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

#271

Post by jlgaddis » Sat, May 02, 2020, 6:03 PM UTC

zerkten wrote: post #203

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…

> 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 The problem is that "power users" can't be trusted to use this power responsibly, or they operate based on assumptions that won't always be true. Either way they end up hurting other people in enough situations that this becomes an ecosystem issue. Power users often help others set up their…

So because perhaps some '"power users" can't be trusted" (in your opinion), that makes it's okay to just take away their own control of their own computers?

(That kinda reminds me of "trust us, we're the government and we know what's best for you".)

Sorry, but that goes against everything that this whole "free software" thing stands for.

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

#272

Post by ashtonkem » Sat, May 02, 2020, 6:04 PM UTC

noncoml wrote: post #118

koolba wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There is. Don’t install Ubuntu. Use Debian.

Ubuntu has a real problem here; Desktop Linux users are much more mobile than other OS users. If you’ve installed Ubuntu, you’re fully capable of installing at least Debian, and probably any other Linux distro.

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

#273

Post by zaat » Sat, May 02, 2020, 6:06 PM UTC

kds3 wrote: post #263

zaat wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that Microsoft see the large number of vulnerable machines on the internet as a problem thay they are responsible for and the forced update as a necessary solution. Nevertheless, I dual-boot my laptop and use Windows almost only for presentations. Whenever connections to external devices and other OS shenanigans force me to reboot my machine when I'm in the speaker position and the dreaded forced update…

Like a big "pause updates" button they already have for years in the "advanced options" tab?

Exactly, just without the time limits. Also, make it work for all updates. Oh, and While they are at it, they should also remove the nasty auto update of office application when starting them, without giving any prior hint or notice.

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

#274

Post by cwyers » Sat, May 02, 2020, 6:06 PM UTC

zerkten wrote: post #203

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…

> 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 The problem is that "power users" can't be trusted to use this power responsibly, or they operate based on assumptions that won't always be true. Either way they end up hurting other people in enough situations that this becomes an ecosystem issue. Power users often help others set up their…

There's a real Dunning-Kruger problem with "power users," where some people know just enough to get themselves into trouble. And I think these D-K power users outnumber the "real" ones.

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

#275

Post by my123 » Sat, May 02, 2020, 6:06 PM UTC

jorams wrote: post #267

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 didn't have a choice. Given an option regular users will never update their computers I think this is a misconception. A few weeks ago I was updating my Windows 7 install that hadn't booted for a year or so. I opened Windows Update. It looked for updates, and found some. I clicked the update button. It proceeded to start downloading, by which I mean it would hang for 1 to 2 minutes and then download very…

Updates are cumulative now to avoid such issues. Prior to this, the updating choices were geared towards regular users, so that such a case wasn't really counted...

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

#276

Post by cmurf » Sat, May 02, 2020, 6:09 PM UTC

stingraycharles wrote: post #120

Spooky23 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And decompression is typically very fast. What I don’t understand is why they’re not using something like zstd if they care about speed. It’s a supported compression algo for squashfs, but still they insist on using a single threaded compression (xz iirc?) algo.

The kernel code for reading zstd squashfs image has been merged for some time. But zstd is only a recently supported algorithm in upstream squashfs tools for creating the squashfs image.

In my testing with OS installs that depend on squashfs+xz, there is a significant lzma hit for decompression, resulting in significant latencies. And the higher the compression level used, the more the hit when decompressing. While compression computational hit for zstd is in the same ballpark as xz to achieve the same compression ratio, (a) decompression computational cost is far less with zstd, translating into faster reads; (b) is fairly consistent regardless of compression level.

Another factor for squashfs is the block size. The bigger it is, the better the compression ratio, but the greater the read amplification. I haven't looked at it, but it might be they're overoptimized for space reduction with too little consideration for performance. Since this isn't a one time use image, like for an installation, but intended to be read over and over again, erofs might be an alternative worth benchmarking.

https://linuxreviews.org/images/d/d2/EROFS_file_system_OSS20...

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/atc19-gao.pdf

https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/5/31/306

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

#277

Post by excalibur » Sat, May 02, 2020, 6:09 PM UTC

stevepike wrote: post #229

So I run Kubuntu on my work laptop (X1 Carbon) and just upgraded to 20.04 last weekend. I had a vague idea there were different competing standards for "linux apps that work across distribution" but didn't know people had such a problem with snap. It just seemed like a useful tool for installing proprietary stuff that wouldn't normally be packaged by the distribution. I just checked and the snaps I have that aren't f…

> Is snap somehow user-hostile?

Yes, but more importantly it's insecure. The ease of typo-squatting is a real problem.

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

#278

Post by snuxoll » Sat, May 02, 2020, 6:10 PM UTC

jorams wrote: post #267

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 didn't have a choice. Given an option regular users will never update their computers I think this is a misconception. A few weeks ago I was updating my Windows 7 install that hadn't booted for a year or so. I opened Windows Update. It looked for updates, and found some. I clicked the update button. It proceeded to start downloading, by which I mean it would hang for 1 to 2 minutes and then download very…

The update loop on Windows 7 is more an artifact of the traditional Windows servicing model where updates aren’t cumulative and only periodically were cumulative bundles released, as well as service packs incorporating prior hotfixes as well.

The Windows 10 servicing model doesn’t have that problem, a new cumulative update gets pushed out every month and can get a machine to the latest update for that branch regardless of how long it’s been out of contact with Windows Update. The semi-annual branches can also be directly upgraded to from any prior branch, as they are essentially a full upgrade of Windows just like moving between releases of Ubuntu/Fedora/etc.

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

#279

Post by MereInterest » Sat, May 02, 2020, 6:10 PM UTC

Legogris wrote: post #50

lmm wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish all software would auto-update silently in the background -- when's the last time you even thought about upgrading Chrome? Updating everything has always been one click in Ubuntu (and I'm sure there's an option to have it go automatically). > 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 t…

This is getting OT, but could you elaborate on your issues with systemd? I’m genuinely curious. I often see people complain but haven’t seen or experienced specifics apart from it being complex and having higher learning curve than initd. (I don’t know if you’ve tried MX Linux BTW; Debian derivative without systemd by default) I will never defend pulseaudio though, that’s a horrible mess.

My first experience with systemd was when they implemented a default that would kill processes when a user logs off. This may be acceptable in some single-user desktop environments, but it is absolutely unacceptable in any server environment. If I am using tmux, emacs --daemon, nohup, or any other custom program that catches SIGHUP, then it is inexcusable for systemd to escalate to sending SIGKILL.

I know that there is a separate command that can be used to tell systemd to allow a program to live. I know that there are systemd libraries that an executable can link against in order to opt out of the new behavior. These do not matter, because they shows that systemd is willing to break existing programs, and to break specified conventions. Systemd developers cannot be trusted to provide a foundation to build upon.

I know that this default setting can be overridden at the distribution level, or at the system level. This doesn't matter, because it shows that systemd developers do not know how to choose appropriate defaults, and that any changes that are made in systemd need to be continually monitored for stupidity.

Maybe this is just me being soured by a very poor first impression of systemd, but I haven't seen anything since to dissuade me from this impression.

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

#280

Post by gfxgirl » Sat, May 02, 2020, 6:12 PM UTC

jorams wrote: post #267

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 didn't have a choice. Given an option regular users will never update their computers I think this is a misconception. A few weeks ago I was updating my Windows 7 install that hadn't booted for a year or so. I opened Windows Update. It looked for updates, and found some. I clicked the update button. It proceeded to start downloading, by which I mean it would hang for 1 to 2 minutes and then download very…

45 to 90 mins to update my Macs. They might not reboot 5 to 10 times but it's not quick.

19.04 Ubuntu just died on me today (I know some expert could have gotten in working). Apparently 19.04 support ended and someone took down the servers. So trying to update would tell me something about the servers having no release file. And they wouldn't let me update to 20.04 until I patched 19.04. I never modded anything. Whatever broke it broke itself. I searched the net for answers but my search foo sucked. Someone said download the 19.04 ISO and extract the sources.list file out. I did, it had different repos but got the same errors (with the source urls pointing to the new places of course)

So, 8 hours later I just finished reformatted the drive and installed 20.04

Yep, Linux is painless :rolleyes: