Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap • Hacker News Board

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#71

Post by SirYandi » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:02 PM UTC

simosx wrote: post #50

ccmcarey wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dumped snapd because of the maintainers absolutely refusing to allow the users to customize the update schedule, or even disable automatic updates at all. Reading the thread with the discussion on it, seems there was real contempt towards letting the user decide not to update their packages.

https://snapcraft.io/docs/keeping-snaps-up-to-date

I didn't see anything about completely disabling automatic updates there. Closest I could find was:

"After a refresh, the next refresh can be delayed by up to 60 days, after which a refresh will be performed regardless of the refresh.hold value."

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#72

Post by somewhereoutth » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:03 PM UTC

henriquez wrote: post #3

I dumped Ubuntu over Snap. Maybe I’m just ignorant but it seems like allowing developers to push software updates without any review invites the same sorts of issues we’ve seen on npm, with very high risks for certain use cases. I don’t want that kind of relationship with my OS, forced updates are why I ditched Windows in the first place. Aside from the philosophical concerns I ran into a lot of glitches with various…

Mint!

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#73

Post by badRNG » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:03 PM UTC

JaggedJax wrote: post #35

quasarj wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not OP, but I tried Pop!_OS recently, and was quite pleased. It's basically just Ubuntu without the bad parts.

The latest POP!_OS release integrated Flatpak instead of Snap into their package manager. It's very well done in that you can choose if you want the deb or the flatpak version and it defaults to the deb as long as one is available.

The latest release also integrated an excellent window tiling manager into gnome, includes customizable gaps and everything.

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#74

Post by chipperyman573 » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:03 PM UTC

mrighele wrote: post #48

dima55 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just use Debian. Ubuntu is quite literally Debian+bullshit.

My issue with Debian that I don't want a rolling release, and Debian Stable feels more like "Debian Obsolete" to me (at least it was years ago, maybe now it is different...)

I have used Debian for a while (2-3 years) and do not have that feeling.

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#75

Post by lame-robot-hoax » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:03 PM UTC

eberkund wrote: post #58

This appears to be an unpopular opinion, but I like snaps and Canonical's philosophy in some ways mimics that of Apple's where they care about usability over configurability. Snaps have been my preferred method of installation for a few years now. I really like how I know where the files are being installed to and if I uninstall the software it will be removed cleanly. I also like how for most software snaps contain…

I like the idea of Snap, but Flatpak seems to be a much better implementation.

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#76

Post by zozbot234 » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:03 PM UTC

mrighele wrote: post #48

dima55 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just use Debian. Ubuntu is quite literally Debian+bullshit.

My issue with Debian that I don't want a rolling release, and Debian Stable feels more like "Debian Obsolete" to me (at least it was years ago, maybe now it is different...)

It's an LTS, upgrading every two years. No different than many other distros. If you want a more frequently-upgraded distro, consider OpenSuSE Leap (yearly upgrades) or Fedora (upgrades every 6 months).

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#77

Post by rrmm » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:05 PM UTC

bouncycastle wrote: post #69

From reading the other comments, people just don't like having security updates done automatically - they'd like to have more control when they are performed. Kind of like in Windows, where your computer suddenly shuts down to apply a service pack while you were in the middle of an important World of Warcraft raid that you were planning for weeks. There's always a trade-off between keeping your system secure and bein…

I've seen more than one twitch streamer going into a big stream, get screwed by this. Of course, they should've known. But we've all made that mistake during a demo or presentation at some point or another.

Worse yet, when you update ahead of time and drivers or other parts of update are incompatible. Stable configurations are important to a lot of people.

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#78

Post by tkuraku » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:05 PM UTC

I have found flatpaks to be much better (they are much faster to startup), except that flatpak doesn't have an unconfined or "classic" mode like snaps. THis is especially annoying if you wanted to install vscode to access the system compiler, python, etc.

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#79

Post by hak8or » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:05 PM UTC

voqv wrote: post #52

dathinab wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have linux experience Arch Linux can be a good idea. Sure the daunting setup process would fall into the "a hobby" category but once it runs it tends to just keep running as long as you update it from time to time. Using it now for ~5 Years and in that time I had two times problems one was that the new kernel version didn't work with my laptop and another which was fully my fault by doing some "special" boot s…

Before switching to Arch, check if packages you rely on for your job are not in the AUR. It became "a hobby" really quick for me to rebuild my entire dev stack because of the bleeding edge approach and "let's update every week and fix source code while we're at it".

Do you have any examples of such packages that were missing? I've been using arch for maybe five years at this point and am an embedded developer. I had maybe oneor two times that I had to install something that was not in the aur.

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#80

Post by simosx » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:06 PM UTC

commoner wrote: post #43

Many applications packaged under Snap are still unusable on Fedora and Arch because Snap has a bug that renders tofu characters (□□□) instead of text: https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/snapped-app-not-loading-fonts-o... I'm not sure whether Linux Mint is also affected by this issue, but it's clear that Canonical doesn't perform quality assurance for Snap on any Linux distribution other than Ubuntu.

The discussion pinpoints the issue in the fontconfig cache files. It is being worked on. The issue is not "snap packages only show tofu characters" but rather in some cases snap packages cannot access the system fonts, hence the squares.