Isn't it possible to improve Snap? What are the blocking points?
- Apps installed as Snaps are slow to start-up. Why?
- Snap from time to time asks to close a Snap-installed app to be able to update and often it seems it cannot update anyway. What is going on with this?
Ubuntu Flavors Agree to Stop Using Flatpak
31–40 of 96 posts
Re: Ubuntu Flavors Agree to Stop Using Flatpak
#32As a computational biologist, I've been struggling with performance issues on Ubuntu for months, which have made it difficult to work efficiently. Despite Ubuntu's popularity in academia, R runs much slower on Ubuntu than on my personal computer running Arch. This has forced me to do my work at home, where I have better performance. It's disappointing that Ubuntu's limitations are often assumed to be universal to Lin…
Is it maybe that the default R binary on Ubuntu hasn't been optimized? Have you tried building R from source on Ubuntu?
Re: Ubuntu Flavors Agree to Stop Using Flatpak
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ubuntu ~always (around 12 years ago) try's to make a proprietary wallet-garden, and fail every single time. It's ridiculous and the complete wrong way to survive in the the Opensource space. The only thing they have at that point is the name Ubuntu.
I see Canonical as a slightly worse Red Hat - they both do their own thing for the sake of it being theirs (NIH syndrome to the max), Canonical just occasionally use a proprietary component as an upsell (compared to Red Hat that rely only on an Enterprise sticker as a differentiator). But fundamentally, what exactly is the difference? Both force their newly decided stuff on everyone and all associated distros - be it…
Systemd was integrated in Arch before even Fedora adopted it.
Suse does not use dnf and in fact libsolv was originally written by Suse and only then adopted by RH.
I just don't see how RH forces them on anybody that isn't a user of Fedora, RHEL and derivatives.
Re: Ubuntu Flavors Agree to Stop Using Flatpak
#34As a computational biologist, I've been struggling with performance issues on Ubuntu for months, which have made it difficult to work efficiently. Despite Ubuntu's popularity in academia, R runs much slower on Ubuntu than on my personal computer running Arch. This has forced me to do my work at home, where I have better performance. It's disappointing that Ubuntu's limitations are often assumed to be universal to Lin…
> I've been struggling with performance issues on Ubuntu for months
I've run Ubuntu on various hardware and in VM's since 2006 running a wide variety of applications, there are no performance issues I've seen. Perhaps R is different to all other software I've run (which is a lot).
Re: Ubuntu Flavors Agree to Stop Using Flatpak
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
But that's just Ubuntu with another repo added on top, with some different default package choices.
What does that even mean? Is Ubuntu just Debian with another repo on top? Either way, it doesn't change the fact that Pop ships with different functionality and is controlled by a different company that has made a lot fewer user-hostile choices than Canonical in recent years.
Yes and no.
Ubuntu tends to fork Debian's unstable branch then freeze it, patch it, rebuild it and call it their own. Pop_OS! is simply adding some software on top of Ubuntu.
If Debian makes a change, Ubuntu is unaffected until they resync. They then have time to patch it and test. If Ubuntu changes a package, that change is immediate in Pop_OS! unless they ship their own version of the package.
I agree that Pop_OS! is doing a great job with their DE modifications and other defaults, but I don't view that as them being in control. Unless a lot has changed since I used it last, Ubuntu and their infrastructure is still building most of the distribution.
A lot of this is really where you want to draw lines in the sand. What makes a distro a distro and not just another derivative?
Re: Ubuntu Flavors Agree to Stop Using Flatpak
#36I switched to Arch a few years ago and I regret not having done it sooner.
All the things I was assuming about stability being a problem or having to muck around with complex settings, were all wrong. It works extremely well. My OS and all my apps update once a day - no reboots, no loaders. The AUR is great.
When I use my macbook or boot into windows the user experience feels outdated by comparison.
Re: Ubuntu Flavors Agree to Stop Using Flatpak
#37I think the Linux Desktop community needs to stop promoting Ubuntu as the "default" distribution. In 2008 it was certainly the obvious choice, but anymore Canonical seems to have done their best to burn any goodwill they generated back then.
Of course, that means picking a new "default". Personally, I think SteamOS v3 might end up being a great choice, should it ever be officially released for general consumption. But until that happens my personal favorite is Fedora Kinoite.
Re: Ubuntu Flavors Agree to Stop Using Flatpak
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you mean walled garden or is wallet-garden a play on words having to do with financial schemes and open source?
>is wallet-garden a play on words having to do with financial schemes and open source? No it means a ->approximation Snapstore/Appstore
What was being asked is whether you're aware that the correct term is "walled garden" (and saying "wallet-garden" as a play on words), or if "wallet-garden" is a mondegreen[1] for you (also recently referred to as a "bone apple tea" thanks to the popularity of a certain subreddit[2]).
Re: Ubuntu Flavors Agree to Stop Using Flatpak
#39After using Ubuntu for 15 years, I moved to Pop!_Os (it uses Flatpak and no snap crap). Have been very happy with it.
But that's just Ubuntu with another repo added on top, with some different default package choices.
In terms of packages, Pop!_OS has the flatpak over Snap, which I believe is not installed by default. Their distro is also known for a brand new tiling window manager on top of GNOME [0]. They have also recently made a notable contribution to improving the "Linux on the desktop" experience (e.g. [1]).
I would not oversimplify it as just "repo added on top". For many years we could say the same about Ubuntu and Debian, but I don't agree with this generalisation.
It may walk like a duck, but if it doesn't quack like a duck, it might not be a duck.
[0]: https://pop.system76.com/
[1]: https://blog.system76.com/post/more-on-cosmic-de-to-kick-off...
Re: Ubuntu Flavors Agree to Stop Using Flatpak
#40A few days ago I wanted to update an Ubuntu laptop that hasn't been turned on for over a year. I had steam and brave browser installed using snap. Updating these two took as much time as updating everything else in the system (1.6Gb of downloads). Then I uninstalled brave, which took about 6-8 minutes. The laptop has NixOS today. NixOS has official GUI installer now https://nixos.org/download.html#nixos-iso
I've upgraded Arch machines after a year offline and it sounds like that was less painful. Ubuntu has been making some interesting choices lately.
I found lxd very appealing in the beginning, but when they favoured snap as distribution channel, where, apparently, updates and restarts could only be blocked using the firewall [0], I moved away from it. And Ubuntu in general.
[0] https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-automatic-refresh-for...