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Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

techtudor.blogspot.com

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Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#151

Post by uhnllon »

ppseafield wrote: post #134
mnm1 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And flatpack. So now there's apt, snap, appimage, and flatpack. 4 fucking systems that need to be maintained just to update apps on an OS. Frankly, it's ridiculous and the apps from all those alternate systems all have some issues too. None work as well as apt. I don't understand what is wrong with apt. If they want newer packages provide a repo for newer shit. Problem solved.

Apt is great as long as what you want is available in the repo. Over the years I have had a few issues though. Often apt's versions trail behind the newest versions. There are some good reasons for this, but it can get in the way sometimes. I have had to ad a lot of PPAs to get some of the software I wanted. The Aurora channel PPA for Firefox stopped getting updates at one point (they discontinued it), and I didn't r…

I think this thing about apps not available for apt is in the past. I specifically use Ubuntu because there are .debs for everything. Most of the new apps for linux published on Internet "need" to have a .dev available, if they want to became popular.

Well, I have found some strange, out of common, software - mostly comercial stuff - which doesn't have any .deb available nor ppas, nor nothing.

It is clearly a decision from somebody who said "no, we are not spending hours packaging our app, if they want it, they will try to install it with the methods we will provide"

Kind of nonsense, except that if you're in Linux looking to install a comercial app, special snowflake, is probably because you have zero chances to do otherwise, then you bit the bullet and try whatever crazy method to deploy their app they have put in place.

Most common stuff I found: - Just download my zipped binary, you know how to deploy it - Just run this command line, "sh something" giving it root credentials to run code from the Internet (YEAH I KNOW TOO, as much insecure as it gets)

Having said that, many comercial apps are there for to be easyly downloaded as .debs (they should just install with a GUI right out from the link, in old-Ubuntu behavior). Or they even offer you detailed instructions to configure a ppa (to manually install with apt).

Heck, nowadays it is common sense and good netiquette to make your installation scripts in the downloaded .deb to just deploy the ppa for apt, so next upgrade happens automatically.

If you ask me and I wouldn't dreaming to control the app-deployment infrastructure in Linux, I would say "yeah, you need to contact EVERY software not providing the .deb format and start working with them, providing them free support, even free scripts to handle the packaging"

I remember in the 90s, there was LOTs of shareware because Microsoft knew this stuff from the 70s and 80s: if you want you're software in use, you need to talk directly with those who could probably use it.

No, links hanging in some flashy website won't cut it, nor repos in github half sharing some code.

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#152

Post by zrm »

alkonaut wrote: post #138
zrm wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want all of the QT libs embedded in the package. I don't understand why anybody wants this. Libraries should have major versions and the latest of each major version should be compatible with anything using that major version, because that's what major version means for a library. You might then need to have more than one major version of the library installed, but any two applications using the same one should b…

> people have to maintain them all separately. Yes. I think most people (most people don't run Linux in any form) would like to think of their system as having a collection of independent applictions , not a set of libraries. If people are expected to "maintain", or even understand, the concept of shared libraries, then I think the system is only geared to power users and tinkerers (the current user base more or less…

The people who maintain the libraries are not the users, they're the library package maintainers.

If you move the libraries into the application packages then the package maintainers for every application also have to maintain every library they use, duplicating the efforts of one another. The users then suffer when they do it poorly because they don't have the time or domain expertise to maintain multiple third party libraries in addition to their own application.

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#153

Post by ric2b »

zrm wrote: post #107
schmichael wrote: post #25

I think there are some very good critiques of snap (performance, provenance, reproducibility, namespacing, etc), and the first couple points in this article seem reasonable. However I can't agree with this: > apt/deb is a wonderful package management system and everyone is happy with it, at least the majority of Ubuntu/Debian users. Besides, dnf/rpm is also a similar packaging system for Fedora/RH systems and everyon…

> I want all of the QT libs embedded in the package. I don't understand why anybody wants this. Libraries should have major versions and the latest of each major version should be compatible with anything using that major version, because that's what major version means for a library. You might then need to have more than one major version of the library installed, but any two applications using the same one should b…

> Libraries should have major versions and the latest of each major version should be compatible with anything using that major version

Should, but accidental breaking changes are a thing. Plus flatpack more or less solves this by having standard runtimes (base collections of libraries/dependencies that flatpack apps target) that get security updates.

> That requires the person configuring the app's container to have both detailed knowledge of the app and detailed knowledge of the container system. It's common for this not to be the case.

With Snap, developers explicitly ask for the permissions they need and the approval process evaluates if it makes sense for that app to have those permissions (and by default or not).

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#154

Post by zapzupnz »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #145
SweetestRug wrote: post #5

I had been an Ubuntu user for almost 16 years, on servers, laptops, and recently containers. The snap situation with Ubuntu is just plain unpalatable, both in principal and in practice. I became so disappointed in the move by Canonical that I finally left Ubuntu altogether and no longer recommend it to friends and colleagues. It takes years to cultivate a garden, but only minutes to destroy it.

I don't understand what the big deal is, though. I run ubuntu and I don't run any snaps. This seems to work fine.

The point is that later releases will start forcing snaps on people without their knowledge.

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#155

Post by krastanov »

slezyr wrote: post #121
krastanov wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your example is dead wrong. I run Gnome and my language shortcut is CapsLock. I used the Tweaks configuration software which is part of Gnome (it is the one you are supposed to use for more invasive configuration). I do find Gnome plenty configurable. You just need to go in order of Settings -> Tweaks -> their weird registry -> custom extensions. I would agree this is convoluted, but I do not mind it (as a power user…

Yup, you can all the miracles in the console, BUT reread the parent comment > I find gnome to be pretty configurable. The opinionated defaults aren’t so bad because you can just replace the environment if you dislike it IT'S NOT CONFIGURABLE. You can hack your way around their "opinionated defaults" which are for MacOS user from USA. Take a look at the KDE's settings for this case https://i.stack.imgur.com/ukKmp.png…

The examples from the OP are configurable from Tweaks which is a GUI. No hacks, command line use, or third-party installs. In particular, the equivalent to the screen shot you showed is available from Gnome's Tweak tool.

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#156

Post by krastanov »

nialv7 wrote: post #120
krastanov wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your example is dead wrong. I run Gnome and my language shortcut is CapsLock. I used the Tweaks configuration software which is part of Gnome (it is the one you are supposed to use for more invasive configuration). I do find Gnome plenty configurable. You just need to go in order of Settings -> Tweaks -> their weird registry -> custom extensions. I would agree this is convoluted, but I do not mind it (as a power user…

You do understand that them being extensions means they are not part of GNOME.

You picked the 4th stage but conveniently skipped all 3 tools that precede it. The Tweaks tool is a GUI that is a part of Gnome and it deals with the examples that OP raised.

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#157

Post by dilandau »

krastanov wrote: post #113
slezyr wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. NO. You can't even change language shortcut from default (Win + Space). As I understand this comes from MacOS, which gnome devs brainlessly copy. https://askubuntu.com/questions/41480/how-do-i-change-my-key...

Your example is dead wrong. I run Gnome and my language shortcut is CapsLock. I used the Tweaks configuration software which is part of Gnome (it is the one you are supposed to use for more invasive configuration). I do find Gnome plenty configurable. You just need to go in order of Settings -> Tweaks -> their weird registry -> custom extensions. I would agree this is convoluted, but I do not mind it (as a power user…

You must be really new to Linux. I mean, wow.

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#158

Post by Shared404 »

panpanna wrote: post #149

I'm _fine_ with snaps. As long as they are limited to applications (i.e. not OS components) and look reasonably like normal applications. Why? Because you can't ask developers to package their apps for 100+ distros. And they let us run latest versions of apps on an otherwise stable/old OS.

Flatpak and AppImage would like a word.

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#159

Post by Shared404 »

RealStickman_ wrote: post #53
clircle wrote: post #12

Snaps and flatpak help Linux work for me. My ideal desktop is a stable core with a few select user applications that I can keep current. Thanks to snaps/flatpak I can run Debian stable on my personal desktop, but keep emacs, firefox, and a few more apps at their most recent versions.

I'd like to point out that, as far as I know nobody or very few people have problems with flatpak.

There is flatkill.org, but that kind of comes across as FUD.

The privilege escalation attack looks a bit worrying, but aside from that it looks either the same/better as/then native packaging (Sandbox for some apps), or something that is on the developer (Out of date packages).

It's possible I'm misunderstanding something, if so please feel free to tell me so.

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#160

Post by lucb1e »

war1025 wrote: post #125
lucb1e wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't AppArmor already doing this though? If I remember correctly (and I never properly read up on it, so please correct me if I'm wrong) it limits which syscalls you can do and with which parameters, like opening only certain files. I think apparmor rules/profiles were becoming more common to be delivered with their respective packages (I'm using Debian), and it sounds like that already solves your exact concern wi…

AppArmor has only ever caused me pain. For whatever reason it's decided that I'm not allowed to connect to the network. It's easy enough to remove the package, but it likes to tag along as a dependency when installing updates.

Sounds like snaps are causing more pain than apparmor though?

I mean, if you want security but don't want the inconvenience that comes with new efforts towards sandboxing, then either you have to read up and help in the effort xor wait for others to fix it and run old and stable software xor not have security.

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