Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04 • Hacker News Board

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#71

Post by Avshalom » Fri, Apr 24, 2020, 9:53 PM UTC

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…

>And now for a minor complaint that also feels most user hostile to me: why do the snap developers think its ok to require a non hidden directory in $HOME? Seriously my home directory is MINE, if you have to store application state there at least have the decency to do it in a hidden directory.

4 years old now.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snapd/+bug/1575053

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#72

Post by brobinson » Fri, Apr 24, 2020, 9:54 PM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #38

psanford wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You as a user can still access hidden directories. Most new applications are nice enough to respect the XDG specification.

Oh, for sure, but it's mildly annoying. Especially when a . is used to make the directory hidden, because I can't unhide that specific directory without changing the name apps expect.

You can press cmd-shift-g to open a "Go to folder" prompt which has some basic tab completion. This also works in file selection dialogs. Hopefully this saves someone as much time as it has saved me over the years.

I get into the Library folder by doing: cmd-shift-g -> ~/Library -> enter

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#73

Post by musicale » Fri, Apr 24, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

> I lean more toward Flatpak as it is more performant

What is "performant" supposed to mean here?

Is Flatpak faster than Snap? more compact? simpler? more reliable/secure? easier to use? more efficient in terms of cpu/memory/communication/power/etc.? all of the above?

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#74

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 24, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #38

psanford wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You as a user can still access hidden directories. Most new applications are nice enough to respect the XDG specification.

Oh, for sure, but it's mildly annoying. Especially when a . is used to make the directory hidden, because I can't unhide that specific directory without changing the name apps expect.

[deleted]

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#75

Post by mothsonasloth » Fri, Apr 24, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

notokay wrote: post #54

Nice and helpful guide. In this month only I had to give up using firefox because uglyBar and ubuntu because of snaps. There won't be anywhere to run soon.

You can disable the new address bar on Firefox - https://lifehacker.com/how-to-disable-firefox-75s-new-addres...

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#76

Post by robocat » Fri, Apr 24, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

coleifer wrote: post #49

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…

> and they just can't execute

That’s a bit rich: are they not the #1 consumer distro, which hardly implies they are failing to execute. A successful product has missteps, so what.

> I don't want to run that garbage on my desktop.

So don’t. Why complain that others do? I use Ubuntu because it works and I can mostly find information about how to do what I want. There are major aspects of Ubuntu I don’t like (Gnome, Snap) but selecting a distro is all about choosing your compromises. I have tried Debian and other distros, but I tend to go back to Ubuntu because it works best for me.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#77

Post by mceachen » Fri, Apr 24, 2020, 9:57 PM UTC

mulmen wrote: post #53

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 don’t have any experience with snaps so this is all new to me. Snaps install software at a system level right? Why on earth would there be anything in a user home directory? What if you have multiple users? Does snap get confused?

Snaps run out of a squashfs partition, but the app may save app config in the user's home directory (if they request the HOME interface, I believe).

After fighting with node, vlc and ffmpeg snaps not working reliably, I had to add a warning for my PhotoStructure users on Ubuntu to avoid those packages (and how to install them via apt).

I agree with a bunch of people here: snap promises some great features, but in practice the horrible performance, additional resource consumption, and spotty reliability led to me actively avoiding snap packages and looking for an alternative installation.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#78

Post by zimbatm » Fri, Apr 24, 2020, 9:57 PM UTC

Consider any other operating systems out there for a moment. A new upgrade comes along that contains unwanted features. How often is it possible to revert that by uninstalling a few packages?

There is a level of care here which I think is great. Some engineer somewhere made sure that the system would still work without snaps. This is a very Debian attitude which Ubuntu inherits from and which I would like to celebrate for a bit :-)

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#79

Post by ilaksh » Fri, Apr 24, 2020, 9:58 PM UTC

The issue I had with snap was my server was going down. I thought it had run out of disk space like the last few times, but it seemed to be out of memory. Then I looked in htop and something related to snap or lxc was using most of the RAM. I think this is Ubuntu 18. Don't remember what I installed that used snap. But I had to remove snap to prevent my server from running out of memory periodically making my program crash.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#80

Post by shock » Fri, Apr 24, 2020, 9:58 PM UTC

101404 wrote: post #20

emersion wrote: post #13

It seems like on recent Ubuntu installations some packages are provided by snaps (ie. "apt install XXX" will install a snap). I'd be interested in disabling this behaviour, if anyone knows.

That would be really bad. I used Ubuntu for the past 15 years or so, but that would make me switch to a different distro. So shortly after the Mir fiasco, why does Canonical feel it necessary to come up with the next dumb idea?

What is or was the Mir fiasco?