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

#631

Post by ssokolow » Mon, May 04, 2020, 3:15 PM UTC

imetatroll wrote: post #531

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…

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?

You could give this a try combined with something like the ungoogled-chromium PPA:

    sudo apt-get autoremove snapd
    sudo apt-mark hold snapd

(I use apt-mark and some custom scripting to defer nVidia driver updates until system boot to ensure that they don't yank libGL function out from under me at an inopportune time.)

If it doesn't work sufficiently well when I'm ready to upgrade from 16.04 LTS, then I'm switching to Debian. (I'd intended to be on 18.04 LTS by now, but life doesn't always cooperate and I haven't found time to risk a day or two of squashing upgrade-induced bugs)

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

#632

Post by lightrush » Mon, May 04, 2020, 3:26 PM UTC

zenexer wrote: post #241

ordinaryperson wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Auto-updating isn’t the only issue. I’m a stickler for security updates; I’m that crazy guy who always reboots his computer immediately whenever there’s an update. I like that Windows forces updates. Even I recognize that this doesn’t make sense in the Linux world, though. Ubuntu is trying to be something it’s not—they’re trying to appeal to a new demographic, and, in doing so, driving away their existing users. Even…

All valid points and as you say it yourself, all addressable. The thing is though, Canonical can control this experiment by deciding on what debs get migrated to snaps. They can easily conduct this experiment in an LTS so long as they only keep it to desktop packages like GNOME components, browsers, third party software, etc. That way they don't have to wait yet more years before providing this system for use by all users and developers. For example I love the fact that VS Code and Spotify update on their own with no interaction required. I wouldn't love if something I don't want to update in our server fleet gets updated but I don't see many snaps in that area. But if we do see that I'm sure both of us can come up with a one liner stopping snap from updating if and until that use case is supported. Besides, the server space is gravitating towards immutability anyways, so doing something like `chmod -x $(which snapd)` or `chmod -x $(which apt)` on a production machine shouldn't be a big problem in that context. In fact that's one foolproof way to make sure packages are what you want them to be after installing them. Or read-only file systems.

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

#633

Post by dbsmith83 » Mon, May 04, 2020, 3:35 PM UTC

Well, I'm out then. Sorry, but at the end of the day, it's a user's machine, not yours, Snappy/Canonical. I will not use a system which will not let me turn off something that installs shit on MY machine. I can't believe the arrogance of the snappy devs. Just shut up and give the people what they want.

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

#634

Post by ahmedyco » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:18 PM UTC

kikoreis wrote: post #611

canonicalwhistl wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but as a fellow Canonical employee, speaking from a throwaway obviously, it's evident to me that you're simply not telling the truth here. You know just as well as I do that if you criticize Snap within the company, you get fired. Especially if Mark overhears you. There is no room for criticism. You either drink the koolaid or you shutup. So, no, sorry, we're going to keep pumping out Snap and those who don't…

OK, I've had breakfast. First, has anybody actually been fired for criticizing snaps? Your comment seems to imply through hyperbole that we don't debate inside Canonical, but in my experience that simply isn't true. In fact, I've seen a lot more intense IC to CEO debate in Canonical than anywhere else I've worked. It's not always super constructive debate, but I don't know how much better it is in any relatively smal…

Just out of curiosity. How was the "debate" about disabling Flatpak support by default?

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

#635

Post by Jedd » Tue, May 05, 2020, 12:57 AM UTC

pnako wrote: post #622

Jedd wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you feel it could be better documented than: https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware you could perhaps offer to update that page to remove the ambiguities you believe exist.

That page does not really offer any explanation. For all intents and purposes, firmware is like a key or a password you must supply to the device to make it work. The driver, which is indeed open-source, just says: "here, device, is the firmware you need". That's it. You are not achieving anything useful at all by making people go through some ceremony to download it separately. Maybe they just want to send the signa…

This is not true.

Firmware is typically copyrighted, large, obfuscated, and executable on your system.

A password is a string that you can examine and offers no intrinsic threat - either exploit, or legal.

As per the link I provided to you, Debian's policy is that free firmware are shipped in the distribution -- non-free firmware requires you add the 'non-free' and/or 'contrib' parameters to your repository lists.

There is no need to wildly speculate about the motivations of the Debian team -- eg 'send a signal people should buy certain devices' -- when their motivation is explicitly stated.

The DFSG dictates non-free software will not part of the standard distribution. But they've made it easy to pull those files in (as above) via a one word addition to one line of your sources.list file.

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

#636

Post by ClumsyPilot » Tue, May 05, 2020, 5:43 AM UTC

gfxgirl wrote: post #550

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you alluding to possibility of an update containing malicious code? Is that because the update's authenticiry is in question or is that because of original developer went rogue? Leaving the system unupdated is insecure. I do not see how auto-updates make it insecure, but themselves.

I depends on what we're updating. ATM I suppose I generally trust a core OS feature's devs to be trustworthy. On the other hand I don't trust random app that was trustworthy to stay trustworthy. Maybe they decided to add an analytics library or maybe it's a game and the decided to add an anti-cheat kit, both of which are essentially root kits spying on me. Maybe one of the libraries they use decided it would be good…

We are in complete agreement - the current station is untenable. However, what can you do about it as an end-user?

By the time you are deciding whether to update candy crush or whatever application, you can't actually check all of it's dependencies. You can postpone updates, or only update manually, but what difference does it make?

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

#637

Post by d_tr » Tue, May 05, 2020, 10:28 AM UTC

Jedd wrote: post #564

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…

I also use KDE Plasma, but even the experimental Debian repository does not yet have 5.18. Otherwise, I would just use Sid.

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

#638

Post by Agitatra » Tue, May 05, 2020, 12:05 PM UTC

Actually, I'm startled by the religious believe that nothing can go wrong with "snap"! What is so new to snap that it is so reliable, in contrast to Debian-packages? Currently I'm trying to update my 18.04 to 20.04 but get stuck, because the Python3-Version shipped lately seem to have issues. So, the upgrade process abruptly stops, leaving the system in a half-baked state. While I do not complain, Ubuntu is free, I'm terrified by the thought such an upgrade could be initiated, without me monitoring it, and having the chance to try it on a non-productive system first. Currently I can live with the snap-approach, because I don’t have to use it at the time being, but if this is the way Canonical will proceed, I probably will have to vote with my feet too. Mark (not Shuttleworth :)

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

#639

Post by Jedd » Tue, May 05, 2020, 12:46 PM UTC

d_tr wrote: post #637

Jedd wrote: post #564

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…

I also use KDE Plasma, but even the experimental Debian repository does not yet have 5.18. Otherwise, I would just use Sid.

Look, I'm a huge advocate of KDE, but objectively I'm struggling to see what's ground-breaking and desperately urgent in 5.18.

Ubuntu (or rather Kubuntu's) schedule [1] unsurprisingly isn't faster than the mothership's.

I guess there's been a lot going on in the world since February, so people haven't been 100% focused on getting free software packaged up into a free distribution as fast as normal.

[1] https://community.kde.org/Get_KDE_Software_on_Your_Linux_Dis...

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

#640

Post by radlad » Wed, May 06, 2020, 12:32 AM UTC

kikoreis wrote: post #611

canonicalwhistl wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but as a fellow Canonical employee, speaking from a throwaway obviously, it's evident to me that you're simply not telling the truth here. You know just as well as I do that if you criticize Snap within the company, you get fired. Especially if Mark overhears you. There is no room for criticism. You either drink the koolaid or you shutup. So, no, sorry, we're going to keep pumping out Snap and those who don't…

OK, I've had breakfast. First, has anybody actually been fired for criticizing snaps? Your comment seems to imply through hyperbole that we don't debate inside Canonical, but in my experience that simply isn't true. In fact, I've seen a lot more intense IC to CEO debate in Canonical than anywhere else I've worked. It's not always super constructive debate, but I don't know how much better it is in any relatively smal…

I want to just say I appreciate your level-headed response to the anonymous poster.

Separately... "In fact, I've seen a lot more intense IC to CEO debate in Canonical than anywhere else I've worked."

As an outsider, this makes me wonder if the CEO is too involved in day-to-day operations. (And overriding the work of those with more expertise than himself.)