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Well, I'll be that guy: I don't get all the complaining about snaps. First, I use the command line for package installation and couldn't care less if the store

Well, I'll be that guy: I don't get all the complaining about snaps. First, I use the command line for package installation and couldn't care less if the store experience is suboptimal. Second, I use Firefox and anything that discourages people from feeding the Chrome monopoly, frankly, that sounds like a good thing to me. Third, for some desktop apps I want auto updates. Having an option for some software to be on the latest is pretty slick and previously could only be solved with PPAs, which had their own problems (maintainer headaches, dependency issues, etc). Would I want them on a server? No. As a desktop (well, laptop) user, do I want all my software deployed with snaps and auto updating willy-nilly? Also no. But as a desktop user, I appreciate that I have the choice. And by lowering the barrier for maintainers who no longer have to worry about multiple distro versions, dependencies, etc, it means I get more software options. Sounds good to me!

sascha_sl 6y ago
You're essentially saying "I don't care because nobody tried to trick me specifically into installing a snap if I wanted a debian package" - I hope you know that on the way forward, Firefox will be snap-shimmed too. The Enterprise Linux ecosystem is a solid alternative to Ubuntu. Fedora for desktop and either CentOS or Fedora for servers, depending on how stable they need to be and how much maintenance you're willing to do.
- KozmoNau7 6y ago
  And SUSE/openSUSE for an alternative in the same segment. Very similar roots, also RPM-based, but with a different take on things, such as using Btrfs and KDE by default, which I prefer.
  - nix23 6y ago
    SUSE (the enterprise edition) uses Gnome as default, i love Opensuse Tumbleweed, but i think Gnome (with the SLES-look) is much more stable than KDE. Anyway i use i3 nearly exclusive. BTW: KDE is not the default, it's just the first in the list :)
  - sascha_sl 6y ago
    btrfs is coming to Fedora 33 as default
- CarelessExpert 6y ago
  > I hope you know that on the way forward, Firefox will be snap-shimmed too. I see, so we're angry about things that haven't happened yet. TIL the OSS community has precogs and this is Minority Report! Look, I get that two whole packages out of literally tens of thousands did this (I've seen lxd and chromium mentioned). But why don't we convict Canonical after they commit their crimes, eh?
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    Surely if it's on the roadmap then better to address it now and potentially avoid it rather than dig in deeper until sunk-cost fallacy suggests there's no way back?
    - CarelessExpert 6y ago
      Sunk costs? How are there greater sunk costs related to switching distros later instead of now if Ubuntu starts actually misbehaving in a significant way? I grant you, if you haven't picked a distro yet and this whole thing bothers you, by all means, pick something else! That's the beauty of the Linux world! But if you're already in the ecosystem (and I have to assume most people complaining are... Otherwise why waste energy complaining about the actions of a company that doesn't affect you) I don't see how the sunk costs fallacy applies here.
      - pdimitar 6y ago
        It's sadly not as easy as you make it sound. I was recommended to use Ubuntu for my work laptop because the IT team couldn't guarantee support if you used another distro. I know my way around and particularly love Manjaro (and worked with Debian and SUSE and Mint) but the company uses proprietary VPN and a spy/monitoring agent and I wasn't sure I'll be able to make those work on a non-Ubuntu machine. So yes, there could be huge sunk costs. After fighting with this work laptop for a full work day to get every single step of the onboarding completed, I am not looking forward to doing it again -- even less so if the proprietary and mandatory programs that I have to install can't be guaranteed to work on anything outside Ubuntu.
nebulous1 6y ago
> Third, for some desktop apps I want auto updates > But as a desktop user, I appreciate that I have the choice. Just so we're clear, it's not that the apps auto-update, it's that there's no way to stop them auto-updating.
- CarelessExpert 6y ago
  So then don't install snaps and use PPAs or flatpak or compile yourself. Unlike Windows 10 you do have a choice here.
  - jrockway 6y ago
    I use Windows 10 and have a choice. I can use a package manager of my choosing. I can install an application that self-updates. I can pause OS updates in a control panel. One of the biggest problems with Windows is that every app sets up its own update policy and comes from its own App Store. (Steam, battle.net, etc.,) But that's Microsoft's fault for doing too little, not for doing too much. And that's actually kind of nice.
    - CarelessExpert 6y ago
      > I use Windows 10 and have a choice. So do I. Their botched rollout of Edge, including installing it without my permission and placing it on my taskbar, shows that no, you don't have a choice. > I can pause OS updates in a control panel. This is misleading at best. You can pause updates for a time period but they're forced at that point.
  - nebulous1 6y ago
    Canonical's actions with snaps are very clearly steering us away from choices that were once easy to make. They come by default, you can't easily use a non-Canonical store (not even really possible at the moment), they force auto-updates on us and they trick us into installing them when we think we're going to install a traditional .deb. I don't know why you're comparing it to Windows 10.
- 6y ago
simion314 6y ago
Same here, I have the choice and so far snap worked good for me. I would rather install some random application as a snap then a deb that I need to use root to run the installer. When I need to install some random app from the internet (last one I had to install was an advanced PDF viewer/editor) I manually unpacked the deb and found the binaries and run them as regular user.
rvanlaar 6y ago
I've had a number of problems with snaps. For one multiple problems with linux containers due to lxd now being a snap package, which auto updates, restarts and sometimes doesn't like switching networks. Apps that needed mounts that weren't there. I mainly use nix packages now for ease of installation, removal, updates and for nix shell. Need to run a shell with ffmpeg? `nix-shell --run bash -p ffmpeg` And ffmpeg is gone after the shell terminates.
yoavm 6y ago
> Second, I use Firefox and anything that discourages people from feeding the Chrome monopoly, frankly, that sounds like a good thing to me. I'm sorry but can you explain? How exactly is Snap helping Firefox? (I'm a Firefox user and I have never used Snap)
- 1_player 6y ago
  Especially since Firefox have an officially maintained Flatpak package which works beautifully, at least on my machine. Is the snap version of FF maintained by Mozilla, by any chance?
- codethief 6y ago
  I second that question. Currently Ubuntu only forces Chromium to be installed as snap, not Google Chrome.
- CarelessExpert 6y ago
  It's an admittedly weaker point: If folks want to avoid snaps (as this blogger professes) but choose Ubuntu then their next best option is (the default browser on Ubuntu): Firefox. I guess a more succinct way to put it is: I actively oppose chrome and really don't care if the snap haters are screwed by Canonical's approach to packaging it.
  - a1369209993 6y ago
    I agree with you about chrome, but your point only works if nothing other than chrome is dependent on snaps, which seems clearly not what Canonical is aiming for.
danielhua 6y ago
You have a good point about making the desktop experience more painless and idiot-proof. The real problem for me though is that snaps are slow as hell. I mean like taking 4-5+ seconds to open on a box with an SSD, i7, and 64GB of RAM. That's unacceptable. The icing on the cake for me is that even through the command line as you mention apt now seems to be giving me snaps instead of debs for a great deal of programs, which affects much more than the store experience. And, also, regarding said store experience: if stuff like Spotify takes 5+ seconds to open I doubt a user coming from Windows giving Linux a try is going to want to stick around long...it would be great if there was just a better solution.
- CarelessExpert 6y ago
  > The real problem for me though is that snaps are slow as hell. I mean like taking 4-5+ seconds to open on a box with an SSD, i7, and 64GB of RAM. That's unacceptable. Spotify is specifically one of the snaps I use and frankly, I noticed it seemed to start a little slow but just assumed that was because of Electron or something. I literally don't care and never thought anything of it. I run it, it starts, and then I don't close it. Besides, if Spotify users reject it, they can always switch to PPA or something else. It's their choice. > apt now seems to be giving me snaps instead of debs for a great deal of programs, "a great deal"? I've seen two mentioned, chromium and lxd. Where else have you encountered this where Debian has a package available from a maintainer but a snap shim is used instead? Apt will also tell you a snap is available if there's no deb but that's just useful information.
  - jula432vdf 6y ago
    > if Spotify users reject it, they can always switch to PPA or something else Some apps, like Chromium have no alternative ppas available. I installed KDE Neon 20.04 and when I discovered that Chromium was being switchted to snap, I searched for any current *.deb out there. NO proper ppas, just found some outdated Chromium 1-3 versions behind the current version. If it wasn't for the KDE from Neon, I would have switched of distro in the hour. I switched to Chrome instead. Got some old compiled Chromium just to have the thing available (I can just run it when I need it, it takes maybe 1/4 of sec to start). Just hope Canonical doesn't try its snap thing in more critical packages or (FAR) worst, in the LTS server versions. I would be getting popcorn to see the show when half the Internet start to ditch the LTS overnight over some half-propietary half-baked software being put in charge of its otherwise perfectly GPLed infrastructures.
RandoHolmes 6y ago
I came here to make basically this comment. I install everything via CLI and pretty explicitly always avoid the GUI they have for installing software. It's never been good, ever. I'm on 20.04 and I think it's a fantastic release, head and shoulders better than 18.04. The only thing in the author's list that I really take issue with is installing a snap when a user attempted to install from a .deb file. That sort of shit is antithetical to linux, and if it continues to get worse would actually be a reason for me to leave Ubuntu. But everything else is just a non-issue to me.
CapriciousCptl 6y ago
I don’t get it either. Just fresh installed 20.04 last week on a new drive and have had no trouble completely avoiding snap or even really understanding what it is. I’ve used Ubuntu for years and may have used the App Store one time.
- mixmastamyk 6y ago
  It's still in the background. Running a root daemon, spamming mounts and filesystem, whether you notice or not. Unsafe and obnoxious is not a good combination. It's the same poor behavior that lead to the marginalization of Docker.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
The author of the article didn't mind the principal behind snaps, if you read his diatribe it was more about the performance of it and feeling snookered that Ubuntu was pushing snap so hard, even tricking people into using a deb that runs a script that then installs the snap version. It shouldn't take chromium 5-10 seconds to startup with firefox launches in under a second
mixmastamyk 6y ago
Many of us have no problem with the idea of snaps, simply the implementation and forced preferences. If I wanted corporate policy shoved down my throat I'd simply use Windows. :D https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23772524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23772524

sascha_sl 6y ago

You're essentially saying "I don't care because nobody tried to trick me specifically into installing a snap if I wanted a debian package" - I hope you know that on the way forward, Firefox will be snap-shimmed too. The Enterprise Linux ecosystem is a solid alternative to Ubuntu. Fedora for desktop and either CentOS or Fedora for servers, depending on how stable they need to be and how much maintenance you're willing to do.

KozmoNau7 6y ago
And SUSE/openSUSE for an alternative in the same segment. Very similar roots, also RPM-based, but with a different take on things, such as using Btrfs and KDE by default, which I prefer.
- nix23 6y ago
  SUSE (the enterprise edition) uses Gnome as default, i love Opensuse Tumbleweed, but i think Gnome (with the SLES-look) is much more stable than KDE. Anyway i use i3 nearly exclusive. BTW: KDE is not the default, it's just the first in the list :)
- sascha_sl 6y ago
  btrfs is coming to Fedora 33 as default
CarelessExpert 6y ago
> I hope you know that on the way forward, Firefox will be snap-shimmed too. I see, so we're angry about things that haven't happened yet. TIL the OSS community has precogs and this is Minority Report! Look, I get that two whole packages out of literally tens of thousands did this (I've seen lxd and chromium mentioned). But why don't we convict Canonical after they commit their crimes, eh?
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  Surely if it's on the roadmap then better to address it now and potentially avoid it rather than dig in deeper until sunk-cost fallacy suggests there's no way back?
  - CarelessExpert 6y ago
    Sunk costs? How are there greater sunk costs related to switching distros later instead of now if Ubuntu starts actually misbehaving in a significant way? I grant you, if you haven't picked a distro yet and this whole thing bothers you, by all means, pick something else! That's the beauty of the Linux world! But if you're already in the ecosystem (and I have to assume most people complaining are... Otherwise why waste energy complaining about the actions of a company that doesn't affect you) I don't see how the sunk costs fallacy applies here.
    - pdimitar 6y ago
      It's sadly not as easy as you make it sound. I was recommended to use Ubuntu for my work laptop because the IT team couldn't guarantee support if you used another distro. I know my way around and particularly love Manjaro (and worked with Debian and SUSE and Mint) but the company uses proprietary VPN and a spy/monitoring agent and I wasn't sure I'll be able to make those work on a non-Ubuntu machine. So yes, there could be huge sunk costs. After fighting with this work laptop for a full work day to get every single step of the onboarding completed, I am not looking forward to doing it again -- even less so if the proprietary and mandatory programs that I have to install can't be guaranteed to work on anything outside Ubuntu.

nebulous1 6y ago

> Third, for some desktop apps I want auto updates > But as a desktop user, I appreciate that I have the choice. Just so we're clear, it's not that the apps auto-update, it's that there's no way to stop them auto-updating.

CarelessExpert 6y ago
So then don't install snaps and use PPAs or flatpak or compile yourself. Unlike Windows 10 you do have a choice here.
- jrockway 6y ago
  I use Windows 10 and have a choice. I can use a package manager of my choosing. I can install an application that self-updates. I can pause OS updates in a control panel. One of the biggest problems with Windows is that every app sets up its own update policy and comes from its own App Store. (Steam, battle.net, etc.,) But that's Microsoft's fault for doing too little, not for doing too much. And that's actually kind of nice.
  - CarelessExpert 6y ago
    > I use Windows 10 and have a choice. So do I. Their botched rollout of Edge, including installing it without my permission and placing it on my taskbar, shows that no, you don't have a choice. > I can pause OS updates in a control panel. This is misleading at best. You can pause updates for a time period but they're forced at that point.
- nebulous1 6y ago
  Canonical's actions with snaps are very clearly steering us away from choices that were once easy to make. They come by default, you can't easily use a non-Canonical store (not even really possible at the moment), they force auto-updates on us and they trick us into installing them when we think we're going to install a traditional .deb. I don't know why you're comparing it to Windows 10.
6y ago

simion314 6y ago

Same here, I have the choice and so far snap worked good for me. I would rather install some random application as a snap then a deb that I need to use root to run the installer. When I need to install some random app from the internet (last one I had to install was an advanced PDF viewer/editor) I manually unpacked the deb and found the binaries and run them as regular user.

rvanlaar 6y ago

I've had a number of problems with snaps. For one multiple problems with linux containers due to lxd now being a snap package, which auto updates, restarts and sometimes doesn't like switching networks. Apps that needed mounts that weren't there. I mainly use nix packages now for ease of installation, removal, updates and for nix shell. Need to run a shell with ffmpeg? `nix-shell --run bash -p ffmpeg` And ffmpeg is gone after the shell terminates.

yoavm 6y ago

> Second, I use Firefox and anything that discourages people from feeding the Chrome monopoly, frankly, that sounds like a good thing to me. I'm sorry but can you explain? How exactly is Snap helping Firefox? (I'm a Firefox user and I have never used Snap)

1_player 6y ago
Especially since Firefox have an officially maintained Flatpak package which works beautifully, at least on my machine. Is the snap version of FF maintained by Mozilla, by any chance?
codethief 6y ago
I second that question. Currently Ubuntu only forces Chromium to be installed as snap, not Google Chrome.
CarelessExpert 6y ago
It's an admittedly weaker point: If folks want to avoid snaps (as this blogger professes) but choose Ubuntu then their next best option is (the default browser on Ubuntu): Firefox. I guess a more succinct way to put it is: I actively oppose chrome and really don't care if the snap haters are screwed by Canonical's approach to packaging it.
- a1369209993 6y ago
  I agree with you about chrome, but your point only works if nothing other than chrome is dependent on snaps, which seems clearly not what Canonical is aiming for.

danielhua 6y ago

You have a good point about making the desktop experience more painless and idiot-proof. The real problem for me though is that snaps are slow as hell. I mean like taking 4-5+ seconds to open on a box with an SSD, i7, and 64GB of RAM. That's unacceptable. The icing on the cake for me is that even through the command line as you mention apt now seems to be giving me snaps instead of debs for a great deal of programs, which affects much more than the store experience. And, also, regarding said store experience: if stuff like Spotify takes 5+ seconds to open I doubt a user coming from Windows giving Linux a try is going to want to stick around long...it would be great if there was just a better solution.

CarelessExpert 6y ago
> The real problem for me though is that snaps are slow as hell. I mean like taking 4-5+ seconds to open on a box with an SSD, i7, and 64GB of RAM. That's unacceptable. Spotify is specifically one of the snaps I use and frankly, I noticed it seemed to start a little slow but just assumed that was because of Electron or something. I literally don't care and never thought anything of it. I run it, it starts, and then I don't close it. Besides, if Spotify users reject it, they can always switch to PPA or something else. It's their choice. > apt now seems to be giving me snaps instead of debs for a great deal of programs, "a great deal"? I've seen two mentioned, chromium and lxd. Where else have you encountered this where Debian has a package available from a maintainer but a snap shim is used instead? Apt will also tell you a snap is available if there's no deb but that's just useful information.
- jula432vdf 6y ago
  > if Spotify users reject it, they can always switch to PPA or something else Some apps, like Chromium have no alternative ppas available. I installed KDE Neon 20.04 and when I discovered that Chromium was being switchted to snap, I searched for any current *.deb out there. NO proper ppas, just found some outdated Chromium 1-3 versions behind the current version. If it wasn't for the KDE from Neon, I would have switched of distro in the hour. I switched to Chrome instead. Got some old compiled Chromium just to have the thing available (I can just run it when I need it, it takes maybe 1/4 of sec to start). Just hope Canonical doesn't try its snap thing in more critical packages or (FAR) worst, in the LTS server versions. I would be getting popcorn to see the show when half the Internet start to ditch the LTS overnight over some half-propietary half-baked software being put in charge of its otherwise perfectly GPLed infrastructures.

RandoHolmes 6y ago

I came here to make basically this comment. I install everything via CLI and pretty explicitly always avoid the GUI they have for installing software. It's never been good, ever. I'm on 20.04 and I think it's a fantastic release, head and shoulders better than 18.04. The only thing in the author's list that I really take issue with is installing a snap when a user attempted to install from a .deb file. That sort of shit is antithetical to linux, and if it continues to get worse would actually be a reason for me to leave Ubuntu. But everything else is just a non-issue to me.

CapriciousCptl 6y ago

I don’t get it either. Just fresh installed 20.04 last week on a new drive and have had no trouble completely avoiding snap or even really understanding what it is. I’ve used Ubuntu for years and may have used the App Store one time.

mixmastamyk 6y ago
It's still in the background. Running a root daemon, spamming mounts and filesystem, whether you notice or not. Unsafe and obnoxious is not a good combination. It's the same poor behavior that lead to the marginalization of Docker.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

The author of the article didn't mind the principal behind snaps, if you read his diatribe it was more about the performance of it and feeling snookered that Ubuntu was pushing snap so hard, even tricking people into using a deb that runs a script that then installs the snap version. It shouldn't take chromium 5-10 seconds to startup with firefox launches in under a second

mixmastamyk 6y ago

Many of us have no problem with the idea of snaps, simply the implementation and forced preferences. If I wanted corporate policy shoved down my throat I'd simply use Windows. :D https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23772524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23772524