s making it what it is, instead of just getting anything else? Just from Debian derivative perspective, if you hate snaps, why not install something like LMDE Mint, if you need a complete out of the box distro?
I think mainly because a ton of open source software will be tested with Ubuntu, and I don’t want another thing that could possibly be the problem when it fails to build on my machine.
This is why I often choose an Ubuntu derivative like Pop_OS. Most of the same underlying structure with none of the snaps.
Just use Linux mint
that only works until you need Lua 5.4 which has conflicting dependencies aaand now im on NixOS
Couldn’t you just install it in a container? Distrobox makes it easy to get something like Fedora which has newer packages.
if i wanted containerized environments, i would pick alpine, but it all makes most trivial things so much more complicated — i just want global install dang nabbit, just keep all your sandboxing on process level controlled by the kernel, give me my userspace freedom
To each there own I guess.
Could someone ELI5 whats wrong with snaps? I see hate for them all over the place but as an end user with little technical knowledge of linux packaging they seem fine? I can install them and use them, they don’t appear to have any anti-FOSS gotchas, so whats the big deal?
I think it’s another fine example of Canonical pushing its own products rather than supporting and enhancing existing standards (flatpak and appimage), which people are getting tired of. Also, as I understand it, the snap store itself is proprietary and is therefore controlled by Canonical.
The server isn’t open source, so Canonical has the sole ability to control snap distribution. It’s also yet another example of Canonical’s “Not Invented Here” syndrome, where they constantly reinvent things so they can control it instead of working with the rest of the open source community. They also trick you into using snaps; for example if you explicitly tell it to use apt to install Firefox, it’ll install it as a snap anyways.
Historically they performed really poorly as well, but my understanding is that they’ve largely fixed that issue.
there was a time when they were slow, but that’s mostly been resolved.
but it’s really just a cult thing now. people hate snaps because they think they’re supposed to hate snaps.
I hate snaps mainly because the server is proprietary. Everything else wrong is negotiable or solvanle, but that’s a nonstarter.
