Can you still install debs with apt command line?
I started to ignore ubuntu's attempts at a graphical app store long ago.
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it
71–80 of 645 posts
Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it
#72Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it
#73The last time I installed the Ubuntu, I noticed gnome calculator took over a second to start in a VM on a new >$2500 laptop. I switched to a .deb, and it was instantaneous. Then I switched back to devuan and have been happy since.
A good time to ask I suppose: Is Devuan stable and does it carry security updates and package repositories equivalent to normal Debian? If so I'll probably switch myself.
It largely uses debian packages, so it gets the same uodates. Only packages that require systemd are modified by the devuan maintainers to run w/o it.
Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it
#74> Auto-updating of snaps can only be deferred at best, until at some point, like Windows, it auto-updates anyway. Even on metered connections, snaps auto-update anyway after some time. This attitude is obnoxious. Yes, not everybody is on a metered connection or running a mission-critical system, but some are, and it is hardly unreasonable to accommodate them.
With that Ubuntu has become useless trash joining the ranks of Android and its impossible to disable constant Play Store updates funneling endless unknown changes onto a machine you supposedly own.
Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Software companies are not infallible, and I've received updates in the past that have broken things. Enterprises don't get compensated for lost productivity when an auto-updating app results in broken workflows. Also, we recently got hit with a bug in a new auto-updated version. [0] It's great that this was finally fixed but silently rolling out updates like this make it harder to catch these issues before they are…
OK, so there was an image orientation bug in that specific release of Chrome. But it's estimated there are 1 billion users of Chrome. One billion! How wide of an attack surface does that present? Or how much of a nightmare would it be if they were all on wildly different versions? I get that this specific bug may have caused problems for you. But if I had to choose between security and compatibility for 1 billion sof…
> But if I had to choose between security and compatibility for 1 billion software users vs an occasional image orientation bug,
This is a disingenuous characterization of my argument. The image orientation bug was a simple example. Further, why can't there be some kind of compromise where security updates are automatically applied and feature updates are not (of course I understand that the line can get blurry)?
Lastly, in a philosophical sense, I don't want to cede control of my machine to a third party. Automatically updating apps removes the chance for me to consent to changes and puts me at the mercy of a third party. It removes my ability to make an informed choice.
Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it
#76> I hate that Chromium’s snap takes more than 10 seconds to load on cold boot on a freaking SSD, whereas .deb and Flatpak apps load in 1-2 seconds. Can someone verify this? As someone who will eventually upgrade to 20.04, this is concerning.
Clean install, Ubuntu 20.04. Chromium starts in around a second.
Whatever you do don't install anything else.
Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it
#77Maybe I'm in the minority but I like Snaps. I wish all software would auto-update silently in the background -- when's the last time you even thought about upgrading Chrome? The author of this article claims it's too difficult to find Flatpak apps and that the Ubuntu software center prioritizes Snaps over .deb. Are platforms never allowed to migrate to a new standard? Why is it Canonical's fault that authors of indiv…
Chrome, no. But I am running FRR on Ubuntu server, and it's also distributed as a Snap - in fact, that has spurred the most known discussion about Snap autoupdates[1]. Of course I can - and do - use the deb version, but it's just one of the critical-always-on things that can creep onto a system as a Snap. For example, LXD is moving with Snap as the default way to distribute on Ubuntu[2]. [1]: https://forum.snapcraft.…
OK, but why is the problem FRR not addressing bugs it may be auto releasing and instead the entire principle of auto-updates in general?
If we agree that auto-updates on the whole improve security for the platform, why is that not a goal worth pursuing? Why are application devs totally blameless in releasing buggy software?
Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it
#78We tried to make an internal IoT device using Ubuntu Core and snaps because the capabilities of it were very promising. We started a PoC and about halfway through we hit a major roadblock. Our enterprise network does certificate substitution, and Ubuntu Core absolutely does not allow you to install your own certificates globally, so our devices would never receive updates. We tried EVERY hack we could think up, short…
Sounds like a solid decision from Canonical tbh. Certificate substitution is terrible.
For a consumer, sure. In a business setting, it seems irresponsible to be to allow every random server to have an un-inspectable VPN.
Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it
#79> Auto-updating of snaps can only be deferred at best, until at some point, like Windows, it auto-updates anyway. Even on metered connections, snaps auto-update anyway after some time. This attitude is obnoxious. Yes, not everybody is on a metered connection or running a mission-critical system, but some are, and it is hardly unreasonable to accommodate them.
I've been a very faithful Ubuntu user for 12 years now but if there's no easy way to disable this abomination then my current one (18.04) will be the last. Whose idea was it to replicate one of the worst features of Windows?
Gnome has been replicating the worst parts of windows (the registry comes instantly to mind) since the release of Gnome 3.
Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apparently, snaps are compressed to save disk space, which is why they take so long to start: - https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/9scoif/snap_package... Saving disk space is certainly useful for rarely used apps, however, your web browser (and any other frequencely used apps), shouldn't be compressed, especially if there is ample disk space.
The bottom line is they optimize installation time by amortizing it out over the runtime life of the package, or in other words, optimizing a one time 15 second process to be a 14 second process, in return for making a many-times 1 second process a 30 second process. It makes absolutely no sense. They do this using a filesystem originally designed for embedded devices, using a driver hacked to disable threading suppo…
It’s a bad implementation. You can run inline compression on latency sensitive workloads like VDI without issue.
Compression makes a lot of sense as the cost for fast high capacity SSD is usually much higher than the extra CPU cycles required to decompress.