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Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

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Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#12

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

They could do with improving the behaviour of snaps first before removing alternatives. The updates are currently awkward as they don't seem to work if the application is running which can be a problem with something like Firefox which I have running for days at a time. It's also annoying that it's gone from using simple "apt" commands to keep the machine up-to-date, to also needing a "snap refresh".

I choose to use Ubuntu at work for a bunch of stuff, but snaps are making me consider whether it's worth migrating over to Debian instead.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#13

Post by bayesian_horse »

londons_explore wrote: post #3

Can we go back to just shipping apt packages? They worked fine, and I don't feel like having multiple types of containers and update methods and mounted image file systems really made anyone's life better.

What you are really saying is you want all software developers to publish Debian packages (no such thing as "apt" packages) compatible with your particular Debian distribution, even though they might be using a different Debian based distribution, a completely different altogether, maybe even a different architecture, even though that compatibility isn't their primary concern.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#15

Post by codedokode »

londons_explore wrote: post #3

Can we go back to just shipping apt packages? They worked fine, and I don't feel like having multiple types of containers and update methods and mounted image file systems really made anyone's life better.

This puts too much unnecessary burden on developers and maintainers. It doesn't make sense to adapt software to tens of distributions (and then to different OS like FreeBSD).

Apt should be used only for system software (like init system, system libraries) but not for applications.

Also apt allows to run scripts as root during installation and this is not secure.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#16

Post by rlpb »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #12

They could do with improving the behaviour of snaps first before removing alternatives. The updates are currently awkward as they don't seem to work if the application is running which can be a problem with something like Firefox which I have running for days at a time. It's also annoying that it's gone from using simple "apt" commands to keep the machine up-to-date, to also needing a "snap refresh". I choose to use…

> The updates are currently awkward as they don't seem to work if the application is running

The fix for this is currently being tested: https://bugs.launchpad.net/snapd/+bug/1980271

> before removing alternatives

Alternatives remain available for install. They weren't removed.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#19

Post by bibanez »

petepete wrote: post #9

Mir, Unity, now Snap. Ubuntu has a track record of wanting to go it alone. But, I'm all for competition, long may it continue. The only real negative here is that some apps will only release Snaps, others will only release Flatpaks and people will end up having to just revert to copr/AUR like before. Choosing a distro is basically choosing a DE and package manager these days anyway - a single unified packaging format…

I've had some success with Nix. Still I would only generally recommend it for development (even though I use NixOs)
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