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Disabling automatic refresh for Snap from store

forum.snapcraft.io

191–200 of 201 posts

Re: Disabling automatic refresh for Snap from store

#191
post #177

Wow. This thread isn't controversial at all. I haven't found a single comment making a case for Snap. It seems to be universally disliked - at least by this crowd.

It's disliked by the same Linux purists who complain constantly about systemd. Bit odd how the same community hates Canonical considering how it's now the only FOSS commercial entity considering Red Hat was bought by IBM. The community treats them worse than Microsoft for no good reasons. If you don't like snap, fine, use flatpak, apt, AppImages. Nobody is forcing you on ubuntu systems, but they spend their effort an…

Thank you for this comment. The Ubuntu/Canonical hate that goes around on this platform is pretty ridiculous.

Re: Disabling automatic refresh for Snap from store

#192
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sensible defaults, but built for the power user. Makes sense.

The old argument is that anything a power user can do, a malicious script can do too. So such options must be removed entirely if there is any chance of a less technically inclined user being tricked into doing it.

This argument doesn't hold water. At the point malicious software is already on the machine, an automated update doesn't help. And if someone is inducing you to manually turn off automatic updates for malicious reasons... they could just as easily be inducing you to install malicious software directly.

Re: Disabling automatic refresh for Snap from store

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sudo apt purge snapd

Does it mean that apt will then install a non-snap version? I haven't verified that, but considering that nothing suggested that I was installing a snap app (other than me not paying attention to apt's output, I guess), I'm not sure if that's even possible. I was planning to stay with 18.04 LTS and then move to something else, but seems like either snap was there already or it has been added after I upgraded.

No, it removes the entire snap ecosystem from your machine, including the snap backend to apt. It does mean that installing snap-only packages becomes more problematic, but that's a price I'm willing to bear.

Re: Disabling automatic refresh for Snap from store

#194
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Snap clearly has a philosophy. And a lot of people clearly disagree with that philosophy. Seems like that philosophy is the user is not to be trusted. The problem here is that users in reality, not just philosophically, CANNOT trust snap because it will force updates (or dns trickery to stop it) that may cause a system to stop working.

Snap's philosophy appears to be: Given the option to not patch, users will not patch. And this is even worse in IoT land. Which I can't say is wrong. Who probably shouldn't use Snap are users with mature patch application skills, who are willing the invest the time to review and patch regularly. That class of users is far smaller than {all users}.

> Snap's philosophy appears to be: Given the option to not patch, users will not patch. And this is even worse in IoT land.

This is true. But there are so many situations where unpatched is better than bricked or bugged. The community's ask was reasonable.

Re: Disabling automatic refresh for Snap from store

#195

So... I have been using Ubuntu 18.04LTS for my half-dozen servers and was planning to replace them with 22.04LTS later this year. Bad idea? I've tended to use every second LTS release, replacing with new (cloud) servers during the overlap in support periods. I use Ansible to configure. Should I be considering Rocky or straight Debian instead? Something else?

If you aren't paying Canonical for support you might as well just use Debian.

Re: Disabling automatic refresh for Snap from store

#196
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They literally have stats for each snap download and install. https://snapcraft.io/slack You see the map at the bottom with a list of OSes? They have the interest, commercial and from the populace. Vendors have already integrated it into their pipelines. What they don't have is the vocal minority. Frankly I don't get why people care so much, if you don't like it switch to something else. No need to whine about it onl…

In what world do unlabeled graphs count as stats? There’s also no counter for how many downloads there were, or any other useful statistic. They are just bars of various lengths with no explanation on what the lengths actually mean. > Frankly I don't get why people care so much, if you don't like it switch to something else. No need to whine about it online. They aren't preventing you from using flatpak. Then, in tha…

A dev on snapcraft can see the install count (I know).

A dev at Canonical can absolutely see how many install counts are there and if the venture is worth it.

>no explanation on what the lengths actually mean.

>Then, in that case, by that logic, there’s no reason for you to whine about my whining.

They don't care what you say, they don't care about the whining here. You aren't paying to support it either.

Feel free to switch to another packaging solution, or even a new OS. It won't affect Canonical's bottom line.

Re: Disabling automatic refresh for Snap from store

#197
post #7

Never used a snap. Never will.

I use it only for Spotify

You can try https://github.com/jpochyla/psst for Electron-less Spotify. I use the AUR package on Arch. It was crashy some months ago but now works great.

Re: Disabling automatic refresh for Snap from store

#198
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a user app like Firefox force autoupdate is not that bad IMHO. Having server infrastructure components update themselves automatically can be disastrous. This caught me by surprise, painfully. Snap for GUI apps, okay, fine. Snap for system infrastructure, no thank you.

It's bad when the user is actively using the application and snapd decides to update the Firefox snap and cause issues.

Yeah, suffered from this last Friday with firefox.

Quite bad timing and since I surf mostly in private mode I'm not so keen on a restart at inopportune times since my state will be completely wiped.

Re: Disabling automatic refresh for Snap from store

#199
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snap's philosophy appears to be: Given the option to not patch, users will not patch. And this is even worse in IoT land. Which I can't say is wrong. Who probably shouldn't use Snap are users with mature patch application skills, who are willing the invest the time to review and patch regularly. That class of users is far smaller than {all users}.

> Snap's philosophy appears to be: Given the option to not patch, users will not patch. And this is even worse in IoT land. This is true. But there are so many situations where unpatched is better than bricked or bugged. The community's ask was reasonable.

Absolutely, the community's ask was reasonable.

But I think the goals might also be mutually exclusive.

Snap's philosophy, from what I read in the thread, boils down to: if an update bricks devices when it's pushed, the proper time to catch that update is before it's pushed, or as it's pushed, not after.

Which I do see the wisdom in. The majority of users are less well informed and equiped to test and patch than developers.

Re: Disabling automatic refresh for Snap from store

#200
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What DEs are common/supported on Fedora, I use KDE (Kubuntu), I'm not keen on snaps and so it seems expedient to switch distros when I next install (as it seems Ubuntu are all in for snaps).

You want Kinoite: https://kinoite.fedoraproject.org/ it's Fedora's equivalent of Kubuntu. I'm a GNOME user but I've heard good things.

Well, this is a KDE variant of Fedora Silverblue, so there are some quirks. If you want normal Fedora but with KDE, there is a KDE spin available: https://spins.fedoraproject.org/kde/
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