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Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

kevin-custer.com

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Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#371

Post by lucb1e »

beart wrote: post #120
Darmody wrote: post #116

I've been using Ubuntu 20.04 for several weeks, almost since beta came out. The snap thing is a pain in the ass. I understand the need for something like snap or flatpak. I had software too new or too old that wouldn't work because some dependencies were not updated or were too new. Snaps can solve that by allowing the developers to provide everything you need (or everything you need that is not on your system). But…

multiple monitor support in Linux is high on my list of reasons I keep switching back to my Windows partition.

You're talking about connecting an external screen to a laptop or two monitors on a desktop and using it in only-display/only-laptop/mirror/separate screens mode right?

To be fair, my Thinkpad from work is the first laptop that has issues with when (dis)connecting a screen. When disconnecting I need to turn on the laptop screen before disconnecting; for connecting I can usually log in without screen and use Super+P to switch modes and that fixes it.

But other than this first instance, I never heard of this being an issue and people here talk about it as if it's commonplace. I must have used or seen Linux used on at least 30 laptops with 2 (or more) screens without issue in the last ~10 years, counting the ones at my previous employer as one because they were all the same hardware even if people ran different distributions.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#372

Post by lucb1e »

isatty wrote: post #280
beart wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

multiple monitor support in Linux is high on my list of reasons I keep switching back to my Windows partition.

Is multi monitor support in Linux broken? I've been going strong for ages with proprietary nvidia drivers and i3/dwm.

Same here with open source drivers and Cinnamon/lightdm.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#373

Post by eternauta3k »

sour-taste wrote: post #99
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s a bit rich: are they not the #1 consumer distro, which hardly implies they are failing to execute All the hard work to make it a viable OS is done by Debian. Canonical just adds some polish and then wrecks it all with poor design decisions over and over again.

Then why doesn't everyone use Debian?

Lots of software out there with Ubuntu PPAs.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#374

Post by gdevenyi »

jaytaylor wrote: post #6

Kudos to the OP, I'm glad this got posted on hacker news because Snap is so ridiculously broken. Since 16.04, Snaps have been a huge pain for me with running LXC in production environments. By default, Snap applies updates and restarts Systemd services anytime it likes, and there's no way to turn this behavior off! The only way to get around it is to download the Snap package binary and install that directly. Then Sn…

Snaps also are completely broken for NFS mounted home and data directories with automount. Which is the classic corporate Linux deployment. Of course, systemd doesn't even support wildcard automount....

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#375

Post by jabirali »

snazz wrote: post #174
im3w1l wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's still visible in ls, it's not a fix.

Make an alias that adds ls --hide the same way you do for ls --color.

The issue is that you have to continue "fixing" lots of individual utilities. In addition to your file manager and `ls`, what about tools like `fd`/`rg`/`ag` (requires adding `snap` to `~/.ignore` or `~/.gitignore`), `fzf` navigation in the terminal (may require updating `FZF_DEFAULT_COMMAND`), "open file" and "save file" dialogs in non-GNOME apps (like Zotero), and so on. The `snap` directory keeps popping up in new places, and discovering all the different ways to hide a non-dot-file is exhausting. In contrast, adding that initial dot to the `snap` directory would avoid the problem entirely.

I have still been using `snap` for the past year, and have mostly been happy with it. It works well for apps like `spotify` and `zotero`, it's a better solution than `ppa` for third-party software, and I like that it tries to introduce a permission model. But not following the dotfile convention is annoying, and not prioritizing a search-and-replace of `~/snap` to e.g. `~/.snap` in the code after four years is strange when this is their most upvoted bug.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#376

Post by _pgmf »

cassiet wrote: post #349
robocat wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and they just can't execute That’s a bit rich: are they not the #1 consumer distro, which hardly implies they are failing to execute. A successful product has missteps, so what. > I don't want to run that garbage on my desktop. So don’t. Why complain that others do? I use Ubuntu because it works and I can mostly find information about how to do what I want. There are major aspects of Ubuntu I don’t like (Gnome, Sna…

Most of HN is shitting on popular things with a hot take and a smug condescending tone, usually erroneously. If Conical hadn’t tried new projects and failed, the poster would complain that they never innovate. People complain like this because they have no real control of their own lives. It makes them feel smart, if only they were in control, then things would be better. It would be so easy, the people in charge mus…

>Projecting this hard.

The shortcomings of snap are well documented. I assumed anyone reading the comments would have been aware of them. But apparently some people will jump on any chance to virtue-signal.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#377

Post by enriquto »

Barrin92 wrote: post #291
teraflop wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Props to Microsoft, for getting their approach to Windows updates adopted as an industry standard! /s

I think automatic updates on all platforms are probably an immense net benefit to the world given the huge degree of security vulnerabilities it avoids. Ubuntu users may be more tech proficient than average users but even for developer machines, I think it takes a lot of concern out of the equation if the software is up-to-date. As far as I'm concerned this doesn't deserve an '/s'.

The option to have automatic updates (whether it is enabled by default or not) is an entirely different issue than the obligation to have automatic updates. The first one is a blessing, the second one is a nightmare.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#378

Post by enriquto »

Denvercoder9 wrote: post #141
bmn__ wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need the iOS/Android model for permissions on desktop. This model is terrible. OS asks up-front: program wants permissions to do A, B, C, X, Y, Z: grant/refuse? You the user decide that the program should not be allowed to do X, so you refuse. Now the program will not run at all. That's about the worst design possible. A 10 year old can brainstorm a better design within a few minutes. Investigate prior art: man…

At least on recent Android versions the apps only ask for permissions when they actually need them, not on install time, and you can grant/refuse individual permissions.

> At least on recent Android versions the apps only ask for permissions when they actually need them, not on install time, and you can grant/refuse individual permissions.

Still, this is not practical enough. A true user-centric strategy would be to offer "mock-permissions" to an app, so that if an app says that it needs to read your home dir, you grant mock permission to the app, and it sees an empty home dir, not yours. From the point of view of the app, it should be impossible to know if it has been granted the real permission or just a mock permission.

Re: Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

#380

Post by Darmody »

sandov wrote: post #305
Darmody wrote: post #116

I've been using Ubuntu 20.04 for several weeks, almost since beta came out. The snap thing is a pain in the ass. I understand the need for something like snap or flatpak. I had software too new or too old that wouldn't work because some dependencies were not updated or were too new. Snaps can solve that by allowing the developers to provide everything you need (or everything you need that is not on your system). But…

On 18.04 it takes like a full second, sometimes two, to open the calculator anyway.

They changed those apps to normal packages in 19.04 or 19.10.
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