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Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

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Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#161

Post by wilonth »

Wow they're still pushing snaps, the project with some the worst engineering I've ever seen.

- Extremely slow at doing anything, even the most basic commands.

- Ridiculous auto-update mechanism (you can't even disable it wtf).

- Random, nonsense limitations (why can't I open dot files and dot directories???).

So terrible that for most apps that I installed with snaps I end up installing the deb version later on.

What an abomination, it is a devil that's hurting the Linux desktop everyday.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#162

Post by _joel »

circuit10 wrote: post #97
trompetenaccoun wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a single user who likes snaps?

They’re better than Flatpak for CLI applications I guess since Flatpak doesn’t aim to support those Is there another option for that than Snap, or Docker which is a bit too complicated to set up? (that’s not rhetorical, I would like to know if there is)

Another option https://appimage.org/

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#163

Post by creshal »

noirscape wrote: post #152
qbasic_forever wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing stopping someone from making a flatpak or other similar tech feed or 'store' that's only the curated apps they deem appropriate for users. Bugs should be fixed upstream, not kept in distro specific silos. There's no reason why only a packager can fix some upstream issues or become a contributor. On the contrary shipping your app as a universal tech like flatpak means Redhat, Debian, Arch or any other…

> Bugs should be fixed upstream, not kept in distro specific silos. This is mostly a Debian issue fwiw. Debian is literally notable because they're obsessed with making sure that any package in their repositories is kept with the same "API"[0], no matter how old the software is. The result is that Debian packages can end up hugely derivative compared to the equivalent of upstream and other distros, but it's usually a…

And even Debian tries to upstream fixes where feasible, which isn't too uncommon for security vulnerabilities, they tend to lurk in old parts of codebases that haven't been refactored for a while.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#164

Post by hotpotamus »

rickydroll wrote: post #117
chr15p wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mir, Unity, now Snap. Ubuntu has a track record of wanting to go it alone. This. Also bzr. They seem to want to control their projects completely and so even when they have good tech they lose out to more open, community developed, equivalents that build wide engagement and momentum. I honestly don't understand it, you would have thought they would have learned by now that they don't have the engineering resources…

Another way to look at this situation is that canonical comes up with innovative solutions that are reasonably well engineered out of the box but they are rejected just because they are from canonical. I'm struggling to find a way to characterize the difference between Red Hat/IBM and canonical's approach to the community. The most succinct I can come up with is that canonical releases projects and assumes that they…

At an old job, we used probably hundreds of hardware and software vendors. I never had to deal with any of them directly, but I often spoke with those who did. There were complaints about all of them I'm sure, but the only ones that inspired bitch sessions over a drink were Oracle and Canonical. I'm told that both were just thoroughly unpleasant to deal with.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#165

Post by CalRobert »

wilonth wrote: post #161

Wow they're still pushing snaps, the project with some the worst engineering I've ever seen. - Extremely slow at doing anything, even the most basic commands. - Ridiculous auto-update mechanism (you can't even disable it wtf). - Random, nonsense limitations (why can't I open dot files and dot directories???). So terrible that for most apps that I installed with snaps I end up installing the deb version later on. What…

Snaps are getting me off Desktop Ubuntu after 12 years of happily using it.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#166

Post by tapoxi »

mulmen wrote: post #145
mikae1 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's kinda what the distros ARE. What things are can change, sometimes for the better. Imagine if distros maintainers could spend their time doing something more productive than doing the same work as hundreds of others are doing.

But if hundreds of distro maintainers don’t do it then millions of users have to do it.

No, users don't do it. The application developers do it in their CI pipelines. Application developers should be the ones building and testing the app, not distro maintainers responsible for a dozen other applications.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#167

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

rlpb wrote: post #146
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That issue is related, but not quite what I meant. I would want the app to be updated in the background whilst it is running (which works fine for APT installed packages), so just closing it and re-opening it would get the newer version. That bug you linked to is the issue that after getting a visual prompt about a newer version of Firefox being available, the "snap refresh" isn't run immediately after closing it dow…

> I would want the app to be updated in the background whilst it is running (which works fine for APT installed packages), so just closing it and re-opening it would get the newer version. The Firefox deb (such as in 20.04) became unusable and tabs crashed when the deb was updated without a restart. It's really down to each individual app as to whether it will work being updated in the background or not. AIUI the new…

> The Firefox deb (such as in 20.04) became unusable and tabs crashed when the deb was updated without a restart.

I never encountered that for any previous version of Ubuntu.

> AIUI the new snap implementation gets everything ready in the background, so the update on closing it and re-opening it is quick.

I hope they get it working soon as my experience is that "snap refresh" does nothing whilst Firefox is running and doesn't even notify you that there's updates available.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#168

Post by Izkata »

killerstorm wrote: post #130
mg wrote: post #108

I wish there was a solution like flatpak or snap that does make things simpler, not more complex. To begin with: It would be nice if the data of the containerized applications were stored in one place and one place only. Each application should simply be a single directory in /snaps/ or something. At first I thought snap would be like that. But no. When I did some tests, the data of a snap seems to be splattered acro…

Well if the app works with documents I'd like to have them in ~/Documents, not in /snaps/

I think they're referring to this:

  /usr/share/bash-completion/completions/snap
  /usr/bin/snap
  /home/izkata/snap
  /var/snap
  /snap

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#169

Post by m4lvin »

teekert wrote: post #76
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.

It worked fine? Did you ever apt install nextcloud-client? Then find out (after pulling your hairs out) that it doesn't work because it is some ancient (and I mean years old) version? And this is just one example. Many devs warn you out right about package manager's versions on their websites.

But exactly this example got fixed! I maintained "inofficial" debian packages for quite some time, but since Debian bullseye came out `sudo apt install nextcloud-desktop` just works :-)

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#170

Post by lapinot »

vinyl7 wrote: post #155
phkahler wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The problem with that model is that it puts the burden on the distro maintainers to package every possible application for their distro. That's kinda what the distros ARE. Also, if you're debian based and debian packages are not compatible with your distribution you're actively fucking something up for "reasons" - stop doing that. If an app can't use a standard .deb or .rpm then the distro is doing something wrong…

Arch Linux would like to have a word

This. Also void and alpine. Which have simple, no-nonsense package formats. We get it that deb and rpm are a hassle to learn and write, but it's completely a false dichotomy to say snap or flatpak are the only alternative. In fact they push a widely different model of software distribution, one that completely destroys "user unions" which is a crucial aspect of what distributions are.
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