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Why is there only one Snap Store?

merlijn.sebrechts.be

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Re: Why is there only one Snap Store?

#31

Post by Barrin92 »

inetknght wrote: post #27
Barrin92 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

snaps are self-contained apps that ship with their own dependencies, so you get software directly from the developer and you'll be on whatever version they ship. software installed with apt on Debian is fixed until the next release (unless you're on testing/unstable), so that would be the biggest difference.

So a snap is a more complicated version of a statically-built binary?

yeah basically, although 'more complicated' depends on what you consider to be complicated, because another benefit is that you can be sure they run cross platform across any distro that runs snapd, and you don't actually end up replicating all dependencies in every binary, because snapd doesn't duplicate the ones already installed.

Re: Why is there only one Snap Store?

#33

Post by simion314 »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #20

"Interestingly, Canonical actually released an open-source prototype Snap store backend a few years ago, but there was very little interest from the community in in actually maintaining and running a second Snap store, so the project bit-rotted and became incompatible with the current Snap protocol." That open-source server was a single-python-file hacky prototype written in an employee's spare time. It's not surpris…

> All Snaps are now digitally signed by Canonical, so you actually need to have the end-user install a forked snap tool

Isn't the client side open source so you can put your own signature? Digital signing things seems a good idea for security.

Re: Why is there only one Snap Store?

#34

Post by gjsman-1000 »

simion314 wrote: post #33
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #20

"Interestingly, Canonical actually released an open-source prototype Snap store backend a few years ago, but there was very little interest from the community in in actually maintaining and running a second Snap store, so the project bit-rotted and became incompatible with the current Snap protocol." That open-source server was a single-python-file hacky prototype written in an employee's spare time. It's not surpris…

> All Snaps are now digitally signed by Canonical, so you actually need to have the end-user install a forked snap tool Isn't the client side open source so you can put your own signature? Digital signing things seems a good idea for security.

I wish, but the signature is actually compiled into the snapd (the software on your system)'s binary. Deliberately impossible to reconfigure.

Like I said, you can change the signature... by distributing a forked binary to users that would be incompatible with the main store.

Re: Why is there only one Snap Store?

#35

Post by freedomben »

geofft wrote: post #21
war1025 wrote: post #9

Semi-related: Does anyone else feel like Ubuntu has lost a lot of its momentum over the past few years? I don't hear about things they're doing nearly as often anymore.

The LXC/LXD folks at Canonical are doing great work with adding kernel features for namespaces etc. I think the "problem" is that Canonical has figured out - correctly - that all their worthwhile stuff needs to be done upstream of Ubuntu. Even their packagers know to try to get things in Debian first and to reduce diffs when they can. Unfortunately, that means that the unique Ubuntu secret sauce is all the weird stuf…

I got so excited about LXD ... until I found out it requires snap.

My first "cup of ubuntu" was well over 10 years ago now and I've always wanted to see it succeed. It's repeated squandering of so much potential.

Edit: I was referring to LXD usage on Ubuntu-20.04 and versions going forward (I should have made that clear in the post). Sure, snap isn't technically required since you can "change distros" or "compile it yourself." Those just aren't great options IMHO (and doubly sad since I'm using the distro of the company that makes the product and the better experience is on another distro).

Re: Why is there only one Snap Store?

#36

Post by katbyte »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #26
spanhandler wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pollute your mount list and make your software start way slower and take up more space. Also sometimes break or require intervention for basic operation due to security restrictions on it. The benefits are supposed to be that they're more secure, more portable, and don't junk up your system with files strewn everywhere. Personally I'm waiting for a better solution than anything we've seen so far for the first of thos…

What's so impressive about Homebrew specifically?

I dunno exactly but my coming back to Debian for a server recently the apt experience hasn’t been as nice as brew in terms of discovery and use

Re: Why is there only one Snap Store?

#37

Post by kelvie »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #26
spanhandler wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pollute your mount list and make your software start way slower and take up more space. Also sometimes break or require intervention for basic operation due to security restrictions on it. The benefits are supposed to be that they're more secure, more portable, and don't junk up your system with files strewn everywhere. Personally I'm waiting for a better solution than anything we've seen so far for the first of thos…

What's so impressive about Homebrew specifically?

Also curious. I'm waiting, or even begging for something like flatpak on mac os just due to the number of times pip/npm/python in general has broken due to homebrew.

Re: Why is there only one Snap Store?

#38

Post by __s »

simion314 wrote: post #33
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #20

"Interestingly, Canonical actually released an open-source prototype Snap store backend a few years ago, but there was very little interest from the community in in actually maintaining and running a second Snap store, so the project bit-rotted and became incompatible with the current Snap protocol." That open-source server was a single-python-file hacky prototype written in an employee's spare time. It's not surpris…

> All Snaps are now digitally signed by Canonical, so you actually need to have the end-user install a forked snap tool Isn't the client side open source so you can put your own signature? Digital signing things seems a good idea for security.

Ideally you'd be able to add the alternative store's public key to the existing snap client. Like you can do with existing package managers to include alternative repos

Re: Why is there only one Snap Store?

#39

Post by gjsman-1000 »

__s wrote: post #38
simion314 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All Snaps are now digitally signed by Canonical, so you actually need to have the end-user install a forked snap tool Isn't the client side open source so you can put your own signature? Digital signing things seems a good idea for security.

Ideally you'd be able to add the alternative store's public key to the existing snap client. Like you can do with existing package managers to include alternative repos

They deliberately designed the software to not allow that without you forking. I mean, it is trivially easy for Canonical to just put the public key in a file and have Snap read from that key. Instead, they've hard-compiled it in.

Three years ago, I actually had a discussion with them about External Repositories. It's called "External Repositories?" on the forum and has, like, over 200 messages on it. They didn't budge one bit despite our arguments on why this was a very bad idea on their part.

Re: Why is there only one Snap Store?

#40

Post by AsyncAwait »

katbyte wrote: post #36
AsyncAwait wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's so impressive about Homebrew specifically?

I dunno exactly but my coming back to Debian for a server recently the apt experience hasn’t been as nice as brew in terms of discovery and use

I am personally a fan of more lean solutions than apt, but there are several on Linux, like pacman (Arch), apk, (Alpine), Portage etc.

Search: pacman -Ss

Install: pacman -S

Remove: pacman -R

Pacman is not tied specifically to Arch either.

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