11–20 of 28 posts
Snaps OTOH just seem like a way tk shoehorn proprietary packages onto open source ecosystem (not to mention snap store itself is proprietory, and cannot be swapped for some other snap store)
Why was NixOS/GuixSD considered for this? It has immutable system and is fully declarative on top. Snaps OTOH just seem like a way tk shoehorn proprietary packages onto open source ecosystem (not to mention snap store itself is proprietory, and cannot be swapped for some other snap store)
You had me at immutable but you lost me at snaps
With flatpak you also don't have to engage in this wierd /snap trickery.
The resulting system still seems very mutable to me, since it appears the system configuration management isn't tracked in a transactional manner. I would think for a "immutable Linux desktop", NixOS would be what the author was looking for, since the whole system is declaratively specified and can be rolled back to any previous generation. But some users go even further, performing a ZFS rollback on every NixOS boot[0] to ensure that mutable state doesn't accumulate (NixOS only needs /boot and /nix to boot, and creates /etc /var etc. if they don't exist already).
The /snap directory is such a ridiculous wart. I really like snaps but they should be unobtrusive, or at least configure-able.
As one of the folks that was present during the early decision-making around this, this was a wart that I wish the team had heeded me on fixing early on. Once they introduced "classically confined" snaps (that is, snaps that have no confinement and exposed the real filesystem hierarchy to them), there was no fixing this anymore. To be clear, the decision to stick to their guns on /snap predates the introduction of "c…
If there is no confinement, what advantages do "classically confined" snaps offer over AppImages?
Why was NixOS/GuixSD considered for this? It has immutable system and is fully declarative on top. Snaps OTOH just seem like a way tk shoehorn proprietary packages onto open source ecosystem (not to mention snap store itself is proprietory, and cannot be swapped for some other snap store)
I've used NixOS before (I still have a server at home running it) but haven't tried GuixSD. Do you recommend it?
I think guix is a lot more ergonomic for package definitions and system configuration than nix, I also think the documentation is a lot easier to break into + it has a semi graphical installer.
the big downside being it doesnt come with proprietary drivers which is pretty annoying, but can be worked around with nonguix -- https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix which also includes a few other proprietary programs, if thats something you need
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As one of the folks that was present during the early decision-making around this, this was a wart that I wish the team had heeded me on fixing early on. Once they introduced "classically confined" snaps (that is, snaps that have no confinement and exposed the real filesystem hierarchy to them), there was no fixing this anymore. To be clear, the decision to stick to their guns on /snap predates the introduction of "c…
>Once they introduced "classically confined" snaps (that is, snaps that have no confinement and exposed the real filesystem hierarchy to them) If there is no confinement, what advantages do "classically confined" snaps offer over AppImages?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As one of the folks that was present during the early decision-making around this, this was a wart that I wish the team had heeded me on fixing early on. Once they introduced "classically confined" snaps (that is, snaps that have no confinement and exposed the real filesystem hierarchy to them), there was no fixing this anymore. To be clear, the decision to stick to their guns on /snap predates the introduction of "c…
>Once they introduced "classically confined" snaps (that is, snaps that have no confinement and exposed the real filesystem hierarchy to them) If there is no confinement, what advantages do "classically confined" snaps offer over AppImages?
By comparison, a strictly confined snap only has access to its own data directory and possibly to some configuration files or the users home directory, depending on which permissions it’s been granted.
A text editor which is most useful if it can edit arbitrary files in the filesystem could be classically confined.
A music player might be strictly confined with access only to external devices (and maybe users home directory).
A fishy untrustworthy crypto miner could be strictly confined with no additional permissions so it can only see/touch its own data.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I saw someone on r/linux recently with a Fedora Silverblue install with all apps installed through Flatpak. We're getting there. Edit: CoreOS -> Silverblue. Thanks to LeoPanthera.
Have been using Silverblue for the past few years as my daily driver. Definitely a game changer, have all of my apps installed in a toolbox or via Flatpak. Can honestly say I have never had a system this stable before.
> I can't believe this worked. Sure, you won't be deploying this in production, but we mostly survived this long with unconfined apps and having transactional updates is an improvement The resulting system still seems very mutable to me, since it appears the system configuration management isn't tracked in a transactional manner. I would think for a "immutable Linux desktop", NixOS would be what the author was lookin…
That being said I use nix on my systems, just as a package manager to some existing boxes.