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Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

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Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#511

Post by ttgo »

ddevault wrote: post #463
jonquark wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see why Snap is like it is from Canonial's perspective - but from the User perspective it seems like FlatPaks[1] are much better and address the issues that this article raises [1] https://flathub.org/home (Disclaimer: I'm talking in a personal capacity but the company I work for in my day job now owns Red Hat - I don't work on Linux Operating Systems).

Every attempt at "solving" this "problem", including Snap, Flatpak, and AppImage, are an absolutely awful regression in the state of Linux. I absolutely hate this trend. These tools solve problems for only two kinds of software: proprietary software, and software with suck reckless, runaway complexity that it can only run in one specific environment. I have no interest in either kind and I will give no quarter to "so…

flatkill.org is clickbait, not written in good faith, and doesn't propose any solution. Moreover things like "it's obvious Red Hat developers working on flatpak do not care about security" is just unnecessary and toxic.

Issues mentioned on flatkill are already fixed, will be fixed or doesn't depend on flatpak itself (like the UI / icon in the software app store).

I don't like Flatpak either but I think we should elevate the debate to deeper architectural issues of flatpak that won't be fixed easily. Personally, I do not like the following in Flatpak :

- no effort on full reproducibility like Nix&Guix

- a big fat flat runtime rather than traditional fine grained dependencies (although OStree avoids duplication, but still very elegant)

- you can't install extra pkg in the sandbox. So the quite overkill solution in RedHat's vision is to separate between Toolbox/Podman for devs vs Flatpak for users, rather than trying to make a single unified sandbox for everything. Of course everything breaks down when you try to code using a Flatpaked IDE, if you follow RedHat's vision you basically need to spawn a toolbox container from an unsandboxed flatpak instance of your IDE : https://github.com/flathub/com.visualstudio.code/issues/44

So personally, I'm still waiting for a packaging system that is :

- compatible with the idea of a declarative/immutable os (like nix, guix, silverblue)

- tries to make everything reproducible (like guix)

- sandboxed with runtime permission API (like Flatpak portals, IOS, Android)

- sandbox can be augmented with packages so that you can code in your sandboxed IDE + add necessary dev packages inside a same sandbox without having to break it

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#512

Post by mekster »

dcow wrote: post #379
foxylad wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a big user issue on top of the philosophical and maintenance issues - snaps are SLOOOOOOW. I've only experienced them with two applications, and both took forever to startup compared to the apt-get installed versions I quickly replaced them with. OK, "forever" is hyperbole - it was probably about 5 seconds. But it was enough of an annoyance for me to figure out how to install a deb packaged version. And ever…

Sending some encouragement your way: try Debian. I bet money you won't even notice it's not Ubuntu. Or you will, because your software will launch when you ask it to. I'm super happy with Debian lately. I know it used to be the old neck beard slow and steady distro, but honestly these days packages get updates rather timely and it doesn't feel like the Debian of 10 years ago. And you can always run Debian testing wit…

Does unattended-upgades also work on Debian to install security updates aromatically?

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#513

Post by mekster »

dcow wrote: post #379
foxylad wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a big user issue on top of the philosophical and maintenance issues - snaps are SLOOOOOOW. I've only experienced them with two applications, and both took forever to startup compared to the apt-get installed versions I quickly replaced them with. OK, "forever" is hyperbole - it was probably about 5 seconds. But it was enough of an annoyance for me to figure out how to install a deb packaged version. And ever…

Sending some encouragement your way: try Debian. I bet money you won't even notice it's not Ubuntu. Or you will, because your software will launch when you ask it to. I'm super happy with Debian lately. I know it used to be the old neck beard slow and steady distro, but honestly these days packages get updates rather timely and it doesn't feel like the Debian of 10 years ago. And you can always run Debian testing wit…

Lately I tried fedora and surprised they have many up to date packages including exa (ls alternative) and other new shiny rust tools. I've switched to using it for one of my personal server and quite happy.

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#514

Post by ttgo »

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…

Flatpak is not a walled garden. Flathub totally messed up the decentralised aspect of flatpak but in theory flatpak can be totally decentralised and you would add software source like you add .debs PPA

Flatpak doesn't impose closed-source, we have distros which only use open source flatpak repos.

Models like Flatpak have the advantage of "download from website & install" i.e you get the apps directly from the producer (which is better for security) while having no walled garden app store but having the advantage of auto updates & permission systems

I do not like Flatpak for technical reasons but Flatpak itself is in no way a walled garden solution, the problem is Flathub.

> I don't care one bit about Linux being a mainstream desktop distro

If you still want to be able to run Linux at all (not even on new hardware) on a consumer hardware, then you should care.

- Linux doesn't run (decently) on Microsoft latest surfaces - Linux won't run on new Apple hardware - Linux doesn't run on Android phones (with a few exceptions) - once Google switch to Fushia no more Linux kernel on mobile hardware - on the long term Huawei will ditch Android and other OS for their own thing.

Linux will die on consumer hardware (except on servers) if it does not become more popular. According to Apple's keynote the future of Linux is in its cage, in a VM running on walled garden MacOS. According to Microsoft the future of Linux is WSL, running on top Windows.

If you do not like walled garden then you should definitively care about Linux getting more mainstream before no comsumer hardwares support it anymore

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#515

Post by cyphar »

pabs3 wrote: post #406
pjmlp wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go also supports dynamic linking actually.

Unfortunately even micro releases of the Go compiler break ABI, so Go dynamic linking isn't feasible for distros to use: https://wiki.debian.org/StaticLinking#Go

There are two types of "static linking" being discussed:

  * Linking with system libraries (what GP mentioned).
  * Linking with Go packages (what you're talking about).
Yes, Go doesn't really support -buildmode=shared anymore (and it was pretty broken from the outset). But this is a separate question to whether a Go binary is actually a static object. In most cases (and by default), Go binaries are dynamically linked to system libraries (with Go packages being statically linked into the program).

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#516

Post by dcow »

streb-lo wrote: post #476
dcow wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sending some encouragement your way: try Debian. I bet money you won't even notice it's not Ubuntu. Or you will, because your software will launch when you ask it to. I'm super happy with Debian lately. I know it used to be the old neck beard slow and steady distro, but honestly these days packages get updates rather timely and it doesn't feel like the Debian of 10 years ago. And you can always run Debian testing wit…

Debian is nice if you don't mind the glacial pace of updates -i.e. you're running a server. After using Arch I don't think I can give up rolling releases.

That’s why people are recommending unstable (sid) which is Debian’s rolling updates channel.

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#517

Post by IshKebab »

NicolaiS wrote: post #265
IshKebab wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's not the difficult part. The hard part is compiling a program that doesn't depend on Glibc 2.X when your users only have 2.6 or use Musl or whatever.

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#518

Post by Avamander »

sergeykish wrote: post #507
Avamander wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be the default that my home folder isn't cluttered. I have tens and tens of pieces of software, it's very impractical to keep track what does what and if I have to get them to behave somehow. That export list required got me weary, plus look at how many in that list are hardcoded :/, the situation is rather bad.

You can patch it all. If world does not match your view it may be you who is outlier. I quite like current convention - hidden files in $HOME belong to applications. There is value in $XDG_CACHE_HOME - it can be safely removed (like /var/cache). You force your view on open source community, that is rather bad.

> You can patch it all.

As I said, impractical, not a solution.

> If world does not match your view it may be you who is outlier.

Looking at the amount of software that does follow the base directory specification, actually you're the outlier insisting on obsolete conventions.

You and a bunch of other developers insist on those things, in reality that is the actually harmful behaviour for open-source.

Interestingly but yet non-surprisingly, that insistence very often goes in hand with the stubborness to stay on obsolete mailing lists, ugly user interfaces, insecurity by-default, git-email, buggy issue trackers, 80-column commit messages, obsolete security standards and practices and so much more.

> I quite like current convention - hidden files in $HOME belong to applications.

The future is now, home folders aren't to be filled with trash. Move on or stay behind, seriously.

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#519

Post by michaelmrose »

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…

Linux distributions had an "app store" for about 27 years with a reasonable GUI for at least 18.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaptic_(software)

Sandboxing is a laudible goal but curation is more likely to result in a system that isn't pwned in the context of current sandboxing being at present being vastly insufficient to contain real threats.

I'm not sure in what fashion flatpak is behind snap given that the former supports custom software sources served over simple existing servers, local and offline installs, runtimes, fine grained permissions via portals, and turning off automatic updates.

>A lot of people are mad at Canonical for not open sourcing the backend but no one seems to be offering to build one.

This is a very strange defense to a legitimate criticism. In what universe would anyone on earth offer to spend their own time to fork snap and write their own backend instead of using flatpak, appimage, apt or 17 other choices.

Re: Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

#520

Post by michaelmrose »

aritmo wrote: post #423
thekyle wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Laying countertops is standard handyman stuff but if your coffeepot doesn't do anything truly unique and requires you to rip it up to switch coffeepots it may be ill designed.
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