71–80 of 201 posts
Snap and flatpak are massive compared to "traditional" packages.
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I personally use ubuntu and have used snap enough to get thoroughly burned and annoyed by it. Slow starts, no auto-update controls with bad defaults corrupting running programs, spammed mount points... (edit: see comment below for some limited controls to reduce the frequency of auto-updates) But, unless I'm missing something about latest or future releases, isn't it still optional? Can't you use apt instead and unin…
Firefox is only available as snap now. I gues it's bthe same for other apps. For VSCode I managed to download a deb from their site IIRC, but from apt it only suggests to download from snap.
VScode wasn't as bad, as it usually seemed to work (but maybe flaky plugins were actually caused by snap?) but it was certainly annoying to lose the ability to switch between windows of the same app (alt+~, I think this was a custom setting to resemble mac) if the latest window/project was opened as a new version of the app (alt+tab)
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I personally use ubuntu and have used snap enough to get thoroughly burned and annoyed by it. Slow starts, no auto-update controls with bad defaults corrupting running programs, spammed mount points... (edit: see comment below for some limited controls to reduce the frequency of auto-updates) But, unless I'm missing something about latest or future releases, isn't it still optional? Can't you use apt instead and unin…
> But, unless I'm missing something about latest or future releases, isn't it still optional? Can't you use apt instead and uninstall snapd altogether? There seem to be more and more things that are only delivered as snaps. I haven't used Ubuntu on the desktop in a while (and even then, it was just trying it out), but I remember that trying to apt install would say "use the snap". I think LXD is in that case, for exa…
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If you're a programmer I'd say Arch or Debian then configure as per your needs. As long as you don't do things blindly it will be very stable and blazing fast.
In my experience, Manjaro is a great, user-friendly version of Arch. YMMV, but I highly recommend it!
Please correct me if I am wrong, but you can simply snap install with a --channel, which could be a specific version. This way it is not auto updating, since it's on that specific channel/version.
More about how snap channels work here. https://ubuntu.com/blog/controlling-snap-releases-with-chann...
> The issue that makes us resist the idea of simply disabling updates altogether is that very often that will mean never update rather than update at someone’s discretion, and then we’re getting back to some of the problems that got us here in the first place. I’m sorry, who owns the machine here?
Counter point for general software: some people don't upgrade software for _years_, due to which vendors have two problems - 1. Open security vulnerabilities 2. Necessity to maintain backward compatible infra To offset this, two channels of releases can be maintained - one for security fixes, another for general features etc. But again here, we run into problems where maintenance of two channels isn't economical, and…
sounds like a user problem
Can someone explain why I'd use snap or flatpak over the distros repo or manual install for something not in the repo or unavailable via adding a repo? Apart from auto-managed updates. Snap and flatpak are massive compared to "traditional" packages.
Over distro repos - no dependency version hell.
I don’t really love snap/flatpak (too much “magic”, hard to tweak installs) but I see why they get used.
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We switched over to Fedora, way better
I'm switching to debian my next install. It's similar enough internally
Running sid is an option, but the amount of fiddly Debian magic you end up needing to learn when it breaks is IME not smaller than the effort of setting up a mostly-unpatched rolling-release like Arch (and I’m sure there are other options). Given that e.g. Arch’s packaging is simple enough it’s no big deal to package even your personal collection of handy scripts (and so the system does not develop funny-looking mold and bits of mystery food all over the place), I don’t really see the point. Just don’t update it when you’re on a deadline.
You can see that my arguments here are to a great extent a matter of preference and personal circumstances, though: do you have a reliable Internet connection for troubleshooting? do you prefer a more solid system that you have to fight and that fails badly but rarely or a less solid one that fails more often but in small ways? does getting locked out of the graphical environment every couple of years count as small?
(Offer not applicable on machines with cursed hardware like nVidia or Broadcom.)
> The issue that makes us resist the idea of simply disabling updates altogether is that very often that will mean never update rather than update at someone’s discretion, and then we’re getting back to some of the problems that got us here in the first place. I’m sorry, who owns the machine here?
I see they're honestly trying to ease life for technically illiterate users (or, put it another way, to chase Apple's "just works" experience). But ignoring the needs of professional users (who are influencers) is a sure way to divert all users.