I don't mind Snaps in a vacuum, but the unforgivable thing is that they messed with the package repo so that instead of installing a deb package as I intended, it installs a Snap stub which I did not want. If Canonical hadn't forced them on users in that way, I'd have been fine with them.
Instead, back to Debian I went (sorry I ever left, actually)
successful project
That is a very biased claim. It's like saying that the PS5 is the most successful gaming platform because God Of War: Ragnarök and Ghost Of Tsushima players prefer it over Xbox and PC.
Did they say it's the most successful project? Because Sony saying that the PS5 is a successful platform because players prefer it over other options doesn't seem biased at all. It's just an objective statement of fact
If you go to snapcraft.io, you can see snap being installed on many other distributions other than Ubuntu. It will not show you the exact numbers, but people willingly install it on their machines. I think that's successful.
I don't think "there exists an unknown number of non-Ubuntu machines with snap installed" is a valid metric when the general sentiment seems to be apathy. It's popular for the same reason Internet Explorer was popular -- it's forcibly installed with the default OS.
If the numbers were favorable, Canonical would release them.
It’s not successful though. Like, maybe if your measure of success is that it’s usable, sure. But no other OSes have adopted it. Not even Ubuntu’s downstream OSes like Mint or Pop_OS!.
Users don’t like it, vendors don’t like it, other OS maintainers don’t like it. I’m not sure why that would be considered successful.
They also called unity successful at some point
Unity was a nice DE. Being on KDE since 12 years, I still miss some of its features, e.g. merging the menu items with the title bar.
And yet they abandoned it.
Yeah, I was pissed when they went away from it. It was great for small screen devices.
At least you could use a different desktop if you didn't like it.
If you don't like snaps, don't use the distribution by the company who tries to establish them.
And also warn newcomers not to invest time into those distros.
Exactly. I hope pop moves away from ubuntu at some point though.
I agree, have seen so many people trying to document how to "desnap" Ubuntu and wondered why bother, you are fighting against what is now the whole point of Ubuntu while trying to use Ubuntu while so many other options exist.
I do happily encourage folks to explain why they left Ubuntu behind as I did (snaps). No confusion, just a reiteration of disappointment that they went from being my favorite distro to completely off my list with the snap stuff.
"Successful"
Nix, guix, flatpak, and OSI images are all better "universal" packages managers on sheer technical merits while also not be a vendor locked proprietary solution.
Snaps are worse than what Redhat is doing.
Also than*
MR accepted. Thx!
snaps are a proprietary vendor-locked format, the only redeeming quality is being able to run them in cli (once Flatpak get that too, there is no valid reason for snaps to exist).
I just find it midly infuriating (if that even is a thing, meaning I hate it but it's not that significant for me to distro hop on my work laptop) to have two "universal" package formats on my system with Canonical shoving the objectively worse one (from a free/libre pov) down my throat...
What utter BS. Stop spreading FUD from others. A simple search would find the source code https://github.com/snapcore/
Snaps are open source, including the store.
...no?
The backend is proprietary and you or other orgs cannot run their own server. It's harcoded to use Canonical's servers for obtaining snaps and their metadata...
seething Ubuntu fans are funny af lol.
Your leash being longer than average doesn't remedy the fact that you're still tied to a pole...Can I self host the official snap server, and use it with an unmodified client? If not, it's proprietary.
(once Flatpak get that too, there is no valid reason for snaps to exist).
They said they will not fix it due to "security concerns"
I've used flatpak only once, but I am pretty sure I ran it through the cli. Did I imagine that? i might have imagined that, it was a while ago
The one app I can't stand as a snap is firefox, it took a minute to navigate to the first webpage every time I start up. The rest are or more less fine I think, but flatpak meets my needs for most other applications.
Also command line tools are terrible as snaps. And the worst part is you have no idea why they won't work. It doesn't tell you that snap is the problem. It just doesn't work.
It look me about two hours to realize that snap was the problem when I was trying to run Mastodon in a Docker container. That was the last straw before I moved to Fedora.
Snap can’t read anything outside of the
/homedirectory, and there’s no way to fix that except changing the source code and recompiling it.
I'd be curious to see some statistics on how many Ubuntu users removed snaps vs how many haven't changed the default.
I’d bet most ubuntu user don’t know the difference between snap and deb, tho.
I didn't until apps started breaking. The snap version of steam, Firefox, and Unity (I think?) all started to have issues. When I googled around people would often ask "deb or snap"? I uninstalled the snap packages and installed the deb packages and most of my issues went away.
I ultimately switched to Linux Mint because I kept having stability issues and I was just desperate for a solution. But snap was not a great experience for me.
I remove that abomination every chance I get.
I removed it and it was a pain.
When Mozilla provide the firefox deb package - Why not give it then? IMO snaps/flatpacks are slower to start, can't be updated while running, takes more diskspace, and takes longer time to update. With the isolation we also have different kind of problems - have you given it the correct permission?, and how do you get keepassxc browser extension to work with it(they dont support it)?
Upstart and Unity are waiting for you.
Don’t forget Mir!
I knew I'd find some receipts in here.
So, I used ubuntu for pretty close to 20 years and it was my go to distro. I have had hundreds upon hundreds of servers running ubuntu.
Last few years I've been moving away from ubuntu because of their lack of respect for their core users. They have no clear vision and when they do, its a magnificently shitty one like the donkey balls decision to enfrorce snap on everything.
I will still have some ubuntu servers to take care of, but every new server I set up will be fedora.
Because fuck snaps, thats why
I had like 4 snaps installed in my system and it was hogging like 60Gb of storage. What the actual fuck.
I wish I kept the names of the dependencies, I just ran a command to remove all snaps and the snap itself.
Am I talking bullshit here? I saw my disk drop 60gb after I did that but I have no evidence.
snap (especially firefox beeing one) made me an arch user
why depict RMS this way
They forgot the halo.
Personally, I use Debian and gravitate towards flat paks, but I'm starting to question whether this is just one of those hills Linux users arbitrarily choose to die on a la systemd/wayland? I suppose one of the advantages of an opinionated OS is a vast array of opinions
It's much worse.
The snap store is proprietary.
I hate snaps, but NextCloud snap is way easier to than the other methods, so it gets a pass... Only one
Over docker compose? You just apply the file and you are good to go.
You still need to install NextCloud next. Then if you are on a home lab you'll probably need a reverse proxy too
On Ubuntu it's just install > go to config > whitelist all urls
"But the Calamares versions have an install option without Snaps"
Well that also doesnt have a webbrowser and will install snaps the second you want one
So they have somewhere a dpkg hook but still install it if you toggle that option?
It is the same thing. Just that base Ubuntu supposedly doesnt have snap, but
sudo apt install firefoxinstalls snap and then snap firefox.So not sure why the base install doesnt have snap, but it mailny lacks FF and TB which are only available as snap and will automatically pull snap in.
What’s wrong with being Robert Baratheon
He downloaded Snaps and ate them.
That reminds me...
I miss those Robert Baratheon memes from the freefolk sub
We all miss the sentient bobby_b bot
He downloaded a snap while drunk...and we know what happens from there ...
I don't really see a problem with a snaps/flatpaks as long as they are not on application I use every day.
But maybe it is easier if we have one standard instead of two.
Multiple standards are good, initially. Multiple visions and approaches can get tested. The best hopefully displaced the rest, whilst picking up all the other good ideas.
If there was only one standard we would get stuck with snaps with no alternatives.
I look at this from the developers perspective. Only need to learn one is good.
