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Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

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Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#151

Post by nsajko »

Sevaris wrote: post #131
nsajko wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that installation requires more learning than other distros, but once you get past that I don't understand the problem. I think Arch "just works", too, and I don't see how Manjaro could be better in that regard considering it is closely related to Arch. BTW, you do know you don't ever need to reinstall Arch (on a single machine)? EDIT: > I'm tired of all the tinkering. I'm tired of the additional cognitive lo…

> BTW, you do know you don't ever need to reinstall Arch (on a single machine)? People say this, but I've found plenty of reason to reinstall Arch (none of it necessarily having to do with Arch, and more trying different distros out of curiosity and Arch remaining my main distro). I always have these discussions with Arch veterans who seem so incredulous about my frustrations with Arch. And I sort of chalk it down to…

> scrapping of the excellent beginner's guide

I gather that you simply want something more opinionated than Arch, and that is OK, even the BSDs have a more opinionated install procedure than Arch.

But FTR scrapping the "Beginner's guide" was done for really good reasons: it duplicated the content of other Wiki articles, which is a maintainability nightmare, and was too opinionated for Arch. All the content should still be accessible by wiki links to other Arch wiki articles.

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#152

Post by simosx »

takluyver wrote: post #147
progval wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 instal…

If you first run

      snap login
then you can install snaps without "sudo". I suppose it is the same process with flatpaks.

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#153

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

ckcheng wrote: post #146
fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

I’ve run Debian testing for like 10 years now, and I’ve never been hesitant to apt-get dist-upgrade.

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#154

Post by simosx »

hvis wrote: post #148
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,…

The announcement from 2019 is https://snapcraft.io/blog/chromium-in-ubuntu-deb-to-snap-tra...

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#155

Post by takluyver »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #117

It's interesting how many distros built on top of Ubuntu are explicitly dropping snaps or throwing their support behind flatpaks: - Linux Mint - ElementaryOS - Pop!_OS Take a hint, Canonical. You guys made some great strides towards being less silo'd by dropping Unity and Mir in favor of vanilla GNOME + Wayland, but you're still all-in on snaps for some reason. Are the handful of proprietary software companies that w…

It's quite a gamble, but if desktop Linux got more popular and Snap was the default way to get applications for it, I'd imagine that running the app store would be a pretty good revenue stream.

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#156

Post by morsch »

Andys wrote: post #98
simosx wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can control when to update, https://snapcraft.io/docs/keeping-snaps-up-to-date

Would someone be able to tell me how to plain old turn it off? I still can't tell even after reading the docs

You can turn it off by replacing your operating system with another Linux distribution. As of 20.04 you also still have the option of removing Snap outright[1], as long as you don't need the software that is only provided via snap.

Although apparently they are considering[2] adding the option to disable auto-updates.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22972661 [2] https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/re-visiting-update-control-on-t...

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#157

Post by dathinab »

Sevaris wrote: post #116
dathinab wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what he/she means is that core maintainers (or AUR maintainers) might be able to change a package without another core maintainer (or AUR maintainer) reviewing it.

Afaik, upstream packages aren't changed by Arch maintainers. It's the whole point of using Arch. And if you're using AUR, you'd better be checking the PKGBUILD (because no, it isn't verified by anybody). At the very least, you need to be checking where the package is being downloaded from.

The PKGBUILD of packages in the official repository can be changed, which people theoretically could use to inject malware. That's what I meant.

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#158

Post by simosx »

lame-robot-hoax wrote: post #75
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.

snapd does much more.

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#159

Post by jlarocco »

jimhefferon wrote: post #15
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…

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

I believe you, but I've better luck with other Debian.

Until I started using FreeBSD on my desktop a few months ago, I had run Debian on most of my personal machines for ~15 years, and often on work machines. For the most part, I was able to track the testing repo and "apt-get dist-upgrade" once a month, and not really worry about anything. Very few breaking changes, and when there were, it was usually related to proprietary drivers (thank you NVIDIA).

IME with Ubuntu on work computers, staying up to date is a much bigger hassle. Besides some of the out of the box settings being brain dead (IMO, of course), upgrading between releases is a pretty big deal with major changes and a lot of breakage.

I don't use Gnome or KDE (on either OS), so that probably helps, but I still always plan for Ubuntu upgrades to break stuff on me.

With Debian, I configure it how I want, and then it just stays out of the way. With Ubuntu, I feel like Canonical is always trying to change my mind and push things on me.

Re: Linux Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap

#160

Post by takluyver »

simosx wrote: post #152
takluyver wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 instal…

If you first run snap login then you can install snaps without "sudo". I suppose it is the same process with flatpaks.

Good to know. Flatpak doesn't have a separate step, but there's a --user option for the install command.
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