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

jatan.blog

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

#151

Post by paride5745 »

koolba wrote: post #41
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.

It’s beyond obnoxious. It’s your computer and there’s no way to disable it from mutating without file system hacks?

You can cleanup Ubuntu from snaps: https://www.kevin-custer.com/blog/disabling-snaps-in-ubuntu-...

However, Canonical pushes snaps via deb packages (e.g. Chromium).

The best option is the use an Ubuntu-based distro, like PopOS or Linux Mint or Elementary OS.

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

#152

Post by GekkePrutser »

Achshar wrote: post #138
jimbob45 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The customer is always right. Say it with me.

Disagree. “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” - Henry Ford. Customer is mostly right. Not always. Use your best judgement as a business owner. Innovate where necessary and stick to customer feedback where you think it makes sense.

Henry Ford was a total dick and not customer-focused at all.

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

#153

Post by alrs »

searchableguy wrote: post #129
apexalpha wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if your goal is to bring Linux to the masses?

That boat sailed long ago. Windows has a pretty decent linux subsystem now. Even devs that were hardcore linux enthusiasts moved to windows. The benefit of linux is that it doesn't force stuff on you that you can't disable compared to windows. If you take that away, there are very little reasons for any normal user to move.

ehhhh, I've never seen a hardcore Linux developer move to Windows. WSL exists to sunset Windows-based development, not the other way around.

Windows Server gets to exist so long as it acts as a funnel into Azure. Someday it will be sold off to Wipro, a la VMS or OS/2.

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

#154

Post by lonelappde »

chrisseaton wrote: post #34
Matt3o12_ wrote: post #11

Earlier 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.

Isn't the point of compression to save transfer time from the disk to memory, not space on the disk? That's why the kernel is compressed.

Yes. It's a great idea for spinning rust, meh for SATA SSD, and bad for NVMe SSD.

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

#155

Post by wolco »

ordinaryperson wrote: post #107
vageli wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'…

No using third party software doesn't mean you are consenting to their control. Why would you believe that?

For open source you can read the source and decide to install or change. You can limit permissions by assigning to different user groups. You can disallow firewall access. You can choose to use selinux and have additional restrictions.

Automatically updating anything introduces risk.

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

#156

Post by ohazi »

thebruce87m wrote: post #147
ohazi wrote: post #115

If you're looking for an alternative to Ubuntu but want to stick with a Debian-based distribution, I'll continue to recommend Debian testing. It's a rolling release, so you don't have to stop what you're doing every 6 months - 3 years to install a huge update that changes the way everything works. It's more stable than the name would suggest, as long as you follow a few reasonable best-practices [1]. Software availab…

Can you use xfce as the window manager easily? Basically all I want is an LTE release of something with xfce or some other “plain” window manager.

Yes! It's what I use! :-)

Just apt install xfce4

Most of the package names are the same between Ubuntu/Debian. Honestly, using testing just feels like using a "level headed boring adult" spin of Ubuntu. Instructions for installing or compiling XYZ for Ubuntu will typically work without modification on testing.

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

#157

Post by dTal »

Achshar wrote: post #138
jimbob45 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The customer is always right. Say it with me.

Disagree. “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” - Henry Ford. Customer is mostly right. Not always. Use your best judgement as a business owner. Innovate where necessary and stick to customer feedback where you think it makes sense.

I think there's a pretty big distinction between the customer lacking the imagination to see a better solution until it is presented to them, and being denied a choice while being in full possession of the facts.

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

#158

Post by mrweasel »

stryan wrote: post #114
ajross wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, Snappy isn't aimed at "mission critical systems", nor even at bandwidth constrained users. It's a straightforward, reasonably robust and obviously used mechanism for pushing routine consumer software. In that realm, the aggregate benefit to society of having everyone running current software outweighs the annoyance of the specialists, sorry. It's always been this way. If you are running "mission critical"…

Ubuntu is sending out "Mission critical" software as snaps: I think the biggest offender has been LXD, but I'm sure there's others. That combined with Ubuntu forcing snaps as the main packaging method (i.e. you have to jump through various hoops to install .debs of snaps) is what a lot of the outrage about. (Side note: Something about listing Docker as a packaging mechanism makes me uncomfortable. IMO Docker and cont…

LXD is a weird one, it doesn't seem that suitable for distribution as a snap in the first place. The filesystem become a magical bundle of weirdness when you use the snap version. Also LXD is something I’m not that happy to have auto updating, I would like to roll it out to a test, preprod or staging environment first.

To me snaps seems like a desktop solution that Ubuntu forgot to disable on the server edition.

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

#159

Post by GekkePrutser »

searchableguy wrote: post #113
daenz wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it's finally time to switch to Arch. This is an absolute deal breaker for me as well, as I use an ubuntu system for live visual performances, and I need to ensure that no unexpected auto-updates take place.

Try pop os. It doesn't come with snap despite being based on ubuntu 20. They use flatpak in their store.

Personally I don't want FlatPak either except maybe for 1 or 2 apps where the sandboxing actually makes sense. It's still a waste of resources just to appease lazy maintainers.

Ubuntu went totally overboard with their snaps, putting everything in it trying to force it to become a standard. But FlatPak is not great either even though it is an open standard.

It's nice for the 1 or 2 niche apps that aren't available any other way, but for the most part I prefer normal packages.

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

#160

Post by harrygeez »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #150
harrygeez wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Microsoft did have a choice. They could simply have hidden the disable auto update (and telemetry for that matter!) somewhere deeper in the OS where non-techie users will never find it. Or even a registry key or whatever.

I haven't been using Windows for a while, but I think there's a way to disable via Group Policy or registry now?
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