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Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

kevin-custer.com

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Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#41

Post by thinkloop »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #26
psanford wrote: post #22

I really like the idea of snaps. I really don't like a lot of the execution decisions around them. Snaps break debain's stable release model. They allow upstream to ship updates outside of the normal 6 month ubuntu releases. There are times when you might want this, but it should be opt in not mandatory. I thinking specifically of lxd which is only shipped via snaps. The snap store's trust model is confusing. Its har…

I've always liked OS X's concept of the Library folder, particularly back in Snow Leopard when it wasn't hidden by default. Applications need a place to save state, and you don't really want it to be hidden, because sometimes I as a user do need to change it manually for any number of obscure reasons. So you make a subfolder that's designated for apps to write to. There's no good way to put this into the existing Lin…

And the problem is gigantic, programs in general are completely broken - why does my entire system have to be compromised because I decided to play Catan. We need the iOS/Android model for permissions on desktop.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#42

Post by [deleted] »

teraflop wrote: post #30
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh, is it still impossible to disable Snap autoupdates? Even if people should be updating regularly, forcing them feels completely antithetical to the Linux ethos of users having control over their devices.

Props to Microsoft, for getting their approach to Windows updates adopted as an industry standard! /s

[deleted]

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#43

Post by AlexMax »

I wanted to like snaps (and flatpaks before then), because trying to ease packaging and deployment of apps on Linux is a noble goal, but in both cases I eventually gave up on non-trivial use of them because they were always broken in some annoying way because of their sandboxing.

The latest snap I had to get rid of was Visual Studio Code, because I was trying to work on an open source game with it, and I found out that if I launched the game from inside Visual Studio Code, my game wouldn't play sounds because it couldn't communicate with PulseAudio, and attempting to use ALSA just straight up gave me an error.

On the other hand, I've only had positive experiences with AppImage. Gives you an all-in-one image that you can directly execute if you like, and no sandboxing nonsense.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#44

Post by phosphophyllite »

Why linux developers can't just replicate MacOS DMG installers and drag'n'drop installing? Seriously.

Repositories with dependencies only annoy anyone rather than core linux fans.

I use linux more than 10 years and still hate them. Yes, apt install package1 package2 is good, but dependency hell is so 2005!

Users just need one simple package format without any fancy security and virtualization nonsense.

It's hilarious when you can't update MPV on debian or ubuntu, because of some dependency. WAT 2020

But ofcource we cant have so much platform fragmentation without dependencies and different package formats, it is just "good tradition" now.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#45

Post by PopeRigby »

AlexMax wrote: post #43

I wanted to like snaps (and flatpaks before then), because trying to ease packaging and deployment of apps on Linux is a noble goal, but in both cases I eventually gave up on non-trivial use of them because they were always broken in some annoying way because of their sandboxing. The latest snap I had to get rid of was Visual Studio Code, because I was trying to work on an open source game with it, and I found out th…

AppImages are definitely the best, I just wish they had an easier way to integrate with the system. I know about appimaged, but I had problems settings it up, and it's just not as easy as integrating Flathub into Discover, or getting your packages from the CLI by accessing your distro's repositories.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#46

Post by stOneskull »

benjaminjackman wrote: post #31

So I've used ubuntu (Xubuntu, xfce) for quite a while and would rather not deal with this, are there any distros that aim to be ubuntu but without snap? Because hearing things like `sudo apt install chromium` actually aliases to using snap is disconcerting to say the least if true.

MX Linux might be the ticket. It's Xfce as well.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#48

Post by _jal »

jaytaylor wrote: post #6

Kudos to the OP, I'm glad this got posted on hacker news because Snap is so ridiculously broken. Since 16.04, Snaps have been a huge pain for me with running LXC in production environments. By default, Snap applies updates and restarts Systemd services anytime it likes, and there's no way to turn this behavior off! The only way to get around it is to download the Snap package binary and install that directly. Then Sn…

I guess users have been sufficiently beaten into submission that many of them will put up with software randomly quitting on them, but the idea that daemons should be snaps is doubly crazy. "Oh, Tomcat just updated itself, that's why we were down."

I really have no idea what people are thinking sometimes.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#49

Post by coleifer »

Canonical always has tried to differentiate themselves, and they just can't execute. Remember Unity, Mir, Juju, upstart and all the other failed shit they've come out with? Snap is just more of the same. I don't want to run that garbage on my desktop. I don't need more daemons and forced auto-updates and all the baggage.

I strongly recommend anyone similarly frustrated to check out debian, which is a fantastic distro. Thanks to Kevin for posting this, but if you're using Ubuntu and disabling snap, you're fighting against the current and I have to imagine it's going to be increasingly difficult with subsequent releases.

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