Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap • Hacker News Board

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#141

Post by dathinab » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:47 PM UTC

fxtentacle wrote: post #17

The main reason why I use Linux for some of my work is reproducibility. A docker image with the same apt packages installed in it will work the same every time. Snap breaks this. A snap package can update itself whenever it wants and then you the user are just screwed when things don't work together anymore. So in effect, snap breaks the main benefit of Linux for deployment and the reason why I use Linux in the first…

Honestly for everything but desktop non dev usage linux containers (e.g. docker) do all the thinks you need and potentially better.

Dev Ides and similar are done just fine by normal package managers as they tend to find enough voluntary work and dev tend to not like thinks like auto updates and similar for them as long as they do get updated.

Only for 3rd party non developer tools does it make sense like office tooling, music apps and similar. Ironically not necessarily for many games.

But for this we have alternatives, like flatpack which seems to be less prone to business bias due to being fully open source with a clear statement against any form of vendor lock-in. Its endorsed by Read Hat, adopted by Clear Linux and the last time I looked at it I remember that I preferred the way they did it over snaps. Also it's not a "Ubuntu thing" but a "for all distributions Linux thing" and seems to be slowly become the standard for "packed/distro decoupled" apps...

Also just to become clear I could imagine that at some point Flathub will have some commercialization, but even if it does so and fails it wouldn't kill flatpack (while the Ubuntu app store not being much trustable kinda partially killed snap for desktop users).

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#142

Post by Sevaris » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:47 PM UTC

nsajko wrote: post #135

Sevaris wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Why in the fuck is dialog an optional dependency? Not all people who use netctl want wifi-menu. > it isn't mentioned anywhere in the documentation It sure is. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide -> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Network_configuration -> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Netctl And there on the top of the netctl page it lists in a table dialog as a dependency of wifi-men…

Please tell me you're fucking joking. You can't be serious. This ties into one of my other comments about how god awful the documentation is for beginners (or even intermediates) after scrapping the beginner's guide.

> Maybe, but not all people have the same opinions...

Yes. And that's fucking fine. Arch Linux isn't opinionated. Which is great, but not what I (or others) might be looking for in a distro.

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#143

Post by hvis » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:48 PM UTC

theflyinghorse wrote: post #114

somewhereoutth wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've switched from Ubuntu to Mint a few years back at home, at work I have to use Ubuntu. Functionally, the two are identical for my use case. I love Mint, it just works and there are no surprises as far as I can tell.

Do they do release upgrades yet?

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#144

Post by _emacsomancer_ » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:48 PM UTC

simosx wrote: post #128

_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.

So? systemd isn't the only daemon-manager.

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#145

Post by simosx » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:49 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #93

Snaps are a poor solution for the problem apt already solved years ago.

"apt" packages are handmade. And they depend on hand-made dependencies. It becomes increasingly difficult to maintain packages like chromium, because they have too many dependencies, that have to be packaged individually.

The "universe" repository has tens of thousands of packages. Do you know that a majority of them are not maintained because it is too much effort and not many helping hands?

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#146

Post by ckcheng » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:49 PM UTC

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #82

mrighele wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...)

Debian testing is basically my distro of choice: if sid is the rolling release, and stable is the LTS version, testing is roughly equivalent to non-LTS Ubuntu: the packages have been tested so you don’t usually get breakage, but they aren’t stale.

The packages are somewhat tested, but "you are participating in the development of Debian when you are tracking testing or unstable" [1]. My feeling is Debian testing is a little less stable than non-LTS Ubuntu.

See, I'd like to use LXDE, and right now I use Lubuntu. I'm interested in switching to Debian, but then I read someone say Debian testing is "more stable than the name would suggest, as long as you follow a few reasonable best-practices" [2]. Then I look at these best practices [3] and I'm like, I don't really have time for all that...

But maybe that person is just overly cautious. So I look at Debian's page [1] for best practices and it wants me to use btrfs or LVM snapshots in case an update puts the system into an unrecoverable position. I... don't think I have time for that.

Maybe I can use Debian stable and just get software not available in Debian stable via... snap [4]. Ok, they also list Flatpak and docker, but this is getting frustrating... Is that really the best way to go about this? Because other than snap auto-updating on my machines behind my back, Lubuntu's been working great up to now.

So basically, is there a Ubuntu / Lubuntu that just doesn't have snap auto-updates? If anyone knows, I'd really appreciate it!

[1]: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUnstable#What_are_some_best_pr... [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23038222 [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23044878 [4]: https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian#Snap

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#147

Post by takluyver » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:50 PM UTC

progval wrote: post #60

bad_user wrote: post #39

While I understand the concerns over Snap, you can't blame Canonical for trying, because lets be honest, rpm/deb packages are a mess. I see in the comments a complaint that you don't want the developers upgrading their apps whenever they want ... really? Because that's my number one complaint for debs/rpms too. You can't install specific versions, you can't install multiple versions side by side and installing a newe…

> You trusted the app developers as soon as you installed that app on your computer with full privileges. No, I don't. First, most apps' code won't run as root. Only install scripts, written my distribution's maintainers, run as root (except for core applications, of course). And secondly, I trust app developers to write their app properly (to a certain extent), but not to write install scripts that won't mess with m…

On a personal computer, you are giving a whole lot of trust to anything you run un-sandboxed as your normal user - it will likely have access to your most interesting files, browser cookies, maybe saved passwords. XKCD covered it years back: https://xkcd.com/1200/

This brings up another drawback of deb/rpm packaging, though: you need root access to install anything. I'm not sure about Snap, but Flatpaks can be installed and used by an individual user.

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#148

Post by hvis » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:52 PM UTC

Darmody wrote: post #9

I can understand Canonical pushing for snaps. It's their product and they want it to succeed. That said I hate their dirty ways. I find it even morally wrong. How can "sudo apt install chromium-browser" not install the apt package but install instead a snap? How I, as a user and also as a professional, trust Ubuntu if when I use their package manager I'm being tricked? I don't use Windows for a reason, more than one…

> How can "sudo apt install chromium-browser" not install the apt package but install instead a snap?

Simple: they decided that maintaining the chromium .deb takes too much effort, and that snap is making that easier. So they moved it to Snap.

But there are many users out there with existing installations who have selected chromium as one of their installed packages. And so as not to keep said users without updates, they decided to migrate them over the best way they found.

I'm not completely sold on the snap ecosystem because of some technical issues, as well as the issues of fully automatic updates. But this particular question has been given a lot more air than it deserves.

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#149

Post by dathinab » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:52 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?

Not sure if they could, but:

Then they would need to review all Ubuntu packages for snap injection and overlay them. Sure that might be doable automatically but is a bit brittle.

It also means the user wouldn't learn what is going on.

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#150

Post by simosx » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 10:55 PM UTC

kemayo wrote: post #16

Skunkleton wrote: post #7

I personally don't packaging apps in a sandbox, its a violation of the basic idea of writing tools that do one thing well. Still, snap gets lots of flack, but I don't see the same for flatpak. Is there some advantage to flatpak that I am missing, or is it just than Ubuntu has pushed snaps too hard?

It sounds like the objection isn't technical -- sandboxed apps are perfectly fine -- but rather to how Canonical is trying to change package behavior alongside the transition. Specifically, they're forcing you to use them for some packages behind the scenes, and restricting what you can do with those packages as a result: > "In the Ubuntu 20.04 package base, the Chromium package is indeed empty and acting, without yo…

The Mint maintainer went out of his way to react in bad faith.

The chromium transition was announced in October 2019, https://snapcraft.io/blog/chromium-in-ubuntu-deb-to-snap-tra...

Ubuntu was not able to maintain chromium as a deb package, and chromium is not the default browser in Ubuntu. Therefore, it has been packaged as a snap package. Since there is no longer an apt package, what should happen when you "sudo apt install chromium-browser"? The usable decision was to install the snap package of Chromium instead, https://snapcraft.io/blog/chromium-in-ubuntu-deb-to-snap-tra...

The snap package of Chromium has been in testing for two years already. The snap package page is https://snapcraft.io/chromium You can view the installation log, with the list of operating systems that have installed it.