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I've been using Linux for over 14 years exclusively. Build several linux hosting companies. I know Linux rather well. I've built a simple font manager for gnome

by berkes 6y ago

I've been using Linux for over 14 years exclusively. Build several linux hosting companies. I know Linux rather well. I've built a simple font manager for gnome in the past. I know the weirdness of gnome font thingies. I've had this glyph issue for over a year. In chromium, Signal, some ebook app, and several other snaps. I've tried many things. But gave up. Snap is not 'one layer of indirection' too much. It's hundreds of them. There's chroot, some VM, a virtual gnome, containerisation, weird user and permissions. And so on. This complexity made me conclude that snap is a bad solution (to a real problem). Not the glyph issue, but the fact that I cannot fix it, is, for me, the reason to conclude it has, or will fail.

codethief 6y ago
Wait, since when is Signal a Snap app?
- kohtatsu 6y ago
  Snap is a distribution format, akin to .msi or .pkg.
  - yc-kraln 6y ago
    No, incorrect. Snap is a distribution format akin to VMDK or anything else which is not intended to be "installed" to a system, but rather run in a virtual machine or sandboxed.
    - SahAssar 6y ago
      If we are getting into details I think calling it a "virtual machine" is not correct either. Also since snaps have some integration with the host DE through launchers and so on they are not like VMDK's.
      - efreak 6y ago
        To be even more pedantic, there's nothing stopping you from using VMDK (or other disk images like VDI, VHD, raw/dd, etc) files as a container (like tar or zip), other than some extra overhead. They can easily integrate into your desktop environment, possibly even easier since there's probably more support for mounting disk images than there is for mounting archives...
        SahAssar 6y ago
        Well, a squashfs file is already a disk image, so that's pretty much what they are doing.
- Spooky23 6y ago
  Snap is more like a virtualization tool that you see in VDI and Citrix environments. It’s sets out to solve a couple of problems in an app-focused way. As with any packager that packages dependencies, it introduces a few dozen more in the process.
sunnysigara 6y ago
Snap is already a standard in the IOT world. It's the desktop section in which it struggles.

by berkes 6y ago

codethief 6y ago

Wait, since when is Signal a Snap app?

kohtatsu 6y ago
Snap is a distribution format, akin to .msi or .pkg.
- yc-kraln 6y ago
  No, incorrect. Snap is a distribution format akin to VMDK or anything else which is not intended to be "installed" to a system, but rather run in a virtual machine or sandboxed.
  - SahAssar 6y ago
    If we are getting into details I think calling it a "virtual machine" is not correct either. Also since snaps have some integration with the host DE through launchers and so on they are not like VMDK's.
    - efreak 6y ago
      To be even more pedantic, there's nothing stopping you from using VMDK (or other disk images like VDI, VHD, raw/dd, etc) files as a container (like tar or zip), other than some extra overhead. They can easily integrate into your desktop environment, possibly even easier since there's probably more support for mounting disk images than there is for mounting archives...
      - SahAssar 6y ago
        Well, a squashfs file is already a disk image, so that's pretty much what they are doing.
Spooky23 6y ago
Snap is more like a virtualization tool that you see in VDI and Citrix environments. It’s sets out to solve a couple of problems in an app-focused way. As with any packager that packages dependencies, it introduces a few dozen more in the process.

sunnysigara 6y ago

Snap is already a standard in the IOT world. It's the desktop section in which it struggles.