Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri) • Hacker News Board

Re: Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri)

#21

Post by ahartmetz » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:43 PM UTC

evrflx wrote: post #8

u10242 wrote: post #6

And Firefox is a snap package now; the .deb will go away next release. Canonical finally managed to make me switch back to Debian.

Is there an alternative source for non-snap Firefox? snapd is the first thing I nuke on fresh installs. I would like to stay with Ubuntu, if possible.

Possibly getting Firefox from Debian Sid (unstable). Will require some advanced apt configuration to make sure that nothing else accidentally comes from sid, and might break or require further apt configuration changes if it starts requiring library versions that aren't in Ubuntu.

I use Ubuntu and I sometimes install Debian Sid packages by downloading them in a browser and installing them with dpkg.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri)

#22

Post by yaks_hairbrush » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:45 PM UTC

bingohbangoh wrote: post #11

ehutch79 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is the hotplugging for external gpus, over thunderbolt or something?

piggy-backing -- is there a use case for hotplugging of GPUs?

I have a macbook air with an egpu connected by a thunderbolt 3 port. I unplug the gpu when I want to take the laptop somewhere, and plug in back in when I'm at my desk.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri)

#23

Post by zeusk » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:48 PM UTC

bingohbangoh wrote: post #11

ehutch79 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is the hotplugging for external gpus, over thunderbolt or something?

piggy-backing -- is there a use case for hotplugging of GPUs?

Yes, Windows uses it for suspending discrete GPUs on laptops to save on power, for designs like surface book, for external GPUs and some more server scenarios.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri)

#24

Post by jgb1984 » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

u10242 wrote: post #6

And Firefox is a snap package now; the .deb will go away next release. Canonical finally managed to make me switch back to Debian.

As a 20+ years Debian user I've never seen the added value of Ubuntu. Why use a derivative if you can get the real thing?

Re: Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri)

#25

Post by BiteCode_dev » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:50 PM UTC

u10242 wrote: post #6

And Firefox is a snap package now; the .deb will go away next release. Canonical finally managed to make me switch back to Debian.

In their mind it makes sense: firefox is a user facing app that is frequently updated and requires a lot of dependencies. Perfect candidate for a snap.

But yeah, up to now, snaps really sucked, and flatpak is winning.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri)

#26

Post by larntz » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:51 PM UTC

chomp wrote: post #19

drcongo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone whose only experience with linux is servers and Raspberry Pi, can you tell me what's wrong with snaps? I've only used them on a self-hosted NextCloud and my experience with them has been decent, but I see a lot of dislike for them on HN.

There's pros and cons. It helps developers because they aren't restricted to the distro's shipped library versions, they can build against what they need. It also confines the app to a sandbox. The downsides are that the packages end up larger because they ship with all of the necessary bundled libraries (which can also increase memory usage of the application because it can't share the libraries loaded in RAM by the…

Also I think snap is an Ubuntu thing vs flatpak and appimage which are more distro agnostic. That's my issue with it/Ubuntu. They are doing good things, but at the same time I don't feel they are as "open" as other linux distros.

Also, snapd is installed by default on their servers and it's not as to remove as it should be.

This is one of the reason that I will always choose a different distro if I have the choice.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri)

#27

Post by BiteCode_dev » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

jgb1984 wrote: post #24

u10242 wrote: post #6

And Firefox is a snap package now; the .deb will go away next release. Canonical finally managed to make me switch back to Debian.

As a 20+ years Debian user I've never seen the added value of Ubuntu. Why use a derivative if you can get the real thing?

It works out of the box for most hardware, install proprietary things easily, including drivers and codecs, and have more up to date softwares. It also have lots of usability tweaks.

You can, have all that with debian, but then you have to do the work.

I don't want to do the work if canonical can do it for me.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri)

#28

Post by andrewshadura » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

u10242 wrote: post #6

And Firefox is a snap package now; the .deb will go away next release. Canonical finally managed to make me switch back to Debian.

I've just completed apt upgrade -t testing on my pre-release impish. Good to be back again.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri)

#29

Post by CarelessExpert » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

jgb1984 wrote: post #24

u10242 wrote: post #6

And Firefox is a snap package now; the .deb will go away next release. Canonical finally managed to make me switch back to Debian.

As a 20+ years Debian user I've never seen the added value of Ubuntu. Why use a derivative if you can get the real thing?

First and foremost, package recency.

If you run stable, which is released as snapshots ala Ubuntu, the packages are ancient.

If you run testing, which is a rolling distro ala Arch, they're a lot newer and pretty solid, but security updates lag.

If you run unstable, which is also rolling, things can (rarely) break.

Additionally, Ubuntu has decided to incorporate non-free software and drivers right into the base product, which gives a better out-of-the-box experience. In Debian this is all opt-in and requires a bit more effort.

Now, I run Debian testing on my laptop, and I'm a huge fan of the distribution, not the least because Debian is the bedrock on which at least a half a dozen other distros are built. But I can acknowledge that their more conservative approach to packaging does have its downsides.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri)

#30

Post by hdjjhhvvhga » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:58 PM UTC

chomp wrote: post #19

drcongo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone whose only experience with linux is servers and Raspberry Pi, can you tell me what's wrong with snaps? I've only used them on a self-hosted NextCloud and my experience with them has been decent, but I see a lot of dislike for them on HN.

There's pros and cons. It helps developers because they aren't restricted to the distro's shipped library versions, they can build against what they need. It also confines the app to a sandbox. The downsides are that the packages end up larger because they ship with all of the necessary bundled libraries (which can also increase memory usage of the application because it can't share the libraries loaded in RAM by the…

You have skipped quite a few downsides. Anyway, the biggest one is that what was previously an app is now a separate environment that is sometimes hard to control. If I wanted to run an app in a sandbox, I would have run it in a sandbox. People have run into all possible problems with snaps in the past, it has been discussed on HN ad naueseam [0] [1].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24383341

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24129208