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> Snap applications auto-update and that’s fine if Ubuntu wants to keep systems secure. But it can’t even be turned off manually. OMG. Is this real? This is th
by nromiun 6y ago
> Snap applications auto-update and that’s fine if Ubuntu wants to keep systems secure. But it can’t even be turned off manually.
OMG. Is this real? This is the exact reason I use Linux instead of Windows 10 or macOS. I am not a grandma who can't stay up to date on tech news. At the least there should be a toggle for power users. But no, you can only defer it. Am I the only one who doesn't like it when your already slow internet slows down even further? It feels like hell when you are working.
I am not upgrading to this. I have been using Arch Linux as my personal OS. Maybe I should look into Debian for my VMs.
And just read this thread[1]. Is this how they treat their users? Even Reddit is better then this.
1. https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/is-ubuntu-software-going-to-be-remove-for-snap-snap-store/14542/58 https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/is-ubuntu-software-going-to-b...
- koheripbal 6y ago...dumb question: Does this apply to Ubuntu Server as well??? Because if so, I'm sticking with 18.04.
- geek_at 6y agoonly if you install your server applications using snap
- littlethrowaway 6y agoSo, why are people getting upset about this then? If you can simply just _not use snaps_?
- koheripbal 6y agoI'm guessing it's not an option when using the GUI?
- nromiun 6y agoI was using the regular version for remote desktop VMs. I don't know about the server version.
- input_sh 6y agoIf you're running Ubuntu's server, odds are that you're SSH-ing into the box instead of running graphical interface. Unless you specifically install snaps, I don't see how this would affect you.
- koheripbal 6y agoPerfect. So I guess that means APT is still the same, correct?
- pnako 6y agoYeah apt is still fine and I've never seen it update anything behind my back.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- znpy 6y agoYou might want to consider jumping ship and go into the RHEL/CentOS world. Stability and predictability is their main strenght. Each release is supported for a veeeeery long time.
- eikenberry 6y agoStability and predictability of the core OS. But then everyone uses EPEL for everything else which throws that all out the window.
- znpy 6y agoUhm, yes and no. I mean... As long as you don't use EPEL, stability and predictability are pretty much granted. I've been using epel on some machine and haven't had that many problems, though.
- Twirrim 6y agoYup, snaps are littering Ubuntu Server 20.04. They're in 18.04 as well, for that matter. Maybe not quite as much, but they're there.
- ultrarunner 6y agoWe work at remote sites on cell connections. Part of the reason we moved to Ubuntu from Windows was the ability to control data usage, which is expensive. Automatic updates quickly become a significant slice of the bill when random decisions like these get pushed on users. Ubuntu was supposed to help prevent us from needing to chase this.
- nromiun 6y agoExactly. It seems like these days everyone assumes you are on a stable broadband connection. In many parts of the world getting a fast and stable internet connection is literally impossible.
- fgonzag 6y agopop_os should fit the bill. Based in ubuntu, with a better UI, and has flatpack support and added polish
- lucb1e 6y agoI have a much, much better idea of what process is using network traffic or other resources on Linux than on Windows (I don't know how often tracing tools pointed fingers at the "system" process for weird magic like CPU or network usage). Unless you mean the 20.04 LTS thing specifically (it sounds like you had this issue for longer), it should be exceedingly easy to turn off anything that runs automatically.
- aeyes 6y agoWindows 10 has an out of the box feature to mark connections as metered which disables automatic updates.
- peterwwillis 6y agoYeah, lol, looks like I'm no longer an Ubuntu user. Now I have to figure out how to force-disable this for server software and corporate Linux desktop users. Jesus.
- bamboozled 6y agoYou can set Snapd to use a proxy and just turn the proxy off until you want to update (lol)
- DoofusOfDeath 6y agoI agree entirely. Unavoidable updates were one of the key factors in my choice to avoid Windows 10 for business-critical computing. I standardized on Ubuntu instead, but this could be a deal-breaker for me. I hope Canonical fixes this immediately. I'm not eager to spend time re-researching to market for a suitable OS.
- walkingolof 6y agoJust disable snapd after you have achieved your ideal configuration. But yes, this should be a setting somewhere...
- DoofusOfDeath 6y agoThanks, that's helpful. Another huge differentiator for Ubuntu over Windows was that I didn't think the OS vendor was trying to seize control of my computer. Canonical jeopardized that trust with this choice. I truly hope they take steps to restore it. I don't want the added work of switching OSs.
- Iolaum 6y agoThe problem with that is you are fighting the platform. That's not a great place to be. Unless your disagreement with the platform's design is small enough you are likely to be better choosing a more appropriate platform.
- KCUOJJQJ 6y agoI'm currently on Kubuntu 19.10. I don't have any snaps. So they can't autoupdate. BTW: After installation of Kubuntu there were automatic security updates. But it was possible to turn these off in the Muon Package Manager (Settings | Software Sources | Updates | Automatic Updates)
- m463 6y agoI tried to uninstall snapd on 18.04 and it broke the desktop. I tried to disable it from systemd, but it had some weird way of relaunching itself. just do a web search on disabling snapd to see how many people want to do this.
- limeblack 6y ago> But it can’t even be turned off manually. Backwards compatibility is a positive as long as it's secure. This makes me hesitatant to what is going on. Auto updates good, no blocking not sure.
- neetfreek 6y agoPoint taken on the shoddy behaviour, but if you'd like to try it out there's this helpful post on disabling snap[1] shared here[2] when I installed 20.04. Quick and painless! 1. https://www.kevin-custer.com/blog/disabling-snaps-in-ubuntu-20-04/ https://www.kevin-custer.com/blog/disabling-snaps-in-ubuntu-... 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22972661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22972661 *Edited
- m-p-3 6y agoAt that point I'll just use Debian.
- littlestymaar 6y agoDebian used not to work easily on hardware that require proprietary drivers, did it change recently ? I left Ubuntu almost ten years ago, after 5 years of using it, when they started using MIR instead of Gnome2 and I replaced it with Linux Mint and I haven't looked back. This whole snap thing looks like the new weird decision made by Canonical to make their faithful users leave :/
- Nursie 6y agoNvidia has been easy on debian for quite some time now, are there other proprietary drivers that are important?
- Firehawke 6y agoIf you have proprietary drivers, you'll need to prepare a USB stick with them downloaded onto it. They won't be on the installer image. On my older 2011-era laptop, that's the wifi and wired network that need those drivers. It's a bit of a pain.
- pnako 6y agoGenerally it's not the drivers but the firmware for those devices, i.e. code that runs inside the device. I think it's an over-zealous position from Debian not to redistribute firmware. Even systems that are very strict about licensing, like OpenBSD, redistribute firmware, because they have some common sense.
- petre 6y agoWe have already installed two new Debian 10.3 VMs instead if Ubuntu. It's quite a breath of fresh air compared to Ubuntu >16.04 which I had to fight all the time to do things my way. Still runnng 18.04 on the dev boxes though.
- tannhaeuser 6y ago+1 Insightful. > GNOME Calculator was put on the ISO as a snap to help us test the whole “seeding snaps” process, not because it was a fast-moving, CVE-prone applications. Chromium, Firefox and LibreOffice fall more into that category. Ok so the whole snap thing comes down to updating browsers. Is this for real? I want the web, not the browser to change daily, or to consume more bandwidth than my www usage :)
- lucb1e 6y agoThe browser is actually the number one component you should update as soon as a security fix comes out. If you don't want new features ("more free stuff!"), use an LTS version that only includes the security updates?
- Macha 6y agoYou can note the version everyone is complaining about here _is_ the LTS.
- lucb1e 6y agoYou mean the Ubuntu LTS, I meant a browser's LTS version (a sibling comment just mentioned it's called ESR in Firefox instead of LTS... I meant the concept, not the specific name for Firefox, but my bad) so that you don't keep getting browser feature updates but only get the backported fixes.
- pdonis 6y ago> The browser is actually the number one component you should update as soon as a security fix comes out. The problem is that there is no way to have a browser that only pushes updates for security fixes. They're always mixed in with changes to the UI that force people to re-learn workflows. > If you don't want new features ("more free stuff!"), use an LTS version that only includes the security updates? There is no such thing. I run Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on all my computers at home and I'm posting this on, IIRC, the fifth or sixth new version of Firefox I've had to accept (and that's only counting major version changes), because, as noted above, there was no way to just get the security updates and leave out the others.
- dima55 6y agosnaps are intended for non-power-users that don't want to deal with dependencies. Those users want things to mostly work without worrying about murky downsides. Auto-updating is exactly the right behavior. If this is of concern to you, why are you using snaps? And why Ubuntu? What's the value-add over Debian?
- michaelmrose 6y agoYou have misjudged who actually uses Linux. This setting would be ideal for all the billions of people Canonical wishes used Ubuntu.
- dima55 6y agoYes... Isn't that what I said?
- Dylan16807 6y agoIf you agree that it's not the current userbase of Ubuntu, then you're saying people should quit using Ubuntu en masse, only a fraction staying behind. The idea that you "misjudged who actually uses Linux" was based on the assumption that you think a product should generally cater to its users. If instead you think most of the users should leave, then okay, that's a valid opinion, it's just surprising.
- catalogia 6y agoUbuntu (and GNOME, who seem to have the same mindset) have no clue in hell how to actually get the billions of proverbial grandmothers to use their software. All they seem to manage is to poorly ape Microsoft and Apple, which will never get them what they want.
- michaelmrose 6y agoRegular people wouldn't use windows if using it required them to understand the concept of an OS and install it for themselves. People will never buy linux but they might buy computers with linux at some point just like they have bought phones with it. Android had things that iphone didn't have and at a much cheaper price point thus linux based phones are everywhere. I wish steam boxes had taken off.
- konart 6y ago>This is the exact reason I use Linux instead of Windows 10 or macOS Not sure about win10, but macOS won't autoupdate apps if you turned it off. If the app is not from an app store - it's up to the devs to have option to (auto) update. Most apps allow you to turn autoupdate off (in fact I can't think of single one without this option)
- nromiun 6y agoThis is from another user in this thread: > I've used both Windows and OSX for my professional work and while Windows is the worst offender when it comes to automatic updates, OSX is pretty horrible as well. At least with Windows you can expect some sort of backwards compatibility, while on OSX, one day you have to upgrade your entire OS, otherwise Notes or some stupid application won't launch. - capableweb I used to run OS X some time ago. When even Windows supported turning off auto updates. These days I am seeing Github issues saying that they can't use brew, clang etc because there is a update. And most of the time the updates are just huge (even compared to Windows). Is this not true? Can you put off OS updates for some time (a few hours is enough for me) and keep using XCode, brew etc?
- stephenr 6y agoYou can turn off auto updates of macOS and Mac App Store apps completely, yes. I stayed on Mojave for months after Catalina was released and I had a MAS app that broke compatibility with the same companies own (abandoned) self-hosted server software so I just didn’t update it. I’ve since resorted to running that single app (and the abandoned server app) in a High Sierra VM. The only version issues I know of that sound like what that other person referenced is: If you update eg iOS to a new major version, sometimes iCloud-linked apps will say they need to upgrade something for new functionality (Notes specifically did this at least once in the last couple of years and iCloud Drive did it a few years ago). But that is (a) not forced and (b) you’re told exactly what will happen (ie that older macs/iPhones won’t be able to use iCloud until they update too). Some third party apps will set minimum required OS version (ie to use a new framework or api) but that doesn’t sound like what the other post was talking about?
- 6y ago
- Firehawke 6y agoI wonder how this affects offshoot distros like kubuntu? I'm currently on Debian with KDE, but I think I might need to move to a rolling release distro due to some issues with SMB/CIFS (that have already been fixed in newest builds of KDE) that probably won't be fixed in Debian until the next release. Maybe I should start looking at distros in general-- but Ubuntu is definitely out of the picture.
- emilsedgh 6y agoGive KDE Neon a try. It's based on latest Ubuntu LTS with up to date KDE. But it doesn't do everything like Ubuntu (like forcing snaps).
- ironmagma 6y agoThere are people working on Ubuntu with tons of dubious ideas. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the one that sealed its doom.
- foobarian 6y agoI just upgraded to 20.04, and minutes later my machine is on its knees OOMing and unable to process remote connections. Apparently there is now yet another new file system indexer to play whack-a-mole with like updatedb in the old days except this one is hooked into systemd and harder to stop. Search for "tracker-extract disable" if you want the full details.
- viraptor 6y agoWhat do you mean by "hooked into systemd"? It seems completely standalone. Do you mean it's activating when new devices are plugged in?