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Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

techtudor.blogspot.com

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Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#51

Post by 2ion »

FZY0E1RnLM wrote: post #42
amelius wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I want: - a user-space install option - rollback functionality (!) - being able to install multiple versions at the same time and switch between them - if I really need to: being able to install the latest version (and even an unstable release); if that means that apt-get has to download and compile stuff, then I'm ok with that.

Sounds like Nix or Guix.

No streamlined enterprise support (insurance), no nix or guix, except for running ON established enterprise linux distributions.

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#52

Post by gentleman11 »

dilandau wrote: post #39
billme wrote: post #19

Largest issue I have with Snap is that it appears to assume the owner of a system is not in best position to make choices for their own systems. Sure, this might be true for the average user, but it is toxic to the “super user” community that’s in the best position to help support the larger community and may end up pushing them away. Snap at the very least should have an opt-out feature, if not be opt-in during an i…

There are parallels with the Gnome team's stance that "we know what's best for you", and that turns off a lot of linux users. There is a tension between those who wish to turn linux into Mac OS or Windows, and those who want fine-grained control over the workings of their computer. The arrogance of the gnome team and the snap apologists is a huge red flag to me. I don't use Ubuntu or Gnome, and I'm glad linux provide…

I find gnome to be pretty configurable. The opinionated defaults aren’t so bad because you can just replace the environment if you dislike it

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#53

Post by RealStickman_ »

clircle wrote: post #12

Snaps and flatpak help Linux work for me. My ideal desktop is a stable core with a few select user applications that I can keep current. Thanks to snaps/flatpak I can run Debian stable on my personal desktop, but keep emacs, firefox, and a few more apps at their most recent versions.

I'd like to point out that, as far as I know nobody or very few people have problems with flatpak.

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#54

Post by 2ion »

gentleman11 wrote: post #45

Devils advocate: it is plain weird for every app I install to have so much file system and system access. It’s nice to have a sandboxed solution built in. It would be nice if it was a solution that didn’t have the problems that this article listed, but snaps could be adapted to be good with a few changes. Why a proprietary backend though? I suppose cannonical views packaged apps as a platform opportunity and wants to…

> Devils advocate: it is plain weird for every app I install to have so much file system and system access. It’s nice to have a sandboxed solution built in. It would be nice if it was a solution that didn’t have the problems that this article listed, but snaps could be adapted to be good with a few changes.

Exactly. Personally I have been sticking my desktop programs into "firejail"-managed "containers" for a long time. It's a good thing that a similar solution has been implemented that is suitable to bring this too the masses.

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#55

Post by nerdbaggy »

oarsinsync wrote: post #17
nerdbaggy wrote: post #7

One of my big things with snap is how it locks the snap into the home directory. I get why they do that but it would be nice to override[1]. In my case I want to play audio files outside of my home directory but VLC doesn’t have access. And VLC now only updates the snaps and not it’s repos so you have to use the snaps.[2] [1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snapd/+bug/1643706 [2] https://www.videolan.org/vl…

The website you linked ( https://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-ubuntu.html ) says: > If you wish to install the traditional deb package, it is available as usual via APT, with all security and critical bug fixes. However, there will be no major VLC version updates until the next Ubuntu release. This is in line with Ubuntu (and Debian) repo policies. You do not get major software updates in between distribution update…

Ohh yeah I misread that

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#56

Post by schmichael »

FZY0E1RnLM wrote: post #42
amelius wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I want: - a user-space install option - rollback functionality (!) - being able to install multiple versions at the same time and switch between them - if I really need to: being able to install the latest version (and even an unstable release); if that means that apt-get has to download and compile stuff, then I'm ok with that.

Sounds like Nix or Guix.

Lots of package management systems support these features. Even MSIs from Microsoft despite Windows ironically lacking a centralized repo until recently.

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#57

Post by cycloptic »

oblio wrote: post #24
kd913 wrote: post #10

You people do realize that snaps have been around for 4 years right? It has widespread first party support from various companies including Microsoft, Amazon, Mozilla, Google, Spotify, JetBrains etc... They have wide spread adoption with almost 10x the install base of Flatpaks. Do you guys really need to keep throwing blogs at something which isn't going away and is useful to users? How is this useful in anyway? Cano…

systemd went away. Oh, wait...

The thing about that is, even systemd contains bits of functionality that overlap with snap/flatpak now.

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#58

Post by ludamad »

gentleman11 wrote: post #52
dilandau wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are parallels with the Gnome team's stance that "we know what's best for you", and that turns off a lot of linux users. There is a tension between those who wish to turn linux into Mac OS or Windows, and those who want fine-grained control over the workings of their computer. The arrogance of the gnome team and the snap apologists is a huge red flag to me. I don't use Ubuntu or Gnome, and I'm glad linux provide…

I find gnome to be pretty configurable. The opinionated defaults aren’t so bad because you can just replace the environment if you dislike it

The problem is configuration churn. A lot of gnome2 stuff didn't carry over if I recall and had to be reinvented for gnome3

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#59

Post by Darmody »

SweetestRug wrote: post #5

I had been an Ubuntu user for almost 16 years, on servers, laptops, and recently containers. The snap situation with Ubuntu is just plain unpalatable, both in principal and in practice. I became so disappointed in the move by Canonical that I finally left Ubuntu altogether and no longer recommend it to friends and colleagues. It takes years to cultivate a garden, but only minutes to destroy it.

If any Canonical employee is around here they should be taking notes or this will blow in their face like Upstart, Mir, Unity 8, etc.

Or maybe Shuttleworth doesn't care at all and he just wants the big bucks from MS.

Re: Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu

#60

Post by RealStickman_ »

rlpb wrote: post #9

> The backend is proprietary. GitHub is proprietary. I understand that some people don't accept that either. But if you accept and use GitHub, then you should have no problem with snaps on this basis. Also, on this topic, consider this quote[1]: "We did that experiment with Launchpad; the people who said they wouldn’t use it because it wasn’t open source were the same people promoting a closed source alternative. Whe…

Gitlab is one open source alternative to Github.

> refusing updates forever is also anti-social and unacceptable

Woah, what?

What about Flatpak or AppImage?

It is not really optional if you have to specifically prevent Snap from being installed again.

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