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Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

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Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#261

Post by jrockway »

eberkund wrote: post #54
jrockway wrote: post #6

I've been kind of disappointed by Snap. It seemed like it was a way to always have the latest version of software you care about available, but in practice, nobody updates their Snaps. I used it to get a newer version of Go, and while it is more recent than what comes with Ubuntu, it's still not the latest version. Apparently Some Guy updates it on a volunteer basis when he remembers, so it's nearly useless. Even if…

The Go snap looks up to date to me? https://snapcraft.io/go

Sure, but there hasn't been a release recently. It's generally inconsistent, so I stopped looking a year ago.

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#262

Post by dilandau »

kd913 wrote: post #206
the_af wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like Linux Mint is doing the same? There is no control being lost by using Ubuntu versus Mint. If I understood the issue correctly (and I may very well be mistaken!) the problem Mint has with Canonical is that Ubuntu has "hijacked" (for lack of a better term) some apt packages so that they now actually install snapd and the snap. So you think you're opting out of snap, but when you use apt to install Chromium you e…

There is no apt package with Chromium. https://ubuntu.com/blog/chromium-in-ubuntu-deb-to-snap-trans... Canonical couldn't afford the maintenance costs for it. On Ubuntu distributions it's either the snap or you have to create some weird frankendeb aspect by pulling from Debian. They explained it better than I would. In other cases, I don't think of a case where apt installs snaps over apt. I think the only priority f…

And yet they have all the time in the world to spend on an invasive daemon that pulls updates OTA without user consent. Plus all the other bullshit they've tried (Mir, unity, juju or whatever it's called). Thankfully Debian is still true to the game.

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#263

Post by clktmr »

emerongi wrote: post #220

Snaps are super laggy. GNOME calculator on Ubuntu runs in a snap and it is baffling that whoever made the decision to package it in a snap by default was OK with the fact that it takes 2 seconds to launch a basic calculator on a 2017 laptop (edit: re-tested, it took 5 seconds). To top it off, a couple months ago my calculator disappeared. For some reason I have been having problems with snap applications disappearing…

This is exactly my experience. On top of that snap creates visible directories in $HOME, f-up my loop devices and snap applications can't even access /tmp. Never had any problems with flatpak and appimage. I will however use it solely for proprietary software.

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#264

Post by drewg123 »

superkuh wrote: post #32
solarkraft wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main (and better supported) competitor is Flatpak, which at least doesn't have the terrible marketing.

All containerization is just the fever to the sickness that is the futureshock from extremely fast rate of development of major libs like c++$year, glibc (no matter what they say about having stable endpoints), and the like. You can't run a program written today on the system repo libraries from 5 years ago. Containers try to mitigate this problem but like a fever they often end up making things worse.

Wouldn't it just be simpler to statically link apps then?

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#265

Post by NicolaiS »

IshKebab wrote: post #114
curt15 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You can’t audit them, hold them, modify them or even point snap to a different store. In particular, it's easy to inspect the sources for apt packages using "apt-get source". Snap seems to have no equivalent command.

Sure because Snap is designed to be able to distribute closed source applications. Part of the reason Snap and Flatpak exist is that distributing binaries on Linux is an enormous pain.

> distributing binaries on Linux is an enormous pain.

It doesn't have to. Packaging using FPM [0] allows many targets (deb, rpm, etc) and using ELF2deb [1] (shameless plug) allows packaging any files to a .deb with no effort.

[0] https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm

[1] https://github.com/NicolaiSoeborg/ELF2deb

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#266

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

emerongi wrote: post #243
CSDude wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's because they extract compressed rootfs tar each time to be mounted in LXC container. Even with a beefy computer, it takes considerable time.

What is weird to me is that apparently there has not been someone in a position of power in this project that would go "Wait guys, this is not good. Any other ideas? How can we improve?" No, just roll on with it. There was a period of time, around 2010-2015 when I really felt that computers were fast. SSDs were getting more affordable and that was a huge improvement, every action was immediately responsive. In 2020,…

In that period, computers made a significant leap forward, and it took developers some time to catch up and fully utilize surplus performance.

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#267

Post by robotbikes »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #228
m4rtink wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Appimage has its own issues though: - no update mechanism - no sandboxing and only basic app isolation - no deduplication (Flatpak automatically deduplicates everything it installs on a machine)

AppImages do have an update mechanism: https://docs.appimage.org/packaging-guide/optional/updates.h...

AppImage seems like the best replacement then. I've loathed Snap since it first appeared on my horizon and I installed LibreOffice with it and that snap image showed up in my mounted drives forever. I was a big fan of Canonical/Ubuntu for years and switching to Debian has not been without pain points but at least I have more control of my computer. Pop! OS and Linux Mint seem like good Linux desktop alternatives to Ubuntu at this point if you don't want to use Debian.

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#268

Post by rlpb »

Avamander wrote: post #240
rlpb wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Canonical's decision to abuse the power of apt packages to make it some "universal installer" is kinda gross. This is a mischaracterization. "chromium-browser" is a transitional package that installs the chromium snap for one reason: it is to provide an upgrade path for users of Chromium in previous Ubuntu releases to the latest Ubuntu release without breaking Chromium. I use an example of where Debian does the sam…

> it is to provide an upgrade path for users of Chromium in previous Ubuntu releases to the latest Ubuntu release without breaking Chromium. Are you seriously, unironically claiming this? You broke a massive amount of native plugins. The snap auto-update mechanism fucks up Chromium's data each time because Chromium gets no warning that it suddenly can't write to the disk. Its launch time is also way worse. On top of…

> Are you seriously, unironically claiming this?

Yes - because when I say "without breaking Chromium", I mean that Chromium wouldn't work at all because it wouldn't be installed following an upgrade, as opposed to some things you don't like about how the Chromium snap works but don't apply to the majority of Chromium users.

Edit: you seem to be conflating your disagreement on Ubuntu's choice to move to shipping Chromium as a snap with a technical detail on how the upgrade path for users was achieved. I understand you disagree with the former. The claim that this is about "make it some "universal installer"" is entirely false, and I'm simply pointing out why. Downmodding me for disagreeing with the former is doubly inappropriate here.

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#269

Post by bananamerica »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #186
kemayo wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it a bad look for Canonical, a major open source company, to not have developed core software for their major open source product in an open source friendly manner?

Why should they do everything open source? To keep happy a few bored FOSS maximalists, who have neither real interest, nor use for the code? We develop open source applications ourselves, and the amount of jerks who drop in from time to time and teach us how to do what (without contributing any code or donations, of course) is overwhelming. They don't care how you pay your bills and how much effort it takes to make t…

IDK where you work but isn’t it possible that many FOSS has significantly less resources than Canonical?

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#270

Post by mixmastamyk »

Symbiote wrote: post #244
rootbear wrote: post #163

I dislike how snap clutters up my df listings. I have to pipe them through grep to get rid of the noise: df -h | grep -v /snap An option to ls to suppress all loopback mounts might be a nice option.

alias df='df --exclude-type=tmpfs --exclude-type=devtmpfs --exclude-type=squashfs'

    sudo apt autoremove --purge snapd  # ;-)
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