4 ms·
The tone of the comments on news like this never fails to disappoint me. Sigh. The Snap store so vastly improves my user experience of using common apps I swit
by DCKing 8y ago
The tone of the comments on news like this never fails to disappoint me. Sigh.
The Snap store so vastly improves my user experience of using common apps I switched from Arch Linux (where 50% of the programs I had installed came from the AUR) to Ubuntu, where everything I needed was just there. No longer do I need to run weird scripts from the internet to get simple stuff to run on my non-standard distro (which could be Arch, Fedora, or whatever I am running at the time).
You can hold the position that these things are a big security risk. Distributing monolithic packages with likely old/vulnerable dependencies is not a great idea. But on the other hand, it prevents asking the user to run random scripts (which in many cases are not vendor provided) as root to get their software, and it gives the user integrated automatic updates and other software center integration (as opposed to downloading random stuff from the internet). In terms of increased security through sheer usability and requiring less manual maintenance, the advantages of Snaps and Flatpak add up, I think. Many things in security are a tradeoff, and I feel that getting the user to do the right thing is often extremely undervalued. I think it is also undervalued in these comments.
Flatpak and Snaps still have a lot of problems. Why do we have two competing standards? Why can't I properly get all Snaps running on Fedora or other platforms that use SELinux [rhetorical question - I know the technical reasons]? Why do so many apps not use their sandboxing effectively? Why is it so hard for these things to respect my computer's theme? The list goes on.
The list of problems is long and valid. But I think it's worthy of some celebration that advancements are being made in making desktop Linux usable for users and popular for developers. And I don't think it's clear at all that this is a regression in terms of security.
- baybal2 8y agoWe also have the not-so-dead autopackage (listaller)
- DCKing 8y agoYeah, but it's not just about solving the problem "how do I install package X on a random Linux distribution". I agree there have been solutions for that for a long time. In fact, Snap at least does not even fully solve this problem because its sandboxing depends on AppArmor, which clashes with SELinux on distros that use this - (e.g. anything from Red Hat). The real key to Flatpak and Snap is the entire app "experience" - integration in the software center as a trusted source, automatic updates, clean installs and removals without messing up other parts of the system. Before Flatpak and Snap, this did not exist on Linux, especially not in something that was compatible with all distros.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago> But I think it's worthy of some celebration that advancements are being made in making desktop Linux usable for users and popular for developers. I don't know about that. This "advancement" is catching up to where every other desktop OS was in the 80s.
- delinka 8y agoDo you think perhaps it's not worthy of celebration that advancement happens, even at a slower pace than you would like?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y agoOn the one hand, yes, on the other there's the immense amount of shame I feel for promoting open software and computing in general because progress is either glacially slow or regressive.
- michaelmrose 8y agoSnap has no concept of multiple repos meaning Canonical is solely responsible for choosing what software you are allowed to run even if you aren't running Ubuntu. Especially if you are running a non ubuntu distro you are stuck with snap AND something else rather than replacing your current system with snap. Further both apt and snap are strictly inferior to nix or guix so you are actually stuck with 2 worse packaging systems in place of one superior one. For what its worth my experience with a ubuntu/ubuntu derivatives was different. I found the non LTS releases fraught with difficulties and the LTS was out of date sufficiently that I ended up adding over 80 ppas to get up to date version which isn't much different than having 80 some aur packages save that it is less convenient.