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Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

kevin-custer.com

251–260 of 436 posts

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#251
post #168
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently hit the wall with Ubuntu too. I'll still run -server in the cloud, but each time over the last 5-7 years I did point-samples of "is Linux viable as a desktop other than ChromeOS", it was always Ubuntu/Gnome. It turns out that that was my problem all along! I tossed Gentoo and KDE (this is not a Gentoo endorsement, it was just a "hey I wonder what Gentoo's been up to in the last dozen years since I last use…

It's interesting how underrepresented KDE is in the "big distros". While it makes sense that Fedora and Ubuntu ship GNOME, and there are "spins" of each that include different desktops out of the box, it still surprises me.

In my opinion KDE has always been way less polished than gnome and is currently not financially backed in any meaningful way. They also have problems focusing on the core product and won't stop shipping half-assed programs nobody asked for.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#252

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…

Netplan is another fail... although I love Ubuntu otherwise

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#253
post #85

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.

The Snap team has some experience with this, seeing as how 20.04 has released and you still can't move the fricking ~/snap folder . Creating some generically named top-level folder in the users home directory is a straightforward fuck you to all users. Since 2017: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snapd/+bug/1575053

This. Came here to post the same bug. I've been following the thread for the last 3 years, and it's an absolute mess.

I feel bad for the maintainers; it must be difficult to deal with all the rude and borderline disrespectful comments -- and particularly for something you're donating your time for free after all. But I must say that the architectural decision of creating a ~/snap was a colossal mistake.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#254
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

> All the hard work to make it a viable OS is done by Debian

You could equally say that all the hard work to make a viable OS is done by Linux, so screw Debian? Last I hurd, the GNU developed OS is unviable (no 64 bit, no SMP).

Or equally say that all the hard work to make the majority of end-user programs (you know, the raison d’être for an OS) is done by other open source projects, not Debian, so screw Debian...

These are open source projects, with cross-pollination everywhere, each with their own opinions on licensing. Ubuntu mostly helps the ecosystem, and certainly isn’t a parasitic player (although like all, they are not perfect).

Why bag on Ubuntu just because it happens to be popular? Should we also cancel all the other Debian based distros?

PS: complaining about upstart shows you are just being biased (or perhaps misinformed). Canonical were developing upstart before systemd was developed - and systemd was developed by RedHat. The main con given against upstart was not technical, but due to licensing. “In terms of overall feature[s] there is really rather little to distinguish upstart from systemd” https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/initsystem/upstart

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#255
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The VSCode part is real. I had to install it on Ubuntu 17.04 a couple of weeks ago and it took me hours.

OTOH VS Code on a semi-old Debian 9 runs perfectly, from a regular .deb package and repository.

On ubuntu 17 there was a dependency issue when I installed the .deb.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debian did not send free CDs by mail

Did a large numbers of people use those? Legitimate question—it always struck me as a cool initiative for a very small number of people, but only that. I'd expect most people tech-savvy enough to install Ubuntu would also have a decent enough internet to download a ~700mb file.

Back in the day, not much of my country, or even the US, had particularly fast internet. Nor did everybody have a disc burner in the days before USB booting being supported by the majority of computers' firmware.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#257
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn’t there some big kerfuffle years ago involving KDE, Qt, and licensing?

There was .

Correct. A few more details:

>[...] To show our commitment to this dual licensing model, the KDE Free Qt Foundation was founded in 1998. It is a non-profit foundation ensuring that Qt will always be available under open source licensing terms. The agreement that governs this foundation has stayed mainly unchanged over the last 17 years. As a lot of things have changed during these years, we have been working with KDE over the last year to create a new and updated agreement that takes todays realities better into account.[...]

From: https://www.qt.io/blog/2016/01/13/new-agreement-with-the-kde...

The updated contract mentioned in that blog post is available here: https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/Software_License_Agreeme...

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#258
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting how underrepresented KDE is in the "big distros". While it makes sense that Fedora and Ubuntu ship GNOME, and there are "spins" of each that include different desktops out of the box, it still surprises me.

Wasn’t there some big kerfuffle years ago involving KDE, Qt, and licensing?

yes; and again about 2 weeks ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22821050

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#259

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.

The closest thing to Ubuntu is Debian.

But I'd like to throw in a recommendation for Fedora. It includes Flatpak by default (which to me as always been the least objectionable sandboxing system) but nothing comes as a flatpak by default. You have to explicitly choose to use it.

Fedora's hardware support is second to none, and even supports in-OS BIOS updates.

I highly recommend it.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#260

It's a shame that chromium's apt package uses snap now. Startup time increased from ~0.2 to 5-10 seconds. Using Brave fixes this.

Switching to another browser to fix a packaging problem with the first browser is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

It's also disingenuous to suggest a browser wrapped in a cryptocurrency promotional wallet thing as a comparable alternative.

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