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Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

kevin-custer.com

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Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Cmd-shift-. will show hidden files and folders in the Mac Finder before Catalina. In Catalina, it's now Cmd-shift-fn-. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250756110

Whoa, even better tip. Thanks!

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#122

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.

Cies posted a link to https://github.com/cies/kubuntu-setup#remove-snap

They give the suggestion to remove via

   sudo rm -rf /var/cache/snapd/ && sudo apt autoremove --purge snapd && rm -fr ~/snap
And make sure it never installs again:

   sudo bash -c "cat > /etc/apt/preferences.d/no-snapd.pref" 

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#123

I've been using Ubuntu 20.04 for several weeks, almost since beta came out. The snap thing is a pain in the ass. I understand the need for something like snap or flatpak. I had software too new or too old that wouldn't work because some dependencies were not updated or were too new. Snaps can solve that by allowing the developers to provide everything you need (or everything you need that is not on your system). But…

actually dash-to-dock is working just fine for multiple monitors (and given the strange UI paradigm of Gnome basically a must have). The ubuntu-dock is just a none-configurable version of that. AND in 20.04 the full dash-to-dock just vanished...

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#124
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

Unrelated to Snap, but on Windows, trying to use the My Documents folder for your actual documents is frustrating, because a huge number of apps and games like to use the folder for all sorts of nonsense, instead of using %appdata% like they're supposed to.

At least on Windows you can mark folders hidden without having to change the name. (i.e. the app that created the folder will still find it)

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#125
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they just realized it gives them a way to package proprietary apps like Skype, Spotify, and Slack a bit more simply than would be required to apt-ify/dpkg-ify them. I really think that's the primary motivation.

And it's a pretty good one since the experience with having a large catalog of useful software in Flatpaks has been awesome and largely seamless. I just wish Canonical wasn't off doing their own thing or had started out in the open from the start so it would have a chance of being a useful standard instead of the weird Canonical store.

Considering that Flatpak was essentially a hostile fork of the AppImage project motivated by Red Hat's insatiable hunger for control, I find it ironic when Flatpak supporters complain about Canonical "doing their own thing".

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#126

> 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?

I always had problems with both of them. I use Docker a lot and Flatpak/Snap are intended to be a type of Docker for desktop apps. I know with Flatpak it has some shims to integrate with your system UI libraries so themes try to match up, but there are issues with that too (and flatpak apps just not starting up half the time). I really hate Snap/Flatpak conceptually. Use the package manager. That's what it's there fo…

Flatpak is marketed as a better Snap (it surely has some advantages: no vendor lockdown), but at the end of the day, the system integration is not that good, I tried to use the Flatpak of Wireshark back in the day when I tried Fedora Silverblue, I ended up regretting that experiment.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#127
post #103

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…

Unity was very good in a lot of respects. Both its UI elements and its performance. Unfortunately, Unity 7 depended on Compiz somewhat heavily, and when it came to writing a replacement of the full stack, Canonical didn't manage to execute. But have you been following last year's improvements to GNOME's performance and responsiveness? A lot of it is Canonical's devs bringing their experience from Unity.

Gnome 3 runs like an absolute dog on my Skylake notebook using Ubuntu 19.10. I don't know what metrics you have been looking at, but as a regular user I "feel" that the UI is constantly lagging during regular use. I didn't think it was this bad when I was using Fedora in the past, but that was a wayland based installation.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#128
post #63
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can never figure out Canonical's logic with going off to do their own thing. They don't do it with everything, so clearly it's not a complete rejection of things not made in-house. It seems like they also often end up going back to the community solutions/standards eventually, so what benefit do they see in doing this over and over again?

Does it force the community solution to improve? If the options are community or Canonical does that competition have benefits to both? Not sure Canonical are thinking that explicitly but maybe it’s just hedging their bets if the community solution doesn’t work out.

But this is a false dichotomy, because Flatpak is a project controlled by Red Hat. Unless by "community" project you mean AppImages.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#129
post #119
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unrelated to Snap, but on Windows, trying to use the My Documents folder for your actual documents is frustrating, because a huge number of apps and games like to use the folder for all sorts of nonsense, instead of using %appdata% like they're supposed to.

This behavior is such normal for all the apps (especially games) that at one point I thought it was a specification.

The problem in Windows' case is that there never was a clear specification regarding what kinds of files should go where. The directory structure and environment in every version of Windows is a little different, and it's hard to write an app (or an installer) that does the right thing on all of them.
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