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Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

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Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#131

Post by abrowne »

jannes wrote: post #124
encom wrote: 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.

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)

Create the file ~/.hidden and with the line "snap". It will then be hidden from your file manager.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#132

Post by RMPR »

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #111

So can anyone actually explain what Snaps and Flatpaks are? Why are they good/bad? And how do they compare to each other?

The two technologies are used to sandbox GUI apps. They were supposed to make it possible to run newer apps on top of older libraries and to let 3rd party editors publish their software easily towards multiple distributions, but in practice you can face many problems (lack of system integration, apps not even starting, ...). Flatpak allows anyone to create stores, (iirc Flathub code is on Github) while with Snap you need to use the Snapcraft (vendor lockdown).

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#133

Post by fapjacks »

And now, in a sort of hilarious turn of events, the latest pulseaudio update wants to install snapd (recommended by pulseaudio's new libsnapd-glib1 dependency). And of course, when someone asked about it, they just got a quiet WONTFIX.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#134

Post by redblacktree15 »

beart wrote: post #120
Darmody wrote: post #116

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…

multiple monitor support in Linux is high on my list of reasons I keep switching back to my Windows partition.

I suggest trying Kubuntu. I've been running 3 4K monitors for years, all works fine, including HiDPI support.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#135

Post by eeZah7Ux »

robocat wrote: post #76
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, Sna…

>> 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.

No, that's Debian doing almost all the work.

90% of the packages in Ubuntu are simply taken from Debian without significant modification.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#136

Post by yummypaint »

james_s_tayler wrote: post #88
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…

I agree. The last Ubuntu release I actually liked was 12.04? After Unity I've been fighting Ubuntu ever since. I'm seriously considering not taking the 20.04 LTS release and either using 18.04 until it's untenable or switching to something else.

Yep this hits the nail on the head. There was some kind of fundamental shift around that time. Running other GUIs has been a bandaid, but the underlying thought processes that led to unity are still clearly at work. Im going to stop even trying out new ubuntu releases anymore.

I think this is ok though. If ubuntu were better thought out, the linux ecosystem might be less vibrant than it is. I would like to think other distros are learning from these failures. Personally ive had excellent luck with scientific linux (CentOs based).

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#137

Post by Koshkin »

robocat wrote: post #76
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, Sna…

> I don’t like (Gnome, Snap)

Snaps may be a pain sometimes, but Gnome seems to be working like a charm...

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#138

Post by RMPR »

pixelmonkey wrote: post #4
lainga wrote: post #2

Does Canonical have any 'push' motive for reducing dependence on apt? Or do they really just like snaps?

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.

If it's to avoid this kind of aberrations https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22864985 it's totally understandable, but in practice, it doesn't work that smoothly unfortunately, not to mention the potential vendor lockdown, or as the Mint team phrased it:

> If you’re a Fedora user and you want to install Spotify, you’re told to go to https://snapcraft.io/spotify. Spotify doesn’t distribute RPM packages, appimage, Flatpak or anything useful to a Fedora user who wants to download it, or to a Fedora maintainer who wants to add it to a repository. Fedora users are told to go to what is essentially a commercial store operated by a RedHat competitor where stats tell them their distribution is only 7th best.

> We’re in luck, we can still download the .deb. If Spotify stops caring, what do we do? We move to snap because we have to? Will the snap store continue to let people download actual .snap files in the future or will that get locked down ? Will the snap store continue to operate without an Ubuntu One account or will we get vendor-locked ?

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3766

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#139

Post by throwbackThurs »

I recommend trying out other distributions. While I like the convenience of Ubuntu, it's got some clear downsides like poor package management & a bloated install. Not to mention the disaster that is Gnome3.

Arch has been very hassle free for me, even the installation process was relatively pain free (If you follow a guide). I've been running it for probably nearly a year or so without any problems..

NixOS also looks really interesting and could be the future of desktop computing, I'm keen to give that a try when I get some downtime.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#140

Post by Koshkin »

sour-taste wrote: post #99
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s a bit rich: are they not the #1 consumer distro, which hardly implies they are failing to execute All the hard work to make it a viable OS is done by Debian. Canonical just adds some polish and then wrecks it all with poor design decisions over and over again.

Then why doesn't everyone use Debian?

Third-party support.
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