Snaps at least integrate into the command line will. Flatpak running dolphin it’s flatpak run org.kde.Dolphin or something compared to snap which is just “dolphin” Doesn’t change the fact that you can’t get snaps to use Breeze which is unacceptable.
@azurefirefly@spez If I recall correctly you can autocomplete the package name. I understand what you mean, having this long names can be underproductive when you know only one app exists with that name, but imagine having various apps with the same name. This naming allows for easier identification
You don’t have to. You can just write a bash script once that creates the alias automatically for every flatpak you install.
Or use one that someone else wrote.
Yeah, that. That’s exactly the problem. To quote @Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever above, who put it much better than I could:
. . . the main issues boil down to concerns over some parts of the Snap ecosystem being closed source, Canonical’s ongoing efforts to try to get some of the Red Hat “premium linux” money, and arguments that other solutions (e.g. flatpaks and appimages) are “just as good, if not better”. And it doesn’t help that Canonical/Ubuntu is increasingly pushing snap as “the only solution” for some applications.
When you speak of no single One True Way and things being completely open source, Canonical/Ubuntu have already left the chat.
Gotta be honest, as a dev I tried to make a Flatpack of my app and gave up. Making a snap was much easier. Of course, I also offer it as a .deb, .rpm, Pacman package, etc. too
I still don't even know what problem snap and flatpak were intended to solve. Just apt or dnf installing from the command line, or even using the distro provided store app, has always been sufficient for me.
Modern Linux distros tend to have configuration and dependency issues where certain packages if installed the “Linux Way” doesn’t completely work as desired at times depending on the distro or even a desktop spin (which might have different default libraries installed than the “main” one). Flatpak is a single configuration meant to work one single way across all distributions and has become more of a standard, usable way for Linux applications to just work.
Use Flatpak. Easy to install and easy to tweak from flatseal or similar GUI Flatpak permission tweakers if you want more flexibility at the possible cost of security.
The idea is that the application may want libraries asynchronously of the distribution cadence. Worse, multiple applications may have different cadence and you want to use both (some app breaks with gnome 45 and so it needs gnome 44, and another app requires gnome 46).
Or some pick forks of projects that neglected to change the shared object name or version, so you have two multimedia applications depending on the same exact library name and version, but expecting totally different symbols, or different ‘configure’ options to have been specified when they built the shared library.
So we have this nifty mount namespace to make believe the ‘filesystem’ is whatever a specific application needs, and for that to be scoped to just one.
There’s also an argument about security isolation, but I find that one to be unfulfilled as the applications basically are on the honor system with regards to how much access it requests of the system compared to a ‘normal’ application. So an application can opt into some protection so it can’t accidentally be abused, but if the application wants to deliberately misbehave it’s perfectly allowed to do so.
You can, but that completely negates the reasons why you'd want to have a repo system in the first place. You gotta do the legwork to get updates, for example.
And to be explicit about it, zypper, dnf, apt, flatpak all have a specific mechanism to declare repositories and one ‘update’ check will walk them all.
snap does not, and manually doing a one off is useless. AppImage also has no ‘update’ concept, but it’s a more limited use case in general, it’s a worse habit than any repository based approach.
This isn’t necessarily true - a developer choosing to not include their app in a repo can always opt for a self-updating mechanism.
Don’t get me wrong - repos and tooling to manage all of your apps at once are preferred. But if a developer or user wants to avoid the Canonical controlled repo, I’m just pointing out there are technically ways to do that.
If you’d question why someone would use snap at all at that point… that would be a good question. The point is just that they can, if they want to.
For computer idiots it’s not bad at all. It mostly just works if you don’t mess with it and Canonical relies on it to ship software for Ubuntu. It’s one of those you should know what you’re doing situations if you’re using standard Ubuntu and messing with it. If you remove it, you will have to figure out what’s shipped via snap and how to supplant it if you want it working, among other potential headaches.
Those are all valid points, but there’s one more. As a person who is just coming back to Linux after 25-30 years and relearning it all from scratch, I just don’t want the hassle.
Sure, there’s overlap between distros, Linux is Linux, and any knowledge I might glean from Ubuntu would also largely apply to any other distro – but why should I bother with investing time into a product that is already heading toward future politics and regressive policies when I can just install [NotUbuntu] and swerve the entire mess?
There are hundreds of distros from which to choose these days, literally. Why start with one that’s already obviously moving toward the dark side? For all that I could just stay on Windows. I’m trying to get away from triple-E and paywalls and gatekeeping, not just find different ones.
Right now I’m testing out over a dozen distros on an old laptop in my spare time, and I think the only Ubuntu related one in my list is Pop!_OS, and it’s there only because Pop!_OS doesn’t rely on snap.
It’s one of those you should know what you’re doing situations
And I absolutely DO NOT, so that’s that, lol. These days every brain cell counts, so damned if I’ll waste any time wading into that mess.
No, it does not just work. It removes the option to install updates manually through GUI. If Firefox was running, the only GUI solution is to close it and wait 6 hours or whatever.
My wife was perfectly fine installing updates from the tray with Synaptic. The PC is always connected to the TV with Jellyfin left open in Firefox where she was watching.
So I switched to Manjaro to have a pretty OS that isn’t getting rid of their package manager controlling the most used program.
Ever since the fix for the “Pending update” notification, updating Firefox has been as complicated as closing it and reopening it when you see the notification. The pending update is installed immediately after closing it. It just works for my wife. ☺️
Also I wouldn’t leave her dead without automatic updates.
Yup. Actually I should have said implemented instead of fixed. The implementation was sizeable. I saw some of the PRs. From a user point of view it was a defect fix but in reality it was a non-trivial implementation. I guess that’s why it wasn’t there from the get go.
If something exists in native form, use that. If it doesn't or you want some sandboxing (and there is at least some argument for a containerized version that brings all its needed dependencies, for developers not having to test for every linux for example) there's flatpack or appimage. Snap is just Canonical's proprietary alternative to flatpack. And also worse in basically any aspect. So they shove it down their users throat instead. Even for stuff that would be available natively and should just be installed via the normal package manager. And to make really sure, nobody is avoiding their crap, they also redirect commands, so for example using apt to install your browser automatically redirects your command to snap install...
The default Firefox in Ubuntu is a snap and I only knew that because due to nagging and having to restart constantly while I was using it and had to learn about snaps and how to install Firefox without them on Ubuntu.
Its a packaging model to pseudo-sandbox applications and avoid needing to install all of their dependencies locally… mostly.
There are performance implications but for actual performance critical operations, you are generally willing to install the dependencies (and would likely just run in a container/VM).
But the main issues boil down to concerns over some parts of the Snap ecosystem being closed source, Canonical’s ongoing efforts to try to get some of the Red Hat “premium linux” money, and arguments that other solutions (e.g. flatpaks and appimages) are “just as good, if not better”. And it doesn’t help that Canonical/Ubuntu is increasingly pushing snap as “the only solution” for some applications. Even though users can still just add the appropriate repository to use that with the package manager/sandbox solution of their choice.
Personally? I don’t like the ongoing push. But I also dislike how many applications are basically only supported as appimages (and to a lesser extent, flatpaks). My main issue with canonical that eventually made me switch to a different distro is that they are increasingly advertising their premium repositories. Theoretically, it is the same update frequency for the pro and free repos. Theoretically, I have a bridge to sell anyone who believes that.
But the advantage is that you don’t have to worry about installing some obscure version of a library because this application that was written ten years ago. Even though the vast majority of these are using pretty standard libraries anyway.
Its probably still a net good but I am very much the kind of person who would rather just run a few apt or dnf commands.
It’s actually less about the library being obscure, and more about version conflicts, which is actually more a problem with common libraries.
For example, let’s say you want to install applications A, B, and C, and they each depend on library L. If A depends on Lv1, and B depends on Lv2, and C depends on Lv3, with traditional package management, you’re in a predicament. You can only have one copy of L, and the versions of L may not be compatible.
Solutions like snap, flatpak, appimage, and even things like Docker and other containerization techniques, get around this issue by having applications ship the specific version of the library they need. You end up with more copies of the library, but every application has exactly the version it needs/the developer tested with.
Even a decade ago? Full agree and that is the source of a lot of my grey hairs.
These days? People understand these problems… in large part because the devs are dealing with them too. So there is a much bigger focus on backwards compatibility within a given major (if not minor) release and version tagged libraries so that you can have libfoo.so.1.2.3.4 and libfoo.so.2.4.6.8 installed side by side with no issues.
There are still definitely problem points and that is WHY containerization is more or less required for a production environment.
But in the consumer environment? It is nice and good practice but it is nowhere near as important as it used to be.
The age and obscurity of the library is irrelevant - you could always include libraries bundled with the app, if they didn’t exist in system repos. For example, in deb packages, you could include it in the data.tar portion of the package (see en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deb_(file_format)).
Libraries with version names baked in are one solution to the dependency hell problem, but that requires support from the language/framework/tooling to build the application, and/or the OS (or things get hacky and messy quickly).
If you read that dependency hell page, you’ll see another solution is portable apps, which specifically mentions Appimage, Flatpak, and Snap.
Additionally, if you read the Debian docs on How to Cope with Conflicting Requirements, the first solution they give is to “Install such programs using corresponding sandboxed upstream binary packages,” such as “Flatpak, Snap, or AppImage packages.”
Bin the consumer environment? It is nice and good practice but it is nowhere near as important as it used to be.
I’ll give flatpak and snap one thing: they did make some concession to avoiding duplication, unlike docker which utterly duplicates everything.
With flatpak and snap, applications can depend on/pull in a maintained external layer. So you might want ‘gnome environment, version 43’ and other applications that want that can all share. That layer can be updated independently of dependencies. You might have two instances of the gnome layers (say 43 and 44) due to different applications declaring different versions, but it’s not too bad.
Now there is some duplication, some libraries that an app says “oh, no particular layer for this one, fine I’ll just bundle it”. But at least there’s a mechanism to not necessarily do that for everything.
Canonical is doing the same thing Microsoft is doing with Edge - using its dominant position to push its other products and force out competition, and to lock users (and potentially developers) into its own ecosystem.
Edge is chromium. If anything, it is MS providing an alternative to Chrome. Personally? I like having a browser that is not associated with my google account. Because sometimes you don’t want to have to do the twelve activation steps for a porn site every time you want to rub one out and having a different browser that nobody uses that you can keep a few cookies active in.
And considering Google already HAS that dominance and more or less have defined the ecosystem (to the point that reddit’s WYSIWYG was actively broken in Firefox for months, if not years)… that is a horrible example.
For future reference: A better argument is to reference chrome and the google assistant on an Android. Or siri and safari on an iphone.
Saying that Edge is Chromium is like saying that Manjaro is Arch or diamond is just coal. They’re related, but there’s significant material difference.
When it was introduced in Windows 10, Edge had an immediate and massive surge in its adoption rate. That wasn’t natural growth based on the application’s merits – it was simply a result of Edge being present in new installs.
I’ll add that the ‘pseudo-sandbox’ is of some dubious value, as far as I can tell the app declares how much or little sandboxing it wants and the user doesn’t really get the opportunity to consent or even know that a snap has full access versus limited access.
I’ll also say that some functionality is broken in snaps (and flatpak). For example I used KeepPassXC browser integration, and then when snap was used instead of native, it broke. A number of extensions broke and the development attitude was everyone pointing fingers everywhere else and ultimately saying “just find a ppa with a browser ok?”
I’ll second the “screw it, I give up on packaging, my app is now a monolithic flatpak, snap, appimage, or docker container” mindset of a lot of developers.
It's a bad, slow and inefficient solution for a problem that is already solved. And because nobody would use their proprietary shit over flatpack, they force the users to use it. Even for things that exist natively in the repositories and would need neither snap nor flatpack.
Too late, I’m on Manjaro for the TV computer now. Super annoying when all I use it for is a browser for Jellyfin when the update popup shows up all the time and doesn’t even update when you follow its instructions.
I know and did the workaround a couple times, but updates through apt is one of the major strengths of Linux for me. Or pacman now, whatever Manjaro has.
I should give it a shot. I went with the best sounding option when googling for distros that handle scaling the best. That way I can keep resolution high for movies, but have text at 200% without certain system menus being tiny the way they were on Ubuntu with Gnome.
I recently tried Ubuntu after many years, needed Docker and it told me to install it as a Snap, I thought, OK, whatever. I’m anything but a newbie, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out where the volumes were actually kept. That was the primary reason to abandon this experiment.
To containerize desktop apps I prefer Apptainer/Singularity, that’s pretty portable, usersapce, and requires less tinkering to integrate with the system than Docker. I use it for Zoom and other closed source crap. AppImage is probably the more standard solution for that that’s very similar technologically, but I’m already familiar with Apptainer from work.
Could someone ELI5 whats wrong with snaps? I see hate for them all over the place but as an end user with little technical knowledge of linux packaging they seem fine? I can install them and use them, they don’t appear to have any anti-FOSS gotchas, so whats the big deal?
I think it’s another fine example of Canonical pushing its own products rather than supporting and enhancing existing standards (flatpak and appimage), which people are getting tired of. Also, as I understand it, the snap store itself is proprietary and is therefore controlled by Canonical.
The server isn’t open source, so Canonical has the sole ability to control snap distribution. It’s also yet another example of Canonical’s “Not Invented Here” syndrome, where they constantly reinvent things so they can control it instead of working with the rest of the open source community. They also trick you into using snaps; for example if you explicitly tell it to use apt to install Firefox, it’ll install it as a snap anyways.
Historically they performed really poorly as well, but my understanding is that they’ve largely fixed that issue.
Over time, Canonical will replace close to everything with Snaps. Ubuntu Remixes are not the solution. They just count towards Ubuntu’s installed base and validate Canonical.
that’s why i love that more and more debian based distros are emerging
How many votes in Debian councils does Canonical own these days? The systemd vs Upstart discussion and vote at Debian was so protracted because Canonical bought votes in Debian’s Technological Council.
I didn’t knew that, the canonical influence on debian can really become a problem down the line. I will also checkout more about what canonical did along the years
When I tried looking up current affiliations, I was either super clumsy in googling or potential conflicts of interests are simply not documented. www.debian.org/intro/organization.en.html lists the members but not who sponsors their work and googling each name individually is a bit too much for what’s only superficial curiosity on my part, so I’m honestly out of the loop who is being paid by Canonical these days.
This is what I fear as well. I’m still running Kubuntu, as I have been for years. Next time I build a system it may just be time for Debian Testing or sid. I’ve been messing with both on some Intel NUCs I have laying around.
The ZFS installer was removed from later non-LTS releases. AFAIK, even in the version with the ZFS installer, it wasn’t in the kernel, it was just including the pre-compiled non-DKMS driver module that matched the kernel version.
That’s inaccurate. I’m was running that kernel when it came out, just the kernel no extra modules or anything get added except the libraries and commanda for ZFS and zpool. I’m on a more recent one these days and it’s still the same set up.
I can’t say I care about it being an option in the installer, I’d rather run an advanced install because the installer’s ZFS set up was garbage, everything in one zpool, no branching no data encryption etc etc.
Ubuntu actually bakes it into the kernel for you. I prefer having it in the kernel after having to deal with failed kernel upgrades several times in a row.
Keep in mind, Ubuntu rolls it’s own kernel based on kernel.org release.
Pretty sure optional means optional to use as your FS but not optional on your kernel.
Good to know! I’ll double check my version, then again, I skipped the installer and did things the advanced mode for my install so I might get to skip that issue.
Out of tree still means not part of kernel.org upstream. You’re imagining a tighter ZFS integration than is actually there in Ubuntu simply because of misunderstanding used terminology.
What are you trying to say? They all use ZFS on Linux (today named OpenZFS). Gentoo and Ubuntu aren’t different in that regard. Ubuntu’s QA verifiably sucks, though.
I’d consider Arch too if you’re running ZFS on a client machine, there are like 5 kernel packages ready to go in the archzfs repo with ZFS baked in. I got tired of constantly rolling my own updated Debian packages for software a few years ago and made the jump to Arch and I’m really happy with it, the packaging and build system are a joy to work with compared to debs.
No disrespect intended to Debian here I just got tired of building so many packages to have updated software. EndeavourOS is a good place to start in the Arch ecosystem if you ever feel like checking it out. I run Proxmox on my server boxes as well.
I used to run arch back before the big /usr/lib migration.
I forgot what got me to change to debian but a buddy was talking up the rock hard stability and something dumb happened so I made the switch to debian.
I usually run it as a rolling release (need to point to the version type rather than the codename) in testing. More stable than arch but more recent than stable.
My big reason for wanting it built into a kernel from my source repo is then I don’t have to worry about some bullshit upgrade not actually updating the kernel module like it should have. Dealt with that a few too many times when using ZFS on debian.
I usually run it as a rolling release (need to point to the version type rather than the codename) in testing. More stable than arch but more recent than stable.
Yeah, this was me before I got tired of constantly building my own packages to have current versions of some software. I’ve been pretty content with Arch since I switched to it a few years ago, I still spend some time mucking with packages but nowhere near as much as before. My breaking point with Debian was a new Ryzen laptop a few years ago, I could either package my own kernel for it along with all of the platform software I needed or I could hop over to Arch and just build a patched kernel so I went for it.
My big reason for wanting it built into a kernel from my source repo is then I don’t have to worry about some bullshit upgrade not actually updating the kernel module like it should have. Dealt with that a few too many times when using ZFS on debian.
There is nothing more annoying than dkms failing to build your primary storage (or NIC) module after a kernel update because ✨reasons✨ - that’s a huge part of why I settled on Proxmox for my server boxes, no more unexpected ZFS breakage.
Check out the Proxmox kernel when you get a chance, you might be able to just pull packages from their repo and roll with Sid otherwise.
Dude if that’s the case I’m so stoked. I don’t hate Ubuntu but I think forced snaps are dumb and wrongbad. It’ll be a bit before I can commit to the project sadly. I’ve got a work trip, a proposal and some pinball repairs on the docket first.
Should probably get a new battery for that laptop too.
The current most popular distribution is MX Linux (based on Debian Stable), which I use. You certainly don’t have to, but I would say least start with a distro that respects you and adheres to FOSS standards…
if i wanted containerized environments, i would pick alpine, but it all makes most trivial things so much more complicated — i just want global install dang nabbit, just keep all your sandboxing on process level controlled by the kernel, give me my userspace freedom
Honestly, instead of trying to remove Snap from Ubuntu, I’d just install another distro (PopOS for example is mostly like Ubuntu but with Flatpak instead of Snap)
Pop is great, even without the wm. The app store is top notch, if you’re into that sort of thing. Basically it’s Ubuntu minus snaps, so slightly more modern Debian, with good flatpak integration making up for all apt’s drawbacks. Perfect for the computer you want to be able to use without dealing with out of date packages or rolling release tinkering.
Even so, the wm is worth taking the time to get familiar with, because it’s intuitive enough for a non power user, and you’re not going to approach its efficiency in terms of workflow unless you can consistently use several dozen keyboard shortcuts on a more bare bones tiling wm. Anyway, that’s my opinion, having used a wide variety of window managers since the 90s.
You’re absolutely not the target audience for the wm. But… you still might want to be familiar with it, because it could totally be your foot in the door to set someone down that path. The cost of adopting pop’s workflow is substantially smaller than creating your own from scratch, but it’s intuitive enough to get someone to at least understand why it might evolve to something like your setup.
These days I just don’t have enough time, and i’ve seen enough trends come and go that i’m happy with most of the pop defaults, and it’s mostly just dressing for terminal windows anyway. There are totally better options out there, I just don’t have the time to invest in one.
And anyway, most Debian and Ubuntu documentation is spot on for pop, which is a big advantage for anyone who is familiar with them or doesn’t have the time or desire to solve their own problems.
Been using pop for months now. The one thing I have a complaint about my part has to do with Steam. I was drawn to Pop because it had good Nvidia support out the box. Steam flatpak is fine but it can’t do some things that the normal deb version can, such as accessing other drives you may have steam games installed on, or that you want to install them on. You have to make some sacrifices with your library setup and your freedom with it when using flatpak.
It took me a while.to figure this out. I like to share it when I can. The deb version of steam is much nicer to use.
Flatpak steam can do all that. You just have to learn to control the flatpak sandbox. There are CLI commands of course or you can install Flatseal which is a real nice gui that lets you control the sandbox for each individual flatpak app. flathub.org/apps/com.github.tchx84.Flatseal
Just add whatever drive/directory/mount point in the filesystem path for Steam in flatseal and Steam can see it.
I couldn’t get it going on anything but my steam deck to read SD cards. Flatseal doesn’t seem to help. The only thing that worked after a ton of attempts following a ton of guides on my desktop was to get the deb version.
Yeah! Has good power management utilities and bonus features. but personally I’d stick to GNOME/Cosmic if you had Pop installed. You miss out on that integration otherwise.
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