Oh God... I am not going to repeat myself. To put it briefly: Snap Store is Canonical's Play Store.
Snap Store administrators removed signal-desktop from Ubuntu Snap
321–330 of 443 posts
Re: Snap Store administrators removed signal-desktop from Ubuntu Snap
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Signal developers have the freedom to distribute their application in any way they see fit. If they don't want to support your machine then that's their choice. You're free to set up a fork if you want to see change in this regard, as long as you don't violate their trademark and terms of service. I don't use gnome-calculator on Windows because there's no official Windows distribution available for that platform.…
Just read this since you aren't familiar with the context: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/1758
I'm well aware of Signal's history with non-official distribution and alternative clients. How they distribute their official binaries is still up to them, though. They clearly don't care enough about AppImages (and other means of distribution) to put any effort into them.
Re: Snap Store administrators removed signal-desktop from Ubuntu Snap
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
The name for the Signal Desktop package is signal-desktop and Signal provides instructions on their website on how to add their deb repository.
Too difficult. Their install instructions are also too complicated and involve reading about 5 lines of comments and 4 shell commands. It should NEVER be more than 1 line of shell or 2 mouse clicks to install anything. This is 2022, not 1995. It's faster to just search for "signal" in the snap store and hit "Install".
It’s true, they should distribute a .deb that ensures the repo and key are installed so it gets updates. However, your suggestion that they should just capitulate and allow 3rd parties to violate trademark seems like a pretty bad take.
Re: Snap Store administrators removed signal-desktop from Ubuntu Snap
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
Moxies always been fairly dictatorial about Signal. no third party clients, no decentralization. im not surprised to see a DMCA at all. So far Signal is a centralized encrypted messaging app that includes its own cryptocurrency and wallet no one asked for, shills me for donations every other release, and begs me to invite new users despite deprecating regular SMS message support. if youre a threat-actor the most male…
This doesn’t change the fact that signal is the best option for my grandma to use still. Moxie is no longer active in signal afaik. This is the new leadership.
What about Element?
Re: Snap Store administrators removed signal-desktop from Ubuntu Snap
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
What alternative do you propose?
What if there was some sort of a store of snaps where you could download vetted packages with a graphical interface. A snap store, if you will.
Sounds great as long as they get proper permission to distribute the software they’re distributing. Otherwise it’s just another untrusted party in the supply chain
Re: Snap Store administrators removed signal-desktop from Ubuntu Snap
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's 5 lines. Took me 30 seconds. Well worth it for the performance gains. wget -O- https://updates.signal.org/desktop/apt/keys.asc | gpg --dearmor > signal-desktop-keyring.gpg && cat signal-desktop-keyring.gpg | sudo tee -a /usr/share/keyrings/signal-desktop-keyring.gpg > /dev/null && echo 'deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/signal-desktop-keyring.gpg] https://updates.signal.org/desktop/apt xenial main' |…
Yeah, let's teach users to paste sudo commands into the terminal. That's great.
Unless you audit every line of code the one liner executed, reviewing that one line doesn’t add much value.
Re: Snap Store administrators removed signal-desktop from Ubuntu Snap
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
My grandma uses WhatsApp Web and Facebook hasn't taken down the WhatsApp Web snap yet. Both are end to end encrypted and based on the same transport but one of them used copyright law to take down a redistribution of their application. Looks to me like Signal is the interior app here.
If you look at anything through a narrow enough lens you can make it look good.
If "a messenger that works" is a narrow lens, then sure. WhatsApp is still as secure as it ever was and everyone is already on it.
Signal had one feature it did better than its competitors and that's allowing integration of SMS. That feature is now getting killed because of RCS issues. With all my contacts on similar chat apps, I don't see why I should keep Signal installed once they remove the SMS feature, let alone why I should convince my grandma to make the switch.
"But Facebook is evil and wants to control you and wants to suck your blood" yes and so do the companies that made our phones and mobile operating systems. What's the point of Signal's openness (well, "open", they did stop uploading the source code for a while when they were adding in their crypto scheme) if you still use it on a proprietary phone.
And no, Linux on neither mobile devices nor the desktop is grandma-ready.
Re: Snap Store administrators removed signal-desktop from Ubuntu Snap
#328How in the world did a walled garden ecosystem like Snap manage to embed itself so deeply into Linux culture? There needs to be a user and industry revolt against Snap for this sort of shenanigans.
My thoughts exactly. Thankfully there are other distros out there and you do not have to use Ubuntu.
Re: Snap Store administrators removed signal-desktop from Ubuntu Snap
#329How in the world did a walled garden ecosystem like Snap manage to embed itself so deeply into Linux culture? There needs to be a user and industry revolt against Snap for this sort of shenanigans.
You want a revolt against snap for ... Signal sending DMCA takedowns?
No... there are many reasons to revolt against snap. That, and software that gets released on Snap Store only is definitely not worth using. Sorry for not having elaborated as to why snap sucks, but I have written so many comments on it already. I may look them up and bookmark them for future reference.
Re: Snap Store administrators removed signal-desktop from Ubuntu Snap
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
Signal never gave canonical permission to distribute a binary called Signal. Canonical just went ahead and did it anyway. How is this Signal’s fault?
It's Signal's fault for getting lawyers involved before communicating with the people that put the alternative up. If it's that much of a problem, asking nicely would probably have worked. They could even set up a mechanism to transfer users to the official distribution if they wanted to put in the effort to help their users. As a side note, "Signal" is a generic English word. The logo is a generic speech bubble. Cop…
Signal isn’t saying no one can use the word signal. The problem arises when you use all of their branding together in such a way that could plausibly fool someone into thinking it’s their software, which very much appears to have happened here (see this entire thread full of people who installed this trademark violating build thinking it was legit)