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Snaps. Why? Please Stop

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Re: Snaps. Why? Please Stop

#111

Post by jeremija »

mhh__ wrote: post #71
MrDresden wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the programs that you've had to install through snap? Or are you talking about the existence of snap on the system in general? Personally I have not a single snap packge installed, and am usually able to find sources for the programs I use elswhere than in the snap ecosystem.

Firefox is a snap by default

Oh don't let me get me started on this. I use Firefox on a work machine and I spent a number of hours troubleshooting why it couldn't access the Internet when I was connected on VPN.

I suspected it had something to do with snapd, so I downloaded the .tar.gz release of Firefox and it worked. I kept investigating and figured it must have something to do with snap.firefox.firefox apparmor profile because the VPN client was symlinking the /etc/resolv.conf to /opt/.../resolv.conf

However, updating the apparmor profile didn't help so I ultimately realized that snap has a hardcoded list of paths that get mounted into the app container [1] and there's no way to change this.

There are a number of reasons to hate on snapd, but this almost made me flip the table.

Also, as a bonus point, if you look at the apparmor profile I mentioned it has a ton of comments about chrome, so someone must've just copy pasted it and modified to work with Firefox. GrEaT SeCuRiTy!

[1]: https://github.com/snapcore/snapd/blob/3a88dc38ca122eba97192...

Re: Snaps. Why? Please Stop

#112

Post by eternityforest »

the_third_wave wrote: post #98
eternityforest wrote: post #84

Snaps were one of the main reasons I moved from Mint to Ubuntu. Traditional package management is a terrible fit for modern systems and apps. If you have dozens of apps and they each have dozens of dynamically linked dependencies, you'll probably get an occasional compatibility issue. At first I really liked Flatpak, but the ecosystem isn't there. Everything I use is in Snapcraft, with Flatpak I still would occasiona…

In my experience - using Linux since 1992, Debian since 1997 - "traditional" package management is quite capable at avoiding compatibility issues related to dynamically linked dependencies. Linux has had library versioning for a very long time - something which made it stand out compared to the 'DLL Hell' Windows users were used to - and it is quite common to have multiple versions of libraries installed and in use.…

It does seem to work 99.9% of the time, but when you have a dozen programs with more dependencies than you can count, some are not in the official repos, and you want more up to date stuff, being able to reproduce the whole environment of a package seems like the best option to me.

Deb packages are rock solid for the most part if you use standard distro packages, but the moment you want something newer or third party, there's no guarantee it will work well with some other random third party thing you also have.

Especially when sometimes apps might even depend on bugs and break when they get fixed.

Snaps mostly solve the reduced integration issues(Or at least try to, some stuff isn't perfect yet?) with all their plugs and interfaces and whatnot.

Re: Snaps. Why? Please Stop

#113

Post by tentacleuno »

kazinator wrote: post #107
DiabloD3 wrote: post #4

I won't use Snaps. Please stop trying to work around my chosen distro's package maintainers. If I want to use your program and there isn't a package for it, I'll build it from source myself.

The same argumentation applies to npm, cargo, pip, ... Also app auto updates, browser extensions, ...

Re: NPM, how does that work? Do you manually unpack tarballs? I believe some distributions package popular NPM modules, but certainly not all of them -- not using npm doesn't really seem feasible.

(Not to mention that, in the case of pnpm at least, everything's installed into a store directory in your HOME. Seems fine to me.)

Re: Snaps. Why? Please Stop

#114

Post by dschuetz »

loxias wrote: post #20
dschuetz wrote: post #6

Why? Because of Dependency Hell. Apt sometimes even tries to solve "circular dependencies". Ridiculous.

I haven't had problems with dependency hell since the early 2000s. And even then, looking back, I'm entirely sure the problem was not in myself. You're possibly using it wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_hell

Seems like I am not alone. If the problem does not affect you much, does not mean it does not exist.

Yeah, the usual "works for me" attitude has had never helped anyone. So, good for you.

Re: Snaps. Why? Please Stop

#115

Post by snovv_crash »

sshine wrote: post #104
snovv_crash wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just make an appimage and be done with it.

I would prefer AppImages over Snap if I were a company. But just to strongman package managers: With an AppImage you don't get security updates, and it isn't a distribution mechanism.

Frankly I see this as a bonus. I don't want my CAD software or 3D printer slicer auto-updating.

Not everything is network connected and security critical. Auto-updates are a huge pain for a lot of workflows.

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