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Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

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Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#451

Post by michaelcampbell »

gmassman wrote: post #392
michaelcampbell wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have meager needs so I haven't run into (m)any of the issues here, but what's a deb based alternative that isn't meant for absolute stability at the expense of anything modern? (I ask with actual curiosity; I'm ignorant to most distros.)

FWIW I’ve been using Linux Mint for years and have never had a major issue. Most minor issues are with out of date repository packages which can usually be installed by other means.

Isn't Mint an ubuntu offshoot, or does it avoid the flatpak/snap issues?

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#452

Post by rascul »

dizhn wrote: post #356
Jnr wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reasons they ship it with servers as well. So the first task after getting ubuntu up and running, you have to uninstall snap.

LXD is a legit product. Too bad they only ship it as snaps. I think Debian finally has packages for it but I haven't tested it. I actually stopped using it because I don't want to use an Ubuntu stewarded project. More and more it's getting harder to use plain lxc. Almost all resources are talking about it in an lxd context nowadays.

openSUSE has natively packaged LXD in their official repo. Looks like Debian bookworm does as well.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#453

Post by ParetoOptimal »

noirscape wrote: post #152
qbasic_forever wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing stopping someone from making a flatpak or other similar tech feed or 'store' that's only the curated apps they deem appropriate for users. Bugs should be fixed upstream, not kept in distro specific silos. There's no reason why only a packager can fix some upstream issues or become a contributor. On the contrary shipping your app as a universal tech like flatpak means Redhat, Debian, Arch or any other…

> Bugs should be fixed upstream, not kept in distro specific silos. This is mostly a Debian issue fwiw. Debian is literally notable because they're obsessed with making sure that any package in their repositories is kept with the same "API"[0], no matter how old the software is. The result is that Debian packages can end up hugely derivative compared to the equivalent of upstream and other distros, but it's usually a…

> The extreme end is nix, which actively requires you to have the upstream written with nix in mind because nix will basically demand you configure the source code in ways to accommodate for it.

I'm pretty sure this isn't true.

What does upstream emacs have to do for Nix to provide https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/nixos-22.11/pkgs/appli...

I will agree though that applications which have their own update mechanism or do other things that make reproducibility harder are much more difficult to create a Nix expression for.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#454

Post by Bellamy »

tacker2000 wrote: post #312

Moved to Debian a while ago because of the mess with Unity and snaps, etc… A shame, since ubuntu got me into linux desktop back then, but in the end they keep screwing things up needlessly.

I didn't, but my next OS won't be Ubuntu for the same reasons.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#455

Post by pmarreck »

The more struggle Linux users have with snaps, flatpaks, appimages, and whatever their native package management system's quirks are, the more they will appreciate switching to NixOS one day, which IMHO is "the only sane Linux" as it's already definitively solved this problem. Join me in shaking my head at all this from the finish line...

And honestly, I get it. I avoided it for years (it's 20 years old now!!) mostly because the nix language and words like "derivations" scared me*, until a year ago after hopping distros for quite a while (hmmm Elementary, Pop_OS, Ubuntu, Manjaro, Arch...) and after a month where I had both a bricking AND a seemingly-unsolvable interdependency build problem, I got mad and decided to take a deep breath and check out https://nixos.org/

* here, let me immediately solve that fear: Nix interactive language tour, it's like JSON with syntax sugar and pure functions: https://nixcloud.io/tour/ . And a "derivation"? That's basically a "lockfile" for a particular package, if you know what that is (and you probably do). Except it existed before the concept of "lockfiles", so it got that name.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#456

Post by skrtskrt »

webkike wrote: post #400
eYrKEC2 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me a noob if you like, but I don't like hunting down drivers. Tried to go to debian on my last dev machine upgrade, but reverted straight back to ubuntu. I may be lazy, but I really don't want to hunt down drivers. I'll try debian again next cycle.

I haven't had trouble with drivers using Fedora in years. RPM fusion handles Nvidia drivers just fine. It's a far cleaner and "noob friendly" distro in my opinion, so long as you're able to google "how to install nvidia drivers fedora"

Yeah I use both Fedora and OpenSuse (Tumbleweed) and it's a really stupid easy no-config setup on both distros.

Ubuntu is just maddening.

Pop OS is nice out of the box too, but I just don't want to use Ubuntu derivatives at this point even if they've removed snaps

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#457

Post by vorvac »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #265
lumb63 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canonical seems to be trying to push users off of Ubuntu. I switched to Arch from Ubuntu about 6 years ago after seeing how aggressively Ubuntu would auto-update, and because of Zeitgeist. I would never look back. Arch is customizable, simple (in the sense that there are no surprises; things work as expected), and has a great community. Folks here can argue about snaps or flatpaks, and I can happily use AUR to instal…

I also switched to arch for a bit, but then I was left with an unbootable system after the arch devs shipped grub's master branch as stable. The arch devs were completely unapologetic and told me 'well maybe you shouldn't use arch if you can't recover a system who won't boot' Immediately formatted and switched to pop OS and I've never been happier.

https://archlinux.org/news/grub-bootloader-upgrade-and-confi...

In regards to this specific incident, The Arch team did release a statement on how to handle the update.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#458

Post by hoppyhoppy2 »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #451
gmassman wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW I’ve been using Linux Mint for years and have never had a major issue. Most minor issues are with out of date repository packages which can usually be installed by other means.

Isn't Mint an ubuntu offshoot, or does it avoid the flatpak/snap issues?

Linux Mint is an Ubuntu offshoot that doesn't use Snaps but does include Flatpak support.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#459

Post by techwizrd »

JeremyNT wrote: post #440
wilonth wrote: post #161

Wow they're still pushing snaps, the project with some the worst engineering I've ever seen. - Extremely slow at doing anything, even the most basic commands. - Ridiculous auto-update mechanism (you can't even disable it wtf). - Random, nonsense limitations (why can't I open dot files and dot directories???). So terrible that for most apps that I installed with snaps I end up installing the deb version later on. What…

This is some crazy NIH syndrome from Canonical. We've been here before, of course - they pushed their own DE (the original Unity, not the current GNOME theme) for a while as a competitor to GNOME, and they also pushed Upstart over systemd. There are probably other cases I'm missing. Eventually they gave up on those pet projects for pragmatic reasons, but Snaps seem to be the hill they want to die on (presumably for i…

This is bone-headed NIH move from Canonical, but I don't think either of those are good examples. Both Unity and Upstart were released prior to Gnome 3.0 and Systemd respectively and had a quite a significant investment in development time from developers and Canonical as well as an existing base of regular users and corporate users.

The original Unity DE was released in 2010 prior to the release of Gnome 3.0 in 2011. Upstart was originally included in Ubuntu in 2006 to replace sysvinit, and writing upstart scripts was a huge breath of fresh air. Systemd was released in 2010.

As a developer and user, I hate snaps _and_ flatpak. Both are user-hostile and constant source of problems requiring hours of Googling (especially the Flatpak sandbox!). I ended up purging both from my system a month ago and have been much happier since.

Re: Ubuntu stops shipping Flatpak by default

#460

Post by josteink »

groestl wrote: post #223
CalRobert wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snaps are getting me off Desktop Ubuntu after 12 years of happily using it.

I left Ubuntu server and lxd because of it. Maybe a bit emotional, but f*ck that, I don't need this in my life.

I’ve switched everything off Ubuntu but my servers. That bit is just too much effort and I can’t be bothered yet.

Next server though. Not Ubuntu for sure. Probably Debian?

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