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Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

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Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#421

Post by lokedhs »

personalcompute wrote: post #339
_y5hn wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snap can't seem to access my mounts. They're not very special mounts, but it happens in linux that you mount something, but snap just won't access. That made "no-go" a no-brainer.

I have the same problem. Snaps are confined to only files within $HOME. I keep almost all data under /media/ and this caused snaps to be mostly unusable for me, at least unusable for productivity apps where I need to process data. Some apps though are self contained, e.g. Spotify, for example, works fine for me as a snap. The limitation stems from a design problem, details at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source…

There is also a problem where snapd fails if your home directory isn't called /home/username (i.e. if it's located in a different path).

At this point snap sounds like a bad joke to me. Especially when Flatpak already exists.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snapd/+bug/1662552

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#422

Post by someperson »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #362
philliphaydon wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just went to chrome.Google.com and downloaded it and installed it. shrug

Google is even less trustworthy than Canonical. I only use chromium for a few tests in incognito mode. Firefox FTW.

You say Google is less trustworthy than Canonical, but you're using Chromium from a PPA. That's a personal packaging archive with far less auditing/eyeballs than either Canonical or Google.

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#423

Post by aritmo »

thekyle wrote: post #227
pjfin123 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is offering to build an alternate store for snaps, Flatpak is building an entirely different executable.

I believe that the Canonical Snap server is hardcoded into snapd, so even if someone did implement their own you would need to recompile snapd to even use it.

Of course it is and of course you would need to recompile snapd. These are standard practices in software engineering.

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#424

Post by user5994461 »

blendergeek wrote: post #21
kd913 wrote: post #12

The reason for why the backend for the snap store hasn't been opensourced has been explained multiple times. Namely that it would be expensive to open source it with little benefit in return. Canonical already spent a large amount of investment opensourcing launchpad and nobody other than them operate it. Mainly because the majority of the costs are for operating an instance which most other distros aren't willing to…

> Namely that it would be expensive to open source it with little benefit in return. Would you describe exactly what will be expensive in releasing the source code to software that was developed in house? Does it have lots of dependencies on proprietary software? If so, why? > Namely they want one location to find software, and one location to serve software. And this, is the killer. This is exactly what the people a…

I wrote a post on that, what prevents companies from open sourcing their codebase https://thehftguy.com/2020/07/07/what-prevents-companies-fro...

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#425

Post by franga2000 »

nix23 wrote: post #417
nightowl_games wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im here to push you towards Mint. mint is cleaner ubuntu. the wifi drivers work. the UI is really good. it just works.

Im here to push you away from secondhand distros use: ArchLinux NOT Manjaro Debian NOT Ubuntu etc And so on, the 'originals' work always better in the long run.

> the 'originals' work always better in the long run

Except that normal people can actually install Manjaro and it doesn't make you use AUR for pretty basic things. Except that Ubuntu actually doesn't shit itself almost every time you add a 3rd party package/repo and comes with reasonable defaults. Also, have you used Pop OS?

Your statement is quite simply untrue.

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#426

Post by pjmlp »

ric2b wrote: post #273
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I rarely think about updating my software unless there's a new feature I need or a fix for a bug that's been ruining my life, so just visiting the website when to check for new versions is fine by me. However, you could also include a facility to manually check for updates and either self-update or just show the changelog. Why manually? "I know you're about to do this thing real quick that needs to get do…

> Why manually? "I know you're about to do this thing real quick that needs to get done, but a new version is available! Would you like to twiddle your thumbs for 5 minutes while watching a progress bar?". That's a very Windows-centric point of view. Programs on Linux can be updated without closing them. You get the new version when you restart them.

It only works if they are self contained without access additional resources on the file system, as the executable file is kept alive until process termination.

Now if the process tries to access some datafiles that changed contents during the upgrade, it might just crash and burn, eventually corrupting data in the process.

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#427

Post by solarkraft »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #43
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.

Depending on the qualities your after, AppImage is also really great. Advantages over Flatpak are that they are completely portable (you can store them anywhere and run them from anywhere), and they don't require a special runtime or package management infrastructure of any kind.

AppImages are basically (kind of) statically linked binaries.

Not my favorite to install software since they're usually huge (500mb is not far out of the norm), but great for things that are hard to install, as they're pretty much guaranteed to work.

I just wish there was a command line switch to stop it from wanting to install itself on my system (move the AppImage to /opt).

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#428

Post by afiori »

freetime2 wrote: post #373
coronadisaster wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why the down vote? I don't even use *buntu... Not that I like snaps, but it just got a lot slower lately

I have no issues with your original comment. But in regards to your "why the down vote?" question, HN's guidelines state: > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

I somewhat disagree with this interpretation, I see more as using the votes as part of the argument "considering the downvotes you are wrong" and similar. In this case he got the signal that many people disagree with his message but cannot understand why.

It is one thing when you make a controversial statement and then decide to attack downvoters, it is a different thing if you are trying to understand how and why people disagreed with you.

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#429

Post by pjmlp »

kelnos wrote: post #127
pjfin123 wrote: post #84

If desktop Linux is ever going to be mainstream there needs to be an easy to use "app store" where users can use a GUI to install apps which need to be sandboxed like on a mobile phone with defined permissions. Snapcraft is way ahead of Flatpak on this and the current Ubuntu setup works well. On Ubuntu you can go to the Ubuntu software app (gui) search for software and it blends apt results with snap results. This re…

> If desktop Linux is ever going to be mainstream there needs to be an easy to use "app store" where users can use a GUI to install apps which need to be sandboxed like on a mobile phone with defined permissions. Curious... do you think that the world has moved on from the "download from website and run installer" model? Obviously that has serious drawbacks from a security perspective, but up until less than a decade…

> For the most part, the only people who really care about "the year of the Linux desktop" are people trying to build a business around desktop Linux.

I used to care, nowadays I just focus on Apple, Google and Microsoft platforms instead, and leave Linux for cloud VMs.

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#430

Post by simion314 »

tdsamardzhiev wrote: post #410
simion314 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are making my point, the "trust" is not the issue , the issue is "control". Canonical has the control on the snap store and Mint can insert their customization on top. Again, if Canonical is evil and can't be trusted why I would run Mint? Do the developers run any scripts to alert me if Canonical slips some bad thing in a binary? I think is fine if they remove snaps but IMO is stupid to accuse Canonical to be evi…

> Again, if Canonical is evil and can't be trusted why I would run Mint? Rational self-interest. I don't think the tech giants are good for society, but not working with them would mean slipping into irrelevance. Say, I'm a game developer. Do I trust Microsoft? No. Do I sacrifice 90% of my profit to boycott Windows? No. There are different degrees of "evilness", and the scale does matter, too.

But you can keep compatibility with Ubuntu if you want by using the same code but keeping control,

Honestly tell me if this does not sound idiotic "Microsoft is evil and we don't trust them, please run our own Windows copy that is the exact same thing but with different colors, MS can push an update and delete all your files because this is not a supported configuration and we have no scripts to check for it but we are not competent enough to setup our own repos and scripts like other distress"

I understand why Mint does what it does, the only idiotic part is complaining about trust in Canonical.

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