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The problem with snap is, that you kick it out of the door and it will enter back through window. So removing and purging snap is not enough. You have to pin i

The problem with snap is, that you kick it out of the door and it will enter back through window. So removing and purging snap is not enough. You have to pin is so down, so it won't install again. Canonical makes this unnecessary difficult, which raises question, whether it is a fight worth fighting or just move on a system that respects its users more. On snap being for servers too, is it relevant at all? There are docker/podman containers, systemd containers, portable services... no need for another way to do the same.

lproven 4y ago
If you say so. Maybe it's different in 22.04 but in 20.04, once removed, for me it stayed gone. I don't think it's worth changing distros over an add-on package format, no. I think that is a massive overreaction and "cutting off one's nose to spite one's face", as we say in the British Isles. I have both Snap and Flatpak installed on both Mint and Ubuntu and use whatever seems to be the most current. I mainly use them both for proprietary apps, such as Slack, Skype, Spotify, and Zoom; it's considerably quicker and easier than adding custom repos, updating them post-upgrade, making sure their signing keys are current, and so on.
- vetinari 4y ago
  Yes, it reinstalled itself in 22.04. As you say, in 20.04 it stayed gone. I don't see it as an issue of just package formats. It is more of issue, that they want to go someplace and I may want to go someplace else, and the two places are not interchangeable. Snap has control-freaky design, making Canonical the sole controller of what goes through; kind of troll-on-a-bridge. I parse Shuttleworth's remarks of integrity of execution over time as we will force every device to version that we want, at time when we want, and only apps we want and it is something that even Apple didn't dare to do. So I will rather install flathub repo and keep the option of installing additional ones, than to give Canonical this kind of power.
  - lproven 4y ago
    That is absolutely fine, if that is what you want. Things like this are the reason that I wrote the article in the first place. One of the first things I do on most of my Linux boxes is to install Google Chrome. I regularly encounter websites that won't work correctly without it, and I have work to do and I need stuff to function. I have to be able to join video calls, so I need Zoom and Teams and so on. But other people are purists and don't want proprietary apps. For instance, I have had colleagues who were happy to use Chromium but did not want a Google binary on their computer. It's good that there are distros that accommodate this range of preferences. I often see people saying "Fedora is the new Ubuntu", including in the comments here. I personally strongly disagree with that. I personally find the range of tools and drivers and so on in Ubuntu to be useful and helpful, and Fedora excludes many of them. I do not like upgrading my work machines more often than I must. Once every two years is acceptable; once every six months is not, and skipping a version and hoping that it works OK every other version once a year is not OK for me. I want the option of stable LTS releases. I think that's really important. Fedora doesn't offer me that, for valid corporate reasons. CentOS rebuilds are not the same thing as Fedora, and if I ran Fedora on my laptop and, say, Rocky Linux on my production machine, I would have to accomodate the differences. I personally really dislike GNOME and find it a pain to work with. I have discussed my issues and my concerns with the GNOME development team, personally. They do not share them or feel they are important. Fine; it's their project and they are free to run it as they wish. But I can run an Ubuntu LTS with Xfce if I prefer; I can't pick that as a built-in option in my earlier example of Rocky Linux. It's GNOME or nothing, unless you add external repos such as EPEL. These are choices and reasons to pick one distro over another. Some are important to you, and that's fine. I am not telling all Fedora users they are wrong. Their choices are valid for them. I also find the choices in Debian to be restrictive. I quite like where Ubuntu sits, for my own machines. But I run multiple other distros and I am always looking. Recently I have been quite impressed by Alpine Linux: https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/26/alpine_linux_316_released/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/26/alpine_linux_316_rele... I also have a mid-spec laptop running ChromeOS Flex and it's very pleasant to use, too. There's more than one way to go. But a lot of distro advocates forget that. They are so deeply committed to their own choices that they forget that other people have different preferences. So I tried to write a piece summarizing what I personally feel are the key problems and issues for me with a bunch of the major distros.

lproven 4y ago

If you say so. Maybe it's different in 22.04 but in 20.04, once removed, for me it stayed gone. I don't think it's worth changing distros over an add-on package format, no. I think that is a massive overreaction and "cutting off one's nose to spite one's face", as we say in the British Isles. I have both Snap and Flatpak installed on both Mint and Ubuntu and use whatever seems to be the most current. I mainly use them both for proprietary apps, such as Slack, Skype, Spotify, and Zoom; it's considerably quicker and easier than adding custom repos, updating them post-upgrade, making sure their signing keys are current, and so on.

vetinari 4y ago
Yes, it reinstalled itself in 22.04. As you say, in 20.04 it stayed gone. I don't see it as an issue of just package formats. It is more of issue, that they want to go someplace and I may want to go someplace else, and the two places are not interchangeable. Snap has control-freaky design, making Canonical the sole controller of what goes through; kind of troll-on-a-bridge. I parse Shuttleworth's remarks of integrity of execution over time as we will force every device to version that we want, at time when we want, and only apps we want and it is something that even Apple didn't dare to do. So I will rather install flathub repo and keep the option of installing additional ones, than to give Canonical this kind of power.
- lproven 4y ago
  That is absolutely fine, if that is what you want. Things like this are the reason that I wrote the article in the first place. One of the first things I do on most of my Linux boxes is to install Google Chrome. I regularly encounter websites that won't work correctly without it, and I have work to do and I need stuff to function. I have to be able to join video calls, so I need Zoom and Teams and so on. But other people are purists and don't want proprietary apps. For instance, I have had colleagues who were happy to use Chromium but did not want a Google binary on their computer. It's good that there are distros that accommodate this range of preferences. I often see people saying "Fedora is the new Ubuntu", including in the comments here. I personally strongly disagree with that. I personally find the range of tools and drivers and so on in Ubuntu to be useful and helpful, and Fedora excludes many of them. I do not like upgrading my work machines more often than I must. Once every two years is acceptable; once every six months is not, and skipping a version and hoping that it works OK every other version once a year is not OK for me. I want the option of stable LTS releases. I think that's really important. Fedora doesn't offer me that, for valid corporate reasons. CentOS rebuilds are not the same thing as Fedora, and if I ran Fedora on my laptop and, say, Rocky Linux on my production machine, I would have to accomodate the differences. I personally really dislike GNOME and find it a pain to work with. I have discussed my issues and my concerns with the GNOME development team, personally. They do not share them or feel they are important. Fine; it's their project and they are free to run it as they wish. But I can run an Ubuntu LTS with Xfce if I prefer; I can't pick that as a built-in option in my earlier example of Rocky Linux. It's GNOME or nothing, unless you add external repos such as EPEL. These are choices and reasons to pick one distro over another. Some are important to you, and that's fine. I am not telling all Fedora users they are wrong. Their choices are valid for them. I also find the choices in Debian to be restrictive. I quite like where Ubuntu sits, for my own machines. But I run multiple other distros and I am always looking. Recently I have been quite impressed by Alpine Linux: https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/26/alpine_linux_316_released/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/26/alpine_linux_316_rele... I also have a mid-spec laptop running ChromeOS Flex and it's very pleasant to use, too. There's more than one way to go. But a lot of distro advocates forget that. They are so deeply committed to their own choices that they forget that other people have different preferences. So I tried to write a piece summarizing what I personally feel are the key problems and issues for me with a bunch of the major distros.