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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

#561

Post by konart »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #534
konart wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is the exact reason I use Linux instead of Windows 10 or macOS Not sure about win10, but macOS won't autoupdate apps if you turned it off. If the app is not from an app store - it's up to the devs to have option to (auto) update. Most apps allow you to turn autoupdate off (in fact I can't think of single one without this option)

> Most apps allow you to turn autoupdate off (in fact I can't think of single one without this option) Every MacOS app from Google auto-updates. You can turn it off iff you have hacker skills. The average user can't do it.

I should've guessed. Google being Google.

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

#562

Post by Jedd »

pnako wrote: post #459
Firehawke wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have proprietary drivers, you'll need to prepare a USB stick with them downloaded onto it. They won't be on the installer image. On my older 2011-era laptop, that's the wifi and wired network that need those drivers. It's a bit of a pain.

Generally it's not the drivers but the firmware for those devices, i.e. code that runs inside the device. I think it's an over-zealous position from Debian not to redistribute firmware. Even systems that are very strict about licensing, like OpenBSD, redistribute firmware, because they have some common sense.

> I think it's an over-zealous position from Debian not to redistribute firmware. Even systems that are very strict about licensing, like OpenBSD, redistribute firmware, because they have some common sense.

OTOH I believe it's a position fully aligned with their ethical standpoint. Equating common sense with your personal preference isn't very gracious.

If you want something that's less zealous about respecting (and eschewing) stupid licensing, but is more zealous about randomly upgrading all your software packages unexpectedly, there's always Ubuntu.

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

#563

Post by zentiggr »

kikoreis wrote: post #542
imetatroll wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The the very least there should be a simple way to turn off snaps entirely. As in, when installing do we want any snaps? If we don't, don't even install the snap ecosystem. After install, have I decided I don't want snaps? If so, uninstall the entire ecosystem. Do these options currently exist?

The challenge is that a) we don't really want to (can't afford to, etc) maintain a forked package for everything which comes in snaps and b) snaps are really, really, much better for publishing and maintaining certain classes of application, in particular complex ones with hundreds of dependencies and a massive surface area, like a web browser. And users want web browsers, so the default is to include snaps. In gener…

I've not used Ubuntu but was about to search for a distro to put on a rebuild machine... I was considering Ubuntu up until I heard about this.

As a former Gentoo user, this whole Snap concept is a huge deal-breaker. I wouldn't consider Ubuntu for anything other than some thin-client/smart terminal/kiosk usage, and I'd still be wary of what gets pushed and what sort of potential holes might get opened.

> but you'll miss out on potentially critical components that are only available via snaps

REALLY shitty move.

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

#564

Post by Jedd »

I've been running Debian since ~1994, and never really got the excitement about Ubuntu. Some colleagues did, but it seemed to be more about the marketing.

I've always been a KDE user, which was always a first class citizen option during the Debian installation process. For Gnome / Unity users having that default promoted and baked into the distribution might have been compelling.

The refrain 'but it's so much easier to install' never really sat well with me -- I hand-install my desktop & laptop OS's infrequently, given the upgrade process (with Debian) has always been wonderfully robust. I auto-install and maintain, almost exclusively headless, every other VM, so a nicer installer wasn't relevant there.

Claims of 'stodgy' versions are rebutted by using testing or unstable branches, or even backports. For enterprise, stodgy's often a plus in any case -- look at what you get with RHEL/CentOS.

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

#565

Post by michaelmrose »

catalogia wrote: post #495
michaelmrose wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Regular people wouldn't use windows if using it required them to understand the concept of an OS and install it for themselves.

People will never buy linux but they might buy computers with linux at some point just like they have bought phones with it. Android had things that iphone didn't have and at a much cheaper price point thus linux based phones are everywhere. I wish steam boxes had taken off.

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

#566

Post by james_s_tayler »

InternetOfStuff wrote: post #558
kikoreis wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably not a surprise to you, but this is a hotly debated topic inside Canonical. And I apologize for that thread, as it really doesn't represent our best attempt at external debate. Changing a paradigm usually involves pushing the envelope and breaking some existing assumptions; systemd is everybody's favorite example of that in the Linux world. The root of this issue with snaps is the trade-off between built…

Let me point out: to me, auto-updating isn't even the crucial issue (I use unattended-upgrades as well, so whatever). Yes, functionality and workflows around installation and updates are still insufficient for many use cases, but that could have been ironed out given enough time. But what you messed up badly, IMO, was to force-migrate packages to Snap in an LTS release before it was ready. Had you waited until Ubuntu…

>But if I install a deb, I expect to get a deb. You don't want to offer it anymore, fine, take it out of the repo. But sneakily migrating me to a snap, and not even notifying me, is just trust-breaking

Indeed.

We need to modify the age old saying:

"Computers do what you tell them to do, not what you want them to"

By applying the following patch:

"Computers do what you tell them to do, not what you want them to do - except Ubuntu 20.04 LTS"

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

#567

Post by kazinator »

james_s_tayler wrote: post #566
InternetOfStuff wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me point out: to me, auto-updating isn't even the crucial issue (I use unattended-upgrades as well, so whatever). Yes, functionality and workflows around installation and updates are still insufficient for many use cases, but that could have been ironed out given enough time. But what you messed up badly, IMO, was to force-migrate packages to Snap in an LTS release before it was ready. Had you waited until Ubuntu…

>But if I install a deb, I expect to get a deb. You don't want to offer it anymore, fine, take it out of the repo. But sneakily migrating me to a snap, and not even notifying me, is just trust-breaking Indeed. We need to modify the age old saying: "Computers do what you tell them to do, not what you want them to" By applying the following patch: "Computers do what you tell them to do, not what you want them to do - e…

That can't be right because it implies that computers with Windows 10 do either what you want or what you tell them.

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

#568

Post by pdonis »

gruez wrote: post #555
pdonis wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The browser is actually the number one component you should update as soon as a security fix comes out. The problem is that there is no way to have a browser that only pushes updates for security fixes. They're always mixed in with changes to the UI that force people to re-learn workflows. > If you don't want new features ("more free stuff!"), use an LTS version that only includes the security updates? There is no…

>The problem is that there is no way to have a browser that only pushes updates for security fixes Yes there is, it's called firefox esr.

Interesting, I'll take a look.

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

#569

Post by lmm »

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.

I've had systems become unbootable, services not start, that sort of thing. All perfectly understandable bugs that have been fixed, I'm sure, but fundamentally my experience is that it's this intrusive thing that I never asked for that's broken a bunch of stuff that was working fine before.

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

#570

Post by [deleted] »

aeyes wrote: post #425
ultrarunner wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We work at remote sites on cell connections. Part of the reason we moved to Ubuntu from Windows was the ability to control data usage, which is expensive. Automatic updates quickly become a significant slice of the bill when random decisions like these get pushed on users. Ubuntu was supposed to help prevent us from needing to chase this.

Windows 10 has an out of the box feature to mark connections as metered which disables automatic updates.

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