Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

techtudor.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 198 posts

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#181

Post by stubish »

brnt wrote: post #136
2ion wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can only comment on snap for the server (non-desktop) side of things but packages in Ubuntu, which are Debian packages, contain random (none or a lot) amounts of shell scripts /var/lib/dpkg/info/* which may fail for any reason and introduce any number of side effects into the system, as they handle sometimes very complex software migrations and can change any number of things. Surely the desktop has some history he…

If rpm/yum fixes much of apts problem, why didn't Ubuntu change for that?

rpm/yum shares a number of apts problems, and certainly doesn't fix all of them.

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#182

Post by logicprog »

SweetestRug wrote: post #106
znpy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, what distro did you move to?

I took a shot and tried Manjaro. After using it for a few weeks, I can say that I absolutely love it, and will be a Manjaro user for a long time on my personal machines. For new users, I have been recommending Pop_OS.

I used Manjaro for about two years on my Dell XPS, and everything was a constant hassle: features I needed weren't set up by default, stuff broke constantly. Usually it wasn't too bad, so I just fixed it and moved on.

Then my laptops ability to connect to WiFi broke, and there was no way I could figure out to solve it. So I made a new partition, installed Pop_OS, moves my old home directory to this one, and was done with it. Pop_OS has been amazing - I always liked GNOME 3, and Pop Shell really helps in that dept.

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#183

Post by zepto »

contravariant wrote: post #43
zepto wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just get a Mac?

Not saying you're wrong, but if the response to people wanting to use linux is "Get a Mac" then that's problematic.

It isn’t. I personally use both a Mac, and Linux. Openness is what makes Linux valuable. I have no desire for Linux to become like the Mac with proprietary parts of the system.

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#184

Post by AlexCoventry »

guug wrote: post #168
AlexCoventry wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you're using desktop ubuntu, you're using snaps. Run `mount` to see which snaps ubunutu has mounted on your system.

Hmm, interesting. Thanks.

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#185

Post by BiteCode_dev »

uhnllon wrote: post #147
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When they moved from Unity to Gnome shell, you could read all over the OMGUbuntu comments that people actually liked Unity and wished they would keep it. It's always the same, you hear people complaining the most. Ubuntu has been a success because they took some risk. The first one has been to make installing proprietary drivers easy. Something they got a lot of heat for. And since they managed to become the most pop…

I would agree with you in this about snaps IF snap were somewhere close to production level software. Nobody can assemble some new kind of app packaging, slowing the starting speed to 5-10 seconds and call that "good rounded software" "It is just a couple of seconds more sometimes, not a big deal" isn't going to cut it. Most of the Internet using Ubuntu, already knows that. I think Canonical is again in denial. It al…

Apt sucked when it started. Give it some time.

It's a complicated endavior, and it will need many iterations before becomming a decent solution. That's why we have to start ASAP.

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#186

Post by afiori »

Myrmornis wrote: post #178
afiori wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me most of the bad reputation of desktop linux seemed to come from people refusing to use Ubuntu for demented reasons... My experience is completely different. I spent 7-8 years using linux on a laptop about 4 of those using either ubuntu or derivatives, my experience was that after about 6 months it was time to reinstall the OS. Since I have installed fedora and it has been the most stable and resilient system…

When I used to maintain a linux machine about 10 years ago, upgrading the kernel was a huge pain on a fedora system (basically required reinstalling the entire OS IIRC) but could be done using the package manager on ubuntu and thus was incomparably less painful. Has this difference gone away?

I never directly did that, my experience was that major version upgrades on ubuntu rarely were painless and on fedora they mostly worked.

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#187

Post by afiori »

the_af wrote: post #176
afiori wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me most of the bad reputation of desktop linux seemed to come from people refusing to use Ubuntu for demented reasons... My experience is completely different. I spent 7-8 years using linux on a laptop about 4 of those using either ubuntu or derivatives, my experience was that after about 6 months it was time to reinstall the OS. Since I have installed fedora and it has been the most stable and resilient system…

Reinstalling every 6 months? Why on earth? I'm still using Ubuntu 16.04, which I think I might have reinstalled once (after I upgraded to an SSD, so it doesn't really count), and dragging my feet about upgrading because it simply works marvelously and I don't like change. It does everything I want, coding, watching movies, gaming.

I believe that, we probably did something subtly different.

I am not saying ubuntu is bad, but it was not a good fit for me

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#188

Post by antpls »

WesternStar wrote: post #8

I honestly like snaps. I like having spotify and discord working as to his other concerns I just don't care.

Same here : I use it for Firefox and Chromium, and it just works. Another comment mentioned VLC, which should be a good candidate for frequent release too.

I can understand the "proprietary store" concerns of this thread, however.

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#189

Post by enriquto »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #101
enriquto wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you want is static executables . It is sad that those are not typically packaged in dependence-free debs, but there's nothing really against it.

Yes, sign me up please! You don't necessarily need to go all the way down to statically linking libc, but if just about everything else could be included in the binary, that would be lovely. We have come up with such convoluted solutions to this problem—Docker, nix, Snap, etc—when the simple option is sitting in front of us. And it works! On my Mac, I don't want to install homebrew or MacPorts—Package managers make m…

You can link libc statically, it's probably smaller than the other stuff you use. If you are really worried about size you can use the musl which is quite smaller.

The only problem I have found with static linking is for programs that use opengl, that need to be linked to a specific version of the graphics drivers. If you try to statically link a program that depends on libGL, it may work for you with an nvidia chipsed, but then it will fail at runtime for somebody that does not have the same type of graphic card. I do not know of a clean solution for this problem, regarding static linking; but I would love to know.

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#190

Post by jabirali »

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…

FYI, the Gnome Tweaks interface is basically identical to the KDE settings here.

Screenshot: http://pvv.org/~jabirali/tweaks.png

Post reply on HN