Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04 • Hacker News Board

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#341

Post by waltpad » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 9:45 AM UTC

wiredfool wrote: post #321

waltpad wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which means that removing them (when removing snapd) doesn't matter much.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#342

Post by qppo » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 10:00 AM UTC

akvadrako wrote: post #326

qppo wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a problem for my users, because it's silently broken.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#343

Post by morsch » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 10:07 AM UTC

simosx wrote: post #229

AlexMax wrote: post #43

I wanted to like snaps (and flatpaks before then), because trying to ease packaging and deployment of apps on Linux is a noble goal, but in both cases I eventually gave up on non-trivial use of them because they were always broken in some annoying way because of their sandboxing. The latest snap I had to get rid of was Visual Studio Code, because I was trying to work on an open source game with it, and I found out th…

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

Sounds like a perfect addition to a -- preferable, but sometimes too heavyweight -- repository-based solution like apt. Basically a more powerful binary tarball.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#344

Post by jcelerier » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 10:12 AM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #202

jcelerier wrote: post #169

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.

> I'd expect most people tech-savvy enough to install Ubuntu

we installed ubuntu with friends in freakin junior high school. it's not like it's rocket science...

OTOH the village where I grew up as a child only got DSL > 512k around 2008 iirc.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#345

Post by coderesearch » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 10:15 AM UTC

Two questions:

a) is it possible to use Chromium without snaps?

b) Can anybody please describe the general experience with Centos for a media production machine - needs to run NVIDIA GPU support, Ardour, low latency jackd and Davinci Resolve on XFCE.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#346

Post by simion314 » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 10:29 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…

>upstart

Do you know Red Hat and google were using upstart? This companies must be hyper incompetent if they run garbage.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#347

Post by dvfjsdhgfv » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 10:46 AM UTC

agentx3r wrote: post #170

jaytaylor wrote: post #6

Kudos to the OP, I'm glad this got posted on hacker news because Snap is so ridiculously broken. Since 16.04, Snaps have been a huge pain for me with running LXC in production environments. By default, Snap applies updates and restarts Systemd services anytime it likes, and there's no way to turn this behavior off! The only way to get around it is to download the Snap package binary and install that directly. Then Sn…

Hear hear. I imagine for dogfooding, LXD is only packaged in snap, so we can't use apt as the source anymore. After migrating, an upstream push to a 'stable' LXD snap channel introduced a regression that borked our environments, and there was no way to: 1. prevent machines in the fleet from pulling the broken LXD update 2. rollback broken machines to the previously working LXD version on the same channel, since it no…

Yes, the situation with LXD packaging is ridiculous. I always wondered, do the maintainers really use it themselves for anything non-trivial?

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#348

Post by the_why_of_y » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 10:56 AM UTC

berkut wrote: post #173

SahAssar wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That works with Flatpak/AppImage too though, right? For me Snap has always had that Canonical smell of not-invented-here, just like Mir, Unity and Upstart. All of those were eventually replaced with what a majority of similar linux distros settled on. I'm not saying it was wasted development or that nothing was learned but ultimately they joined the rest of the ecosystem instead of the ecosystem joining them. It seem…

Just like with Upstart (which existed well before systemd did), Snap existed before Flatpak, and in fact existed in another form (Click) for two years before that. So it's wrong to say Canonical is guilty of NIH-syndrome with these two items, when their versions were out first. Whether the tech is any good is another matter.

You might as well say FlatPak existed in another form since 2007, considering https://people.gnome.org/~alexl/glick/

https://blogs.gnome.org/alexl/2018/06/20/flatpak-a-history/

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snappy_(package_manager), Snap was publicly revealed on 9 December 2014, whereas the design of xdg-app (FlatPak's old name) was already discussed publicly at GUADEC 2013.

https://www.superlectures.com/guadec2013/sandboxed-applicati...

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#349

Post by cassiet » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 11:08 AM UTC

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…

Most of HN is shitting on popular things with a hot take and a smug condescending tone, usually erroneously. If Conical hadn’t tried new projects and failed, the poster would complain that they never innovate.

People complain like this because they have no real control of their own lives. It makes them feel smart, if only they were in control, then things would be better. It would be so easy, the people in charge must be stupid. It comes from a lack of experience and the inability to understand the challenges in those positions.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#350

Post by saintamh » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 11:09 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #319

antpls wrote: post #317

I installed Snap on Debian 10 stable to install Firefox and Chromium as snaps. It allows me to get the latest security updates for these 2 software without entering into dependency hell with the OS. Beside the slow startups, which is not really an issue with those apps because I keep them open all the time, it worked flawlessly so far for me. My only con is that the defaults update all snaps like every day, and I rea…

If all you're looking for is the ability to get the upstream updates immediately, you can also just download the tarball version and unpack it somewhere under your home directory. Then dump a .desktop file for each in ~/.local/share/applications/ so it shows up in your app menu. No startup slowness, and you'll still get the vendor-provided updates as they're released.

I'm curious why this got downvoted -- would it not work?