Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04 • Hacker News Board

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#291

Post by Barrin92 » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 4:54 AM UTC

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

I think automatic updates on all platforms are probably an immense net benefit to the world given the huge degree of security vulnerabilities it avoids.

Ubuntu users may be more tech proficient than average users but even for developer machines, I think it takes a lot of concern out of the equation if the software is up-to-date.

As far as I'm concerned this doesn't deserve an '/s'.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#292

Post by Kaze404 » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 5:06 AM UTC

Koshkin wrote: post #148

djsumdog wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> a type of Docker for desktop apps By the way, what is it with Docker that makes it hard or impossible for it to be used for this exact purpose?

It's not that hard. I remember using it to run Slack at one point, and while it wasn't easy it's definitely possible if you need it bad enough.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#293

Post by Kaze404 » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 5:10 AM UTC

ghthor wrote: post #167

readwind wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PPA is hell. Arch is love and life.

The AUR is so transparent. If I want to see how the AUR package is getting built, ez, read the PKGBUILD linked right from the packages page. I was immediately turned off to using Snap because I couldn't find how the Snap was built and really who built it. No Thanks, that's not how I install software on my personal computer anymore, it's one of the main reasons I exited windows as soon as I started to learn about info…

Not only that but modifying the pkgbuild for yourself is trivial. Very convenient for installing patched kernels.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#294

Post by cerberusss » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 5:16 AM 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…

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

Please read the HN guidelines: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work". Link at the bottom-left.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#295

Post by joshuaellinger » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 5:20 AM UTC

Very timely.

Just tried to install 20.04 on LVM. It gets in to a completely broken state if you misconfigure the network due to an error in an exception handler in an Python error handling view in the UI. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#296

Post by TylerE » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 5:30 AM UTC

jeroenhd wrote: post #151

stefan_ wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Dang, that really sucks. I was planning on updating my desktop to 20.04 but after reading about Canonical pushing snaps and now this thread basically claiming that moving or renaming the directory is impossible because what is in my opinion a design flaw in the entire system design, I think I'll switch to Manjaro or Arch for my desktop instead. I am on the rolling releases already but I'm not going to install an LTS…

Would you expect anything else from the distro that rammed half-baked versions of systemd, pulseaudio, and unity down users throats?

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#297

Post by usr1106 » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 5:31 AM UTC

I always uninstall snapd, too.

Inspired by this post I checked what is actually offered as a snap.

This one surprised me: https://snapcraft.io/aws-kernel

Who can explain me how I would use a kernel running as a snap?

Well, last updated 2017, so I don't think I want to try that one.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#298

Post by vbernat » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 5:31 AM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #285

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…

> upstart [...] failed shit they've come out with? upstart was pretty good. It just lost the popularity contest with systemd. I'm not sure if there's really anything serious to complain here about.

There were some serious complains around upstart. Notably, jobs may get stuck in a bad state, difficult to recover. This was never fixed. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upstart/+bug/96420..., https://bugs.launchpad.net/upstart/+bug/406397 and http://www.markhneedham.com/blog/2012/09/29/upstart-job-gett....

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#299

Post by usr1106 » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 5:34 AM UTC

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.

In Xubuntu 20.04 no snaps are installed by default. So you can simply uninstall snapd or just leave it there.

However, if you want to use chromium-browser you are out of luck. It is no longer available as a .deb package.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#300

Post by favadi » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 5:36 AM UTC

I don't understand the need to remove it, if you don't like snap, just ignore it and don't install anything from it. There is no harm keeping them instlaled, right?