Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap • Hacker News Board

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#121

Post by ronsor » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:30 PM UTC

littlestymaar wrote: post #105

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…

> Apple's where they care about usability over configurability. I don't know the Apple ecosystem, but adding a 3-second-delay to every opened app because of a questionable sandbox whose security benefits are hypothetical doesn't sounds like “caring about usability” at all… Appimage is a better solution than snap overall, and it solves your issue with having yo go through canonical, but the whole point of snap is forc…

>adding 3-second delay to every opened app

But that's exactly like the Apple ecosystem![0]

[0] https://sigpipe.macromates.com/2020/macos-catalina-slow-by-d...

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#122

Post by SweetestRug » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:31 PM UTC

techntoke wrote: post #6

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…

Definitely try an Arch-based distro. I run Arch myself, but I've heard good things about Manjaro.

Manjaro is simply fantastic. I switched when upgrading Ubuntu failed again. Hardware detection is great, defaults are sane, and pacman is a great package manager. The AUR is also amazing.

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#123

Post by simosx » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:31 PM UTC

pkaye wrote: post #24

> Mint never shipped snapd, Snap's daemon program or any snaps, but moving ahead, in Linux Mint 20, "Chromium won't be an empty package which installs snapd behind your back. It will be an empty package, which tells you why it's empty and tells you where to look to get Chromium yourself." Further, APT will forbid snapd from installing. Can't they just replace the Chromimum package with the one in Debian?

The Chromium situation has been explained already in 2019, https://snapcraft.io/blog/chromium-in-ubuntu-deb-to-snap-tra...

There is no deb package in Ubuntu, so the system is setup to transparently install the snap package.

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#124

Post by phatfish » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:33 PM UTC

SirYandi wrote: post #71

simosx wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

With windows update the trick since MS enforced a similar update policy is to change the user the Windows Update service runs under to an account that doest have the required permissions.

Not sure if that would work with Ubuntu though ;)

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#125

Post by amelius » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:34 PM UTC

somewhereoutth wrote: post #68

jimhefferon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What distro? I use Ubuntu because I just want an OS, not a hobby.

Mint. It's Ubuntu without the nonsense. I switched when the Unity thing happened, and haven't looked back. This news about snaps reaffirms my confidence in Mint.

Does Mint allow to safely roll-back package manager operations (i.e. without ever failing)?

If not, what other distro allows this (other than Nix)?

This is the main feature I'm looking for.

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#126

Post by Sevaris » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:35 PM UTC

pkulak wrote: post #87

Sevaris wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh, no. Manjaro is the no-nonsense "I really don't want to waste time troubleshooting my own shit" version of Arch Linux. I stopped using Arch when I found Manjaro and I'm so glad I did. Arch just requires way too much fiddling for it to ever feel "complete" and or finished.

The cost of Arch over anything else is 100% in the installation. After that, it IS Manjaro except you are using the real thing, not a derivative. I've had to trouble shoot Arch far less than any other distro I've ever used.

My main problem with Arch is that there's rarely a point where I feel like I've finished installing. There's always something missing or something not configured right. Shit, dialog still isn't a default package in 2020, which you need to use wifi-menu during the install process. So if you happen to forget to install that (and it isn't mentioned anywhere in the documentation), you're going to have to reboot into the live media, chroot into your install, install dialog, then reboot again.

https://www.archlinux.org/packages/core/any/netctl/

Why in the fuck is dialog an optional dependency?

Which sort of ties into my next problem which is that Arch simply isn't opinionated enough. Which is fine for people who want that kind of experience, but if you used Ubuntu before and you want a similar "install and go" experience, Arch really isn't the right answer. It is if your goal is to tinker with Arch, but that isn't what everybody wants.

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#127

Post by b5n » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:36 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...)

Check out testing:

  sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
  sed -i 's/buster/testing/g' /etc/apt/sources.list
  sudo apt dist-upgrade

Getting security updates from unstable (not required):

1. Pin unstable lower than testing.

2. Configure apt/debsecan as outlined here: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=725934

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#128

Post by simosx » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:36 PM UTC

_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #66

My number one complaint about Snaps is that they're not portable (despite being labelled "universal packages for Linux"): they start to work less well outside of Ubuntu, and they don't work at all unless you're running systemd. I find this slightly ridiculous given that Flatpaks really do work more universally - they don't require systemd - and they come out of Red Hat - the home of systemd.

snapd is a service, therefore it requires an init system.

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#129

Post by michaelmrose » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:36 PM UTC

simosx wrote: post #104

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…

You may distribute those .snap packages directly to the users. Granted, you need to pay for your own separate Snap Store, unless someone makes the effort to create a third-party implementation.

My understanding is that you want to distribute via your own store you need to develop your own distro, reverse engineer their backend, develop your own backend. Develop your own forked client that actually searches in more than one store and then you can distribute to only those people running at minimum your forked client.

Basically if you have multiple millions of dollars you would be able to distribute your software to probably nobody.

Compare this to making a repo for any platform that allows multiple repos where this is fantastically trivial.

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#130

Post by amelius » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:37 PM UTC

dima55 wrote: post #25

jimhefferon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What distro? I use Ubuntu because I just want an OS, not a hobby.

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

NVidia's CUDA only supports Fedora, OpenSUSE, RHEL, CentOS, SLES and Ubuntu, see [1].

So I suppose that rules out Debian (?)

[1] https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-downloads?target_os=Linux&...