4 ms·

How well does system stuff work as snaps/flatpacks? (I.e. things like LXC and multipass)

• mrweasel 5y ago
  I was testing out MicroK8s on Ubuntu, as a Snap. Regarding stability, I can't say, I didn't use it long enough. What really annoyed me is that it's confusing as hell. Files are no where near where you'd expect them to be. When things break and you need to go look for configuration files, you'll find that they are hidden deep down in /var. Snaps add a level of complexity I'm not comfortable with, while I gain very little. I am pleasantly surprised by how cleanly Snaps uninstall though.
  • rlpb 5y ago
    > Files are no where near where you'd expect them to be. > I am pleasantly surprised by how cleanly Snaps uninstall though. These two things are connected :)
• goodpoint 5y ago
  Pretty bad, by design. It cannot really integrate with the OS, that's why OS packages exists.
  • zibzab 5y ago
    Hmm... that's not good, I really prefer LXC to docker (mainly because of better security and that I use Ubuntu and debian images instead of alpine anyway)
    • goodpoint 5y ago
      You can instead use dedicated directories, virtualenvs, chroots, firejail sandboxing, systemd nspawn containers. (In increasing order of effort)
      • zibzab 5y ago
        Only the last one gives my the same level of security. And that one is not very user friendly.
        • goodpoint 5y ago
          Not at all. OS packages run scripts as root during installation, and this is why you should install software only from trusted Linux distros. Sandboxing user applications is a completely orthogonal topic. You can sandbox OS-installed applications or other applications. With the same tools. Both options equally require custom configuration depending on what files and directories you want to allow or restrict access to (and syscalls and so on). Fine grained permission are a personal choice and both firejail and nspawn make it quite easy to configure.