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Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

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Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#331

Post by Avamander »

madars wrote: post #113
cies wrote: post #51

To ensure snap will not be installed again see the apt config here: https://github.com/cies/kubuntu-setup#remove-snap This is needed because an every growing number op packages is "dependant" on it. Here I show how to install Chromium as a DEB package from Debian (on a buntu): https://github.com/cies/kubuntu-setup/tree/master/chromium

Chromium is actually the only real use case for snaps. It is so difficult to build/package chromium for a LTS distro that Debian simply stopped trying. See what happens with security updates on Debian jessie (which is under their LTS): https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/source-package/c... . Ubuntu made the right choice here: https://snapcraft.io/blog/chromium-in-ubuntu-deb-to-snap-tra...

It's a terrible use-case that causes data loss for users, for FOUR years now: https://bugs.launchpad.net/snapd/+bug/1616650

I despise the bug, it causes so much trouble without a way to turn it off. Plus the switch to snap happened exactly during a critical vuln which meant people were running on critically vulnerable chromium for weeks.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#332

Post by Avamander »

livre wrote: post #307
simosx wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AppImages are a disaster waiting to happen. They are like Windows MSI installation files just downloaded from somewhere, running without any confinement.

You can run the AppImages you don't trust with the Firejail sandbox which has native support for AppImage. https://firejail.wordpress.com/documentation-2/appimage-supp...

This is a nice workaround I guess.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#333

Post by Avamander »

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.

Oh it also breaks a lot of native extensions: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chromium-browser/+...

It also causes data loss: https://bugs.launchpad.net/snapd/+bug/1616650

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#335

Post by kingosticks »

ronjouch wrote: post #8
pixelmonkey wrote: post #4

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.

I don't know about Spotify, but both Skype and Slack are distributed with private apt repositories and it works just fine.

Spotify is too. Their deb repo is just outdated compared to their snap (which itself is outdated compared to what's available on macOS and Windows). I think it's fair to say they don't care much.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#336

Post by laumars »

abrowne wrote: post #131
jannes wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

dot prefixed files is a kludge that is now a standard rather than an actual hidden attribute like on Windows/NTFS.

The actual heritage is when `ls` was written to exclude .. (dot dot) directories from it's listing the code literally just had the logic to exclude any files which had a dot/period as its first character. Later operators exploited that bug/feature to create items with a dot prefix to make those files and folders hidden. Eventually this became convention.

Whereas systems released more recently understood the need to have a hidden file attribute so made it a first class property.

I do love POSIX and often the first to defend some of Linux or BSDs idiosyncrasies but if there was ever anything that was worth someone saying "I know we've always done it this way but it's shit and it's about time we implemented a proper solution", it would be the dot prefix kludge. (I also know it's easier said than done and would take years for all the tooling to catch up)

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#337

Post by red_admiral »

I really don't get what market ubuntu is going for here.

People like me who would like a system that works their way, even if it's not the same way as the distribution maintainers - nope. Believe it or not, I don't want my desktop to be full of animations, I want updates to happen on my schedule, and I care about having the active title bar a different colour to the rest.

People who believe in Free As In Freedom - it's still technically free, but for all practical purposes it might as well not be if you have to recompile a core package for things like using a non-standard home directory path. This is one of many things where I sigh and go Freedom wasnt meant to be like this.

The average non-techy user - uses windows anyway, and has access to a much larger software ecosystem as a result.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#338

Post by the_duke »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #166
Denvercoder9 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least on recent Android versions the apps only ask for permissions when they actually need them, not on install time, and you can grant/refuse individual permissions.

This is also how iOS has worked since forever. I think it's helpful, but not that helpful. In practice, apps that want access to my contacts usually keep asking for access every time I try to do anything, until I eventually either relent to make the prompts go away or click allow by accident. And that's me as a computer-enthusiast. I would bet money most normal people just hit allow always. Because it's easier.

In Android 10 you "only" need to deny a permission 3 times until it is auto-rejected without a prompt.

Some apps even try to circumvent this system by showing a "help" screen with instructions on how to re-enable the permission manually, but I only saw this twice.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#339

Post by exikyut »

useragent86 wrote: post #222
sneak wrote: 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…

> 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…

Echoing the other similar comment, where can I find citations for this annoying drama I now need to take into account?

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#340

Post by Taniwha »

madars wrote: post #113
cies wrote: post #51

To ensure snap will not be installed again see the apt config here: https://github.com/cies/kubuntu-setup#remove-snap This is needed because an every growing number op packages is "dependant" on it. Here I show how to install Chromium as a DEB package from Debian (on a buntu): https://github.com/cies/kubuntu-setup/tree/master/chromium

Chromium is actually the only real use case for snaps. It is so difficult to build/package chromium for a LTS distro that Debian simply stopped trying. See what happens with security updates on Debian jessie (which is under their LTS): https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/source-package/c... . Ubuntu made the right choice here: https://snapcraft.io/blog/chromium-in-ubuntu-deb-to-snap-tra...

Except that chromium under snaps is pretty unusable unless your home directory is structured exactly the magic way Canonical expects, if you have symbolic links, stuff on other disks, suddenly you can't upload your customer orders, or your PCB CAD designs to be made, you can't save files into /tmp anymore, even if you've been doing that for 3 decades. And it all fails silently, mysteriously, no error messages explaining why stuff has suddenly stopped working.

I'm not against stuff changing, but tell us up front, explain what's changed and make sure that you're not breaking existing things or provide a way for people to keep their existing stuff work, a flag that says that following symbolic links is OK ... and put that UI in Chromium itself, not in some other box somewhere

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