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Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

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Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#321

Post by wiredfool »

waltpad wrote: post #277
waltpad wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I strongly recommend anyone similarly frustrated to check out debian, which is a fantastic distro. It is true that the Debian people are doing a great job. > [...] if you're using Ubuntu and disabling snap, you're fighting against the current and I have to imagine it's going to be increasingly difficult with subsequent releases. Actually, snap was harder to remove in the previous release: you had to rebuild certain…

Now, this is embarassing, here the list of reverse dependencies on snapd: python3-ubuntu-image xubuntu-desktop xubuntu-core vanilla-gnome-desktop ubuntustudio-desktop-core ubuntustudio-desktop ubuntukylin-desktop ubuntu-unity-desktop ubuntu-snappy-cli ubuntu-snappy ubuntu-mate-desktop ubuntu-mate-core ubuntu-core-launcher ubuntu-budgie-desktop snapd-xdg-open snapcraft snap-confine qml-module-snapd plasma-discover-bac…

Many of those are also the main meta packages for specific flavors.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#322

Post by ezoe »

The only downside of disabling snap in Ubuntu is the Chromium. Since Ubuntu's official package of Chromium is using snap, disabling the snap means you don't get packaged Chromium from Canonical. You have to build it yourself or using other means of distribution, like using Debian apt package or proprietary Google Chrome.

It's not much of a problem for me since I believe that keeping diversity of Web browser is necessary for the healthy Web ecosystem and I force myself to use Firefox. And I really hate Chromium force me to waste CPU time on some kind of test payload occasionaly, it use 100% of a core and there is no way to disable it.

I'm fine with restricting myself to use Firefox since I'm not a Web frontend developer so I don't need to test Chromium behaviours myself. But others may not.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#323

Post by robocat »

Skunkleton wrote: post #272
robocat wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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... Th…

> You could equally say that all the hard work to make a viable OS is done by Linux, so screw Debian? No, you couldn't say that. Without toolchains, userlands, and packaging, a kernel is pretty worthless. The barest bones you can go is still gcc, linux, uclibc, and busybox. There is more code that goes into a computer running linux, then there is in the linux kernel. By a wide margin.

If it had to be done, GNU programs could all be replaced. Port BSD tools or improve busybox tools, use KDE instead of Gnome, and there is a variety of great packaging solutions that aren’t .deb. AFAIK GCC is already being replaced by clang due to the GCC codebase, amongst other reasons. Distros mostly use GNU programs for historical convenience. Given incentive, GNU could be dropped by Ubuntu for the desktop. The most popular Linux distro Android has moved away from GNU already.

FSF does fabulous work, which we are all appreciative of, but some decisions are peeing in the open source pool.

I think RMS creates unnecessary division against Linux and Linus for what I feel are poor reasons. I went to a lecture by him where he spent half his time being negative towards Linux and Linus (that felt like he was just pissed off because Linux was popular) and a bit because Linus had used the GPL2 (not trivial to change, and you don’t get change by attack). Being negative towards the people who are on your own side is wrong IMHO. It could equally be argued that Debian should be called Debian/Linux. Edit: I just found a quote from Linus about RMS that summarises what I wished to say here: “It's not passion for something, it becomes passion against something else.“ - http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2008/11/black-and-white....

PS: I totally admire RMS and his relentless idealism. He has given so much to the world, and the faults I see in him are interwoven with the strengths I see: I’m not sure the faults could be mitigated without badly weakening the virtues.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#324

Post by capableweb »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #260
lemagedurage wrote: post #11

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.

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

Sure, but some people just want to have their problem fixed and they only have a sledgehammer in front of them. If it works, is it really that bad?

> a browser wrapped in a cryptocurrency promotional wallet thing

I think you have it the wrong way around. It's a browser containing an integration with a cryptocurrency wallet, not the other way around. You'd still be able to use it as a normal browser if you ignore the cryptocurrency stuff.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#325

Post by fulafel »

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?

Desktop apps are not designed to operate in isolated fs namespace/network/etc from the host. So the user experience won't be seamless unless there are standards that enable desktop apps to be aware of how they are dockerized. Which there aren't afaik

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#326

Post by akvadrako »

qppo wrote: post #194
troyready wrote: post #89

One of the very annoying consequences of the Chromium move to snap on 20.04 is that it will silently fail to launch most external links (e.g. Slack, Zoom). A workound is posted at https://bugs.launchpad.net/snapd/+bug/1776873/comments/29 (simple patch & recompile). May be worth making a PPA for the fixed snapd if we can't get the Canonical dev team to fix the core issue.

It basically breaks xdg-open. This is crucial for a lot of flows with desktop software and I'm honestly baffled why it isn't fixed. Any URI with a custom scheme is horribly and completely broken with a browser installed as a snap. Even basic stuff like file uris are broken in browsers installed as a snap. It's extremely weird to see this kind of thing when it happens too, you usually trust Firefox to work!

It is strange this is still broken, but it’s pretty easy to build wrappers for xdg-open and friends yourself.

I prefer the isolation of snaps so I’m willing to put a little work into it, but understand not everyone cares to do that.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#327

Post by notokay »

mothsonasloth wrote: post #75
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...

Not on the new nightly release anymore.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#329

Post by m0xte »

m-p-3 wrote: post #69
avhception wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got an ansible playbook that modifies my ~/.config/lxc/config.yml for certain deployment scenarios. Due to LXC now being a snap, the file is simply not there. I guess it's 5 layers deep in namespaces, overlayfs and other stuff. I was so fed up with this that I removed Ubuntu (and replaced it with Gentoo).

I came to the realization that my home server doesn't need Ubuntu, it needs Debian.

All this shit actually drove me to NetBSD for my home server

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#330

Post by Razengan »

sneak wrote: post #318
useragent86 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Half of the utilities I install out of the box on a fresh macOS are built in, and the annoying stuff that used to be editing arcane files is now easy preference settings That's been the case with KDE for 15-20 years now. KDE 3.5 was a great environment (and Trinity (TDE) is a modernized fork of it). Note that, this year, KDE added telemetry to their Plasma desktop environment. Of course, it's opt-in, so it must be…

Thanks for letting me know. It looks like the telemetry (kuserfeedback) isn’t even a dep of the Gentoo plasma-meta metapackage, so I don’t think it was even built on my system (but will double check when not on mobile). If I dabble with debian or kubuntu I will make sure to mitigate it, thank you for making it known, keep up this kind of good work! It’s a real shame that they found it necessary to even build a teleme…

> all the phone-home that Catalina STILL does even with iCloud, Siri, analytics/crashes, Screen Time, iMessage/FaceTime, Location Services, ntp, App Store, and software update all disabled.

Do you have examples of what you mean?

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