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I personally use ubuntu and have used snap enough to get thoroughly burned and annoyed by it. Slow starts, no auto-update controls with bad defaults corrupting

I personally use ubuntu and have used snap enough to get thoroughly burned and annoyed by it. Slow starts, no auto-update controls with bad defaults corrupting running programs, spammed mount points... (edit: see comment below for some limited controls to reduce the frequency of auto-updates) But, unless I'm missing something about latest or future releases, isn't it still optional? Can't you use apt instead and uninstall snapd altogether? I'd agree that needing to uninstall instead of opt-in is an annoyance, and that user-hostile actions tend to be a slippery slope..

spaniard89277 5y ago
Firefox is only available as snap now. I gues it's bthe same for other apps. For VSCode I managed to download a deb from their site IIRC, but from apt it only suggests to download from snap.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  flatpak is a great alternative and it works well on ubuntu. Although I've just moved wholesale over to pop_os with flatpaks and LTS version.
- brianshaler 5y ago
  Interesting. Firefox on snap was an absolute nightmare. Not only would New Tab break after an update, fonts would break as they may be (re-)loaded from disk which becomes missing when the app gets remounted at a new mount point after an update. I forget which hoops I had to jump through, but I did finally find a non-snap method that allows me to manually update (or dismiss prompt) to get around these issues while staying up to date (~1 day) VScode wasn't as bad, as it usually seemed to work (but maybe flaky plugins were actually caused by snap?) but it was certainly annoying to lose the ability to switch between windows of the same app (alt+~, I think this was a custom setting to resemble mac) if the latest window/project was opened as a new version of the app (alt+tab)
  - Brian_K_White 5y ago
    FF has been driving me crazy lately. Every other day it blows away all my open tabs and whatever I had going on in them. I have a bunch of random tabs open, some with essentially "unsaved work", like shopping carts which may be the result of an hour of research, editing files in web interfaces like github or fluidd (web interface to a 3d printer) ... and randomly once every day or 3, I'll go to touch anything, any button in any of those tabs, like edit that config file some more, or try to save it... and kablooey, "firefox needs to restart" and I lose everything I had going. This is a new thing that didn't used to happen. Apparently the snap teams response to this story would be "Don't use FF like that."
    - lelouch11 5y ago
      I have a similar situation. The issue here is that the apt update changes firefox program files underneath it which needs a restart. Afaik, using the mozilla release directly is the only solution for this where the program files are changed only after exit. Edit: This has become more common nowadays due to multiple point releases close to each other, to fix some important bug.
- kzrdude 5y ago
  What, where is firefox only available as snap? I'm on Ubuntu 20.04 so haven't run into that yet.
vladvasiliu 5y ago
> But, unless I'm missing something about latest or future releases, isn't it still optional? Can't you use apt instead and uninstall snapd altogether? There seem to be more and more things that are only delivered as snaps. I haven't used Ubuntu on the desktop in a while (and even then, it was just trying it out), but I remember that trying to apt install <something> would say "use the snap". I think LXD is in that case, for example.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- brianshaler 5y ago
  Yikes! I fortunately haven't run into this yet. There are very few cases where I would take the easy road and install a snap (maybe a one-time use CLI where performance doesn't matter and I'd uninstall after?). If not in apt I'd probably ignore the suggestion and look for a ppa, binary, or, in rare cases, compile from source.
- chousuke 5y ago
  I recommend Fedora to everyone wanting a desktop alternative to Ubuntu. It's a well-balanced distribution that is opinionated enough to work fine as-is but doesn't try to force things on you the way Ubuntu does with snaps.
  - pbhjpbhj 5y ago
    What DEs are common/supported on Fedora, I use KDE (Kubuntu), I'm not keen on snaps and so it seems expedient to switch distros when I next install (as it seems Ubuntu are all in for snaps).
    - chousuke 5y ago
      Gnome is the default and there's a KDE "spin", but I use Sway myself so I can't really comment on how well KDE works.
    - tapoxi 5y ago
rlpb 5y ago
> no auto-update controls Maybe not what you want exactly but there are controls and claiming otherwise is misleading. https://snapcraft.io/docs/keeping-snaps-up-to-date#heading--controlling-updates https://snapcraft.io/docs/keeping-snaps-up-to-date#heading--...
- brianshaler 5y ago
  Thank you for this. Severely limited controls are certainly better than no controls. Looks like timer can reduce breakages to no more than monthly, hold can prevent breakages for up to 3 months, and metered seems like it may be able to disable updates and subsequent breakages if I can figure how to trick the OS into thinking I'm always on a metered connection (which is actually true, but I'm on LTE via wifi)

spaniard89277 5y ago

Firefox is only available as snap now. I gues it's bthe same for other apps. For VSCode I managed to download a deb from their site IIRC, but from apt it only suggests to download from snap.

stjohnswarts 5y ago
flatpak is a great alternative and it works well on ubuntu. Although I've just moved wholesale over to pop_os with flatpaks and LTS version.
brianshaler 5y ago
Interesting. Firefox on snap was an absolute nightmare. Not only would New Tab break after an update, fonts would break as they may be (re-)loaded from disk which becomes missing when the app gets remounted at a new mount point after an update. I forget which hoops I had to jump through, but I did finally find a non-snap method that allows me to manually update (or dismiss prompt) to get around these issues while staying up to date (~1 day) VScode wasn't as bad, as it usually seemed to work (but maybe flaky plugins were actually caused by snap?) but it was certainly annoying to lose the ability to switch between windows of the same app (alt+~, I think this was a custom setting to resemble mac) if the latest window/project was opened as a new version of the app (alt+tab)
- Brian_K_White 5y ago
  FF has been driving me crazy lately. Every other day it blows away all my open tabs and whatever I had going on in them. I have a bunch of random tabs open, some with essentially "unsaved work", like shopping carts which may be the result of an hour of research, editing files in web interfaces like github or fluidd (web interface to a 3d printer) ... and randomly once every day or 3, I'll go to touch anything, any button in any of those tabs, like edit that config file some more, or try to save it... and kablooey, "firefox needs to restart" and I lose everything I had going. This is a new thing that didn't used to happen. Apparently the snap teams response to this story would be "Don't use FF like that."
  - lelouch11 5y ago
    I have a similar situation. The issue here is that the apt update changes firefox program files underneath it which needs a restart. Afaik, using the mozilla release directly is the only solution for this where the program files are changed only after exit. Edit: This has become more common nowadays due to multiple point releases close to each other, to fix some important bug.
kzrdude 5y ago
What, where is firefox only available as snap? I'm on Ubuntu 20.04 so haven't run into that yet.

vladvasiliu 5y ago

> But, unless I'm missing something about latest or future releases, isn't it still optional? Can't you use apt instead and uninstall snapd altogether? There seem to be more and more things that are only delivered as snaps. I haven't used Ubuntu on the desktop in a while (and even then, it was just trying it out), but I remember that trying to apt install <something> would say "use the snap". I think LXD is in that case, for example.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
brianshaler 5y ago
Yikes! I fortunately haven't run into this yet. There are very few cases where I would take the easy road and install a snap (maybe a one-time use CLI where performance doesn't matter and I'd uninstall after?). If not in apt I'd probably ignore the suggestion and look for a ppa, binary, or, in rare cases, compile from source.
chousuke 5y ago
I recommend Fedora to everyone wanting a desktop alternative to Ubuntu. It's a well-balanced distribution that is opinionated enough to work fine as-is but doesn't try to force things on you the way Ubuntu does with snaps.
- pbhjpbhj 5y ago
  What DEs are common/supported on Fedora, I use KDE (Kubuntu), I'm not keen on snaps and so it seems expedient to switch distros when I next install (as it seems Ubuntu are all in for snaps).
  - chousuke 5y ago
    Gnome is the default and there's a KDE "spin", but I use Sway myself so I can't really comment on how well KDE works.
  - tapoxi 5y ago

rlpb 5y ago

> no auto-update controls Maybe not what you want exactly but there are controls and claiming otherwise is misleading. https://snapcraft.io/docs/keeping-snaps-up-to-date#heading--controlling-updates https://snapcraft.io/docs/keeping-snaps-up-to-date#heading--...

brianshaler 5y ago
Thank you for this. Severely limited controls are certainly better than no controls. Looks like timer can reduce breakages to no more than monthly, hold can prevent breakages for up to 3 months, and metered seems like it may be able to disable updates and subsequent breakages if I can figure how to trick the OS into thinking I'm always on a metered connection (which is actually true, but I'm on LTE via wifi)