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

jatan.blog

491–500 of 645 posts

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

#492
post #421

I am very diligent about applying updates as soon as I'm able and generally read the changelogs of the updates I'm applying in Ubuntu's Software Updater. One thing I will not do is willingly allow somebody else a way to deploy and execute code on my computer without my say so (which snap is). After reading the whole thread at https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-automatic-refresh-for... and seeing Gustavo Niemeyer'…

I’ve been running Pop OS on the desktop for a year and I’m very happy with it. It might just be me getting better at running Linux, but this is the first Linux partition I haven’t had to hose after about 6-9 months due to some issue with incompatible libraries/updates/settings getting installed.

With regards to updates, it seems that 20.04 continues in the mold of Pop OS 18.04: You get periodic notifications that updates are available, and can go to the Pop Shop to install them. If there are multiple apps receiving updates, you can review and install them piecemeal (although OS/library updates are bundled together as one item in the UI).

The idea of using it for my servers feels weird at first (when I think of Pop OS the UI comes to mind) but after thinking about it, it is a really solid OS and there’s no reason I can think of that it wouldn’t work.

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

#493
We work on a product where we must deploy different Linux distributions for customers but it’s imperative they’re stable and we’ve tested the image at an exact point in time.

Snap is an extremely big pain when it comes to this. We have to workaround for forceful updates by telling it to use a non-existent proxy, it’s very dumb.

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

#494
post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 Insightful. > GNOME Calculator was put on the ISO as a snap to help us test the whole “seeding snaps” process, not because it was a fast-moving, CVE-prone applications. Chromium, Firefox and LibreOffice fall more into that category. Ok so the whole snap thing comes down to updating browsers. Is this for real? I want the web, not the browser to change daily, or to consume more bandwidth than my www usage :)

The browser is actually the number one component you should update as soon as a security fix comes out. If you don't want new features ("more free stuff!"), use an LTS version that only includes the security updates?

You can note the version everyone is complaining about here _is_ the LTS.

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

#495
post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

snaps are intended for non-power-users that don't want to deal with dependencies. Those users want things to mostly work without worrying about murky downsides. Auto-updating is exactly the right behavior. If this is of concern to you, why are you using snaps? And why Ubuntu? What's the value-add over Debian?

You have misjudged who actually uses Linux. This setting would be ideal for all the billions of people Canonical wishes used Ubuntu.

Ubuntu (and GNOME, who seem to have the same mindset) have no clue in hell how to actually get the billions of proverbial grandmothers to use their software. All they seem to manage is to poorly ape Microsoft and Apple, which will never get them what they want.

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

#497

> Snap applications auto-update and that’s fine if Ubuntu wants to keep systems secure. But it can’t even be turned off manually. OMG. Is this real? This is the exact reason I use Linux instead of Windows 10 or macOS. I am not a grandma who can't stay up to date on tech news. At the least there should be a toggle for power users. But no, you can only defer it. Am I the only one who doesn't like it when your already s…

Yeah, lol, looks like I'm no longer an Ubuntu user. Now I have to figure out how to force-disable this for server software and corporate Linux desktop users. Jesus.

You can set Snapd to use a proxy and just turn the proxy off until you want to update (lol)

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

#498
So...I guess we are done with Ubuntu then.

This is terrible. We use Ubuntu on systems where bad things can happen if software becomes unstable due to an unwanted update. In other words, nobody, nobody would ever even dream of installing any software of updating the OS without authorization. And this authorization would require regression testing in order to verify the changes would not compromise the system.

I don't understand how anyone working on Ubuntu could think this is a good idea.

To be clear, if Linux (let's say Ubuntu) is going to become a viable OS for the masses it probably needs something like this. I get it. However, there is no reason to break the traditional stability of Linux and even risk creating danger.

Disabling this mode should be as simple as one setting. In fact, it should be offered as a choice during installation with a full explanation. This is where they could make a pitch for the functionality. Those of us who don't need it (or can't use it for other reasons) can opt out and move on. Consumers, sure, I don't care.

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

#499
post #7

> 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.

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.

> snaps are compressed to save disk space

The list of dumb decisions that Ubuntu has been making recently just keeps increasing.

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