Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it • Hacker News Board

Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it

#101

Post by ordinaryperson » Sat, May 02, 2020, 4:27 PM UTC

Legogris wrote: post #38

ordinaryperson wrote: post #12

Maybe 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…

> If we all agree that on the whole auto-updating software is generally better and more secure than manually updated software, why not single out the applications that haven't migrated instead of blaming the whole standard? Everyone certainly don’t agree on that. It really depends on the situation. And if that’s what you want, you had that already with unattended-upgrades. I really prefer to manage what updates, how,…

Unattended upgrades is a great example. You must manually install it, it's difficult to configure (you must edit some complex text file) and even then with it on and set to update all types of packages it often still doesn't. Maybe I'm doing something wrong but in my long experience with Ubuntu I've found unattended-upgrades very unreliable.

I get that some people prefer a less secure ecosystem and never want to update their software. But it seems like the greater community is better served by auto updates.

Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it

#102

Post by karmakaze » Sat, May 02, 2020, 4:28 PM UTC

I don't use Software Center so the only thing I should be concerned about is getting the snap flavor of Chrome instead of the .deb. My main browser is Firefox anyway.

I get that the forced direction toward snaps seems premature. I wouldn't stop using it though if there's simple measures to get around it. Also use Xfce/Xubuntu.

Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it

#103

Post by harrygeez » Sat, May 02, 2020, 4:28 PM UTC

greendave wrote: post #18

> 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.

This is a hard problem.

And Microsoft didn't have a choice. Given an option regular users will never update their computers, perhaps partly due to fear of what they don't understand, fear of change, or maybe due to past bad update experiences. I witness this in my mom with technology all the time. Every time there's a popup she mini-panics, and she has trained herself to click close every time she sees something she doesn't understand.

Google started the trend of silently updating Chrome and everyone including Microsoft followed after, except upgrading an OS is nothing like updating a browser.

For most parts, I think auto update is necessary for tech illiterates, especially now that everybody's jumping on the Agile bandwagon, including Windows. There needs to be a way to ensure new versions reach their users given everyone's just churning out barely working software these days.

Honestly I don't have a problem with that. But if they don't give power user the option to opt out, this is just disrespectful

Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it

#104

Post by tom_devref » Sat, May 02, 2020, 4:29 PM UTC

I really dislike the way snaps create disk partitions. When I run $ df I want to see what I defined during OS installation, not a dozen nasty snap mounts. An application misusing fundamental system features like this feels like a violation of some UNIX principle.

Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it

#105

Post by veesahni » Sat, May 02, 2020, 4:29 PM UTC

Anybody have commentary on how this snap stuff impacts those who use Ubuntu on their EC2 nodes?

So far I see complaints about Chromium, which typically doesn't exist in a server environment.

Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it

#106

Post by simion314 » Sat, May 02, 2020, 4:30 PM UTC

commoner wrote: post #51

Snap has an issue on certain Linux distributions (including Fedora and Arch) in which many applications render tofu characters (□□□□□) instead of text. https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/snapped-app-not-loading-fonts-o... Canonical needs to invest in compatibility if it wants Snap to be adopted in distributions other than Ubuntu. Flatpak doesn't have this issue, and unlike Snap, its server implementation is decentralized,…

Isn't flatpack designed from the point of Desktop users (GNOME) where snaps are designed with a server in mind? This would mean that are very different and you can't just substitute them.

Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it

#107

Post by ordinaryperson » Sat, May 02, 2020, 4:31 PM UTC

vageli wrote: post #75

ordinaryperson wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)? Las…

It's a simple example but that's the kind of tradeoffs platforms are trying to make. Small bugs in favor of security and compatibility. It could be a thousand image orientation bugs. Same arguments still apply.

And yes, you can't cordon off security updates from everything else. They accidentally break other things. But this is a general problem of software development.

If you're using a third-party's software, aren't you already consenting to their "control"? How much control do you have over someone else's software?

Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it

#108

Post by Legogris » Sat, May 02, 2020, 4:31 PM UTC

ordinaryperson wrote: post #68

capableweb wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My two cents, you don't have to agree but thought I'd just add a different perspective. I prefer my own package manager (pacman) over snaps for the following reasons: 1) I like to upgrade on my own schedule. I use my computer for work, and I cannot have things break in the middle of the day or in the morning, just as I get started with work. I usually save upgrades for when I less things to do, so that in case stuff…

My position is not that certain users would prefer to update on their own schedule. Of course there are. Or that new updates sometimes break things and that's a hassle. Of course they do and it is. The problem is if you want to distribute an important security update, what do you do? Ask everyone nicely to upgrade? How? Again, what % of users will manually update their software? Not a lot. For #2, that seems like a r…

I think there would be a lot less complaining about the existing unattended-upgrades functionality being enabled by default on dektop, than the new self-updating capabilities of snaps.

Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it

#109

Post by searchableguy » Sat, May 02, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

harrygeez wrote: post #103

greendave wrote: post #18

> 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.

This is a hard problem. And Microsoft didn't have a choice. Given an option regular users will never update their computers, perhaps partly due to fear of what they don't understand, fear of change, or maybe due to past bad update experiences. I witness this in my mom with technology all the time. Every time there's a popup she mini-panics, and she has trained herself to click close every time she sees something she…

Are linux users regular users?

Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it

#110

Post by harrygeez » Sat, May 02, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

na85 wrote: post #79

bitcharmer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think gconf and macOS's plist have proven that Microsoft is at least somewhat right with registry, or at least the idea is. I don't know why people didn't like it and honestly I don't have a strong opinion on it, but I have a feeling in some ways Microsoft didn't have much of choice given that they need to have backwards compatibility.