17 ms·

Ubuntu Snap update spoiled my World Cup Final

206 points by tomjuggler 4y ago

Mikeb85 4y ago
Yeah, Snap updates seem cursed for the newest Ubuntu. I'm on Fedora these days, can't see ever leaving it the way things are going. It's rock solid and seems to be driving the state of the art in Linux things...
- timbit42 4y ago
  Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu/Debian but doesn't have Snaps.
baggy_trough 4y ago
Snaps are certainly a cursed technology. I've had one update in production and break things outside of our regular release process.
- amelius 4y ago
  I mean, providing executables is probably the main purpose of a Linux distro. Ubuntu is playing with their raison d'etre.
pitched 4y ago
Site seems to be having trouble keeping up right now: https://archive.ph/Hnr8P https://archive.ph/Hnr8P
- tomjuggler 4y ago
  Thanks - my $5 server is struggling, yes. Time to look at Cloudflare? Or maybe just a static blog like Jekyll..
  - daguava 4y ago
    Free tier of cloudflare and the cache everything setting + maybe a page rule or so will probably do most of what you want.
  - bauruine 4y ago
    You could also use e.g. nginx to cache the site you don't need Cloudflare for that.
  - renewiltord 4y ago
    Cloudflare is trivial to set up. You should definitely use it. If you use a mainstream static site generator, you can just deploy to Cloudflare Pages as well.
CSDude 4y ago
Snap is an abomination. See my previous comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33173762 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33173762 I fought with a guy in 2015 that believed snap was the future, and this cost me almost my job back then.
- vbezhenar 4y ago
  I don't see snaps being phased out. I don't like them either, but there're plenty of abomination technologies being the future. The whole web might be one of them.
- throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
  based
- forgotpwd16 4y ago
  >* Oh, you want to install a package, here are two very distant versions in snap and apt. Select one! Well, Canonical has your back on that with apt installing snap packages.
  - CSDude 4y ago
    That is immediate trigger to rm -Rf /
- dunefox 4y ago
  How did this almost cost you your job?
  - CSDude 4y ago
    Ugly politics, guy was just trying to delay timeline
mesebrec 4y ago
Snaps don't update when the app is running. I don't know what happened here, but it seems the problem might be somewhere else.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  If that goes on for 2 weeks, doesn't it kill the app and update anyway?
  - mesebrec 4y ago
    If you ignore the notifications for two weeks, yes. But you even get a notification at least four hours before updating saying you have little time left. That said, if you run `snap hold firefox`, it will wait indefinitely.
    - bauruine 4y ago
      Not updating isn't a solution. What works for me is a systemd service that does a snap refresh on boot. At least I have some controll on when it updates.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - bobmaxup 4y ago
        I know it is simple to do, but care to share the unit file?
        bauruine 4y ago
        It's the most basic file possible but it does it's job. cat /etc/systemd/system/upgrade-system.service [Unit] After=network-online.target [Service] ExecStart=/bin/bash -c '/usr/bin/snap refresh && apt update && apt upgrade -y' [Install] WantedBy=default.target
    - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
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amelius 4y ago
Heh, I just tried to fire up a Snap instance of FreeCad on a remote machine (because snap on the local machine was broken). Got an "X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication", even though xeyes started just fine. It seems to be yet another Snap limitation. Found this thread from more than 2 years ago: https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/x11-connection-rejected-because-of-wrong-authentication/16528 https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/x11-connection-rejected-because...
renewiltord 4y ago
Crazy game for sure. The best WC ever (or over the last 20 anyway). This is a classic UX problem with automation: there are times when you don't know the operating condition. It's better to prompt with opt-out. Mac OS prompts, and that's better than anything else. Snaps are also abysmally slow. And while I'm complaining, they also occupy my `mount` output so that's annoying.
- d1sxeyes 4y ago
  The last 20 WC covers pretty much all of living memory, and I doubt many of us on here are qualified to talk about more than 5-10 WCs. 2006 I remember Italy v France was very exciting. 1954 was supposedly pretty exciting with allegations of doping, blatent fouling, and a very dodgy offside call against Puskas. '58 was also supposedly pretty exciting (certainly a lot of goals) '66 was a great one for me as a Brit, but also interesting because of the stolen trophy, yet more doping. The match itself was also tense, with a last minute free-kick pushing the match to extra time, the first (and only) hat trick every scored in a WC final, the controversial third goal and the final goal scored while the pitch was being invaded. '90 was interesting because of the sheer dirtiness of play. '98 is interesting for me because it's the first World cup I really remember following closely, but not particularly noteworthy as these things go. That said, 2022 was a very exciting final and will go down in World Cup History. And definitely nothing should kill a browser without explicit user confirmation.
  - iso1631 4y ago
    It's odd because I have firefox snap on ubuntu 2204 on my laptop, an annoying popup crops up occasionally, but the only thing I've ever had kill firefox is oom-killer.
  - renewiltord 4y ago
    Over the last 20 years hahaha not last 20 WCs. I've only seen the last 20 y worth.
  - unethical_ban 4y ago
    Was there ever a time when faking injuries like a toddler wasn't an integral, unpunished part of the game? I like watching the WC because soccer is interesting enough to see once per Olympiad on the world stage. The final today had some amazing shows of talent and teamwork, but it is primally revolting to me to watch grown men writhe in faux agony with one eye on the ref, when their opponent's foot whiffed some air past their shin.
DuckFeathers 4y ago
I always disable auto-updates on my PCs. The OS has no business installing anything on it's schedule, or in any schedule. I do it on mine as I go. I just have update notifications and I install them manually when I feel like it. Also, it is bizarre that they desinged a software delivery system with no option to disable auto-updates... and only adding the option now. And the fact that Firefox frooze during the update is also strange. Not sure if it's a snap problem or Firefox problem. As a long-time Firefox and Linux user (started using Firefox when it was alpha version and Linux around 2002), the best decision I made around 3 years ago was move to Windows and Edge.
- pmontra 4y ago
  Latest time I checked it was impossible not to update Windows. The best I could do was to postpone the updates by 180 days. That was Windows 10.
bfrog 4y ago
Snap is terrible. Trying to solve the problem the wrong way. See nix/guix for how it’s done right.
hinata08 4y ago
To the defence of Snap, I have the same issues on my Firefox installed with PPA (Firefox updates at random time, then kindly asks to reboot by replacing each webpage by a grey one with a restart button, and it doesn't restart tabs in private windows) It's a very Firefox problem, not snap (I use PPA and not Snap because snap outright doesn't work when your home isn't /home/uname , and mine is /home/company_domain/uname ) (I can't believe that ubuntu forces you to use a software that isn't production ready)
- capableweb 4y ago
  I'm mostly using Firefox on Arch and it doesn't suffer from this problem. It updates when I want it to update, meaning when I do my daily update with my distros package manager.
  - prmoustache 4y ago
    Same with most distros. It really is a ubuntu problem.
- asddubs 4y ago
  i've had the same thing happen in both chromium and firefox. what i hate most about snap though is the constant popups telling me the close the application. but closing the application doesn't actually trigger it updating, it basically wants you to close the application and then wait several hours until their cron job to update or whatever runs again. so I just get these constant pop ups
- Izkata 4y ago
  From what I've heard (haven't done this myself yet) if you install Firefox manually instead of through a package manager, it has an internal update mechanism that doesn't trigger the "please restart" page. That page is for when a package manager swaps files out from under it, while the internal mechanism waits for you to restart.
  - deleted 4y ago
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j1elo 4y ago
They went to Arch, which is fine, although quite a steep change in the baseline system. New package manager, new update cadence, new "way to do things". Another alternative with much less change would have been Linux Mint: it still is a fine-tuned Ubuntu, but without the Snap Store.
alkonaut 4y ago
Can someone explain what’s going on here? Is there a design mistake here? Does the app update in-place rather than side by side so it simply launches the updated version on next launch? If it’s side by side then why does it even affect the old version it force a restart? And if it’s not side by side then who the hell designed it?
deleted 4y ago
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voidfunc 4y ago
Snap is a pile or garbage and I really wish Ubuntu would just stop trying to be a little different all the time. They learned their lesson with Upstart but I guess it'll be a few releases until the abandon Snap.
- pbhjpbhj 4y ago
  Hmm, it's good to try to be different, bit they certainly shouldn't push "different" stuff when it doesn't even work yet. I've not minded the transition to systemd, for example. Snap has been awful, I don't like it and every time it's pushed that bit more I feel like Canonical are behaving like Microsoft somewhat. Debian is looking attractive. Abandoning snap is not enough, it's more about respecting users ... but they are obviously under no obligations to me, I'm not paying.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    Ubuntu moving window control buttons to the left circa 10.x was that straw for me. Not because it necessarily made anything harder, but because it was an arrogant change for no goddamned reason. UX should start with humility -- if you change things that lots of people are used to then you'd better have some damn good reasons.
    - unethical_ban 4y ago
      Keeping the clock and widgets in the upper right while unifying the header window and app window was the reason. You can dislike the reason, but you can't say there wasn't one. RIP Unity
      - tmtvl 4y ago
        What do you mean "RIP Unity"? Ubuntu Unity got accepted as an official flavour just recently.
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    Canonical is doing a great job replicating the BOFH. It's an integral part of the traditional *nix experience.
neilv 4y ago
Snap getting more invasive was the final straw, which led me to move a startup away from Ubuntu LTS, to Debian Stable. (Was already leaning towards moving, because a rough monitoring of security updates over several months showed Debian was strangely more trustworthy. Snap making things even worse for some of our systems made the decision easier.)
- napsterbr 4y ago
  It was the last straw for me, as well. More specially, the annoying notifications telling me to update Firefox or "it will automatically update in 13 days". I don't know what was supposed to happen, but these notifications kept showing up for several months.
- dogmatism 4y ago
  Debian stable with flatpak and appimage is a good way to go
Broker0 4y ago
I like the conclusion. Factor 'X' messed up my 'Y', going back to previous solution.
guiambros 4y ago
Snap is a disaster, and full of problematic structural decisions that are now really hard to fix (e.g. [1]). I've decided to delay my upgrade to 22.04 given Canonical's increasingly aggressive push towards Snap, and now I'm considering moving to Arch or some other distribution. [1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snapd/+bug/1575053 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snapd/+bug/1575053
- input_sh 4y ago
  Funny thing is the biggest Ubuntu derivatives (elementary OS, Linux Mint, Pop! OS) are all going against Ubuntu on this one and shipping with flatpak support.
  - Avamander 4y ago
    I wish things like lubuntu, kubuntu, kde neon would also adopt the same or rebase themselves on top of Debian.
- Avamander 4y ago
  > (e.g. [1]) Canonical employees in that thread have repeatedly said they basically don't care about the opinion of the people affected. The latest reasoning provided being that they don't have the resources... But either they have so little resources they shouldn't be pushing snap in its current form at all or they're lying (and the former reason still applies). Either case it's disappointing and will slowly destroy all the goodwill they had.
kybernetyk 4y ago
>I am going back to Arch. My computer is my computer, and I don’t care anymore how much work it takes, I’m going to take charge so nothing like this ever happens again. From my experience the only real work load with Arch was the set up. Once I installed it and configured everything to my liking there has been nearly 0 work with maintaining the system. I've been running my installation of Arch since 2016 and the system didn't break even once.
- manchmalscott 4y ago
  I recently switched back to arch, and when I updated my xorg a few days later, a few things started crashing (notably godot) with a “[xcb] Unknown sequence number while processing queue”, so as much as I love arch I definitely wouldn’t call it “nearly 0 work” unless you just never update.
  - stevenhuang 4y ago
    Unlucky, looks like it was an libx11 upstream bug. Has since been fixed as of a few hours ago at least.
    - manchmalscott 4y ago
      That’s what I figured, yeah. I wish the Arch team used their news feed more often for things like this.
- silisili 4y ago
  Same. I love their archiso, you can build your own little custom live ISO. I put Gnome and networking on mine, then install via a terminal shell window. The only reason I reinstall is when I upgrade my box every 2 or 3 years. Years ago Arch was a bit more finicky, but today it's been perfectly stable for me, doing updates every Friday.
- mort96 4y ago
  I agree, Arch is amazing. I haven't been using it for a few years, I've been on Ubuntu in an attempt to be closer to how a "normal computer user" would experience Linux. But every single time Ubuntu Softwate messed something up, every single time I get a notification to close Firefox in <13 days to avoid disruptions, every time I click the "update all" button on Ubuntu Software and it tells me it can't because the Snap Store is running (as a background process which I can't close through the UI), I get the urge to go back. At this point, it's only inertia which keeps me on Ubuntu, I don't want to take the time to set stuff up anew. But at this rate, I'm sure I'll finally make the switch sooner rather than later. I'm not philosophically against Snap as an idea. But what I am against is all the absolutely terrible UX decisions and bugs which Canonical evidently considers "acceptable". It makes the whole Linux desktop look like a joke. Maybe it's time to realise it is a joke. That Linux will remain a programmer OS and an OS for locked-down consumer devices, but not a general consumer desktop-style OS. And maybe we should recognise that in such a world, there is no space for Ubuntu Desktop.
Darmody 4y ago
That's why the first thing you do once Ubuntu is installed is remove snap completely. It's sad that now we have to fight against the OS like on Windows.
- doodlesdev 4y ago
  You don't, you still have the option to switch distros. Stop being a slave to Canonica. With Ubuntu and Snap, Linux is no better than Windows. Try Linux Mint, Debian, Fedora, Arch, openSUSE. Options is something we're not short on in the Linux space.
- timbit42 4y ago
  But when you remove Snaps, how do you install the apps Snap was providing? I recommend Linux Mint which has no Snaps and everything is in the repo as normal.
silisili 4y ago
At this point I have trouble feeling sympathy. All of us former and some current users have been outlining the problems with snap for years, this one included. Just find any HN thread (or probably Reddit and Twitter threads) about ubuntu or snaps from the last few years and you'll see. At this point it's akin to starting smoking today then acting shocked when you get lung cancer.
thot_experiment 4y ago
Snap is awful, no arguments there. I think the more important thing here is that the very idea that something should update itself is so incredibly insanely broken and I cannot for the life of me understand why it's the norm. The number of times I've been hacked and suffered a data loss is astronomically small compared to the number of times I've had something update and suffered a data loss, or more importantly the number of times I've had something update and cause a regression or break something. Then I have to spend my precious time bringing something that was PREVIOUSLY IN A WORKING STATE back to a working state, which is one of the most infuriating feelings.
- bombolo 4y ago
  Doesn't apt also update itself?
  - f1refly 4y ago
    Apt updates itself if you instruct it to, the updates also won't restart anything by themselves. I don't think unattended upgrades are enabled on debian or on ubuntu.
    - bombolo 4y ago
      I think they might be in ubuntu server installations. I think they aren't enabled by default on debian… at least not on my installs.
      - f1refly 4y ago
        I have a bunch of ubuntu containers at work, none of them self update by default, I know that because I had to enable unattended upgrades manually in all of them. Maybe it's a lxc template thing?
        bombolo 4y ago
        If you got them from dockerhub or similar… that's not a default ubuntu install.
aborsy 4y ago
I have a snap installation of nextcloud. It has self updated for years with no problem. The set up took almost no time. Canonical tests the package before releasing it in their OS. Compared to bare metal and docker installation that were broken every few months and required maintenance, I have been pretty happy with snap. Based on this, would say snap is not a bad idea. Sure snaps might be slow, but that’s improving. I don’t have time to tweak applications. Let canonical package and test all dependencies for their platform, secure and update the apps.
- tommica 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing this comment, its nice to read about the positives of snap, and not just the negative. Helps in getting a better idea of it.
- timbit42 4y ago
  Snaps are available for other distros but I presume Canonical doesn't test their Snaps on all the other distros. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, making Snaps a bad idea.
simonebrunozzi 4y ago
Sorry to hear this. If you managed not to get "spoilered" on the result, try to watch it (I'm sure there's several ways to watch a rerun)... it was a phenomenal game.
bobmaxup 4y ago
You can set when snap refreshes take place: https://snapcraft.io/docs/keeping-snaps-up-to-date#:~:text=on%20the%20system-,refresh.timer,-Use%20refresh.timer https://snapcraft.io/docs/keeping-snaps-up-to-date#:~:text=o...
- CoastalCoder 4y ago
  On that page I'm seeing options for delaying snap updates for a limited time, but I'm not seeing anything to prevent them permanently.
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    "Time duration units can be seconds (s), minutes (m) or hours (h), or a combination of these. A value of forever is also valid, to postpone updates indefinitely:" ... "If no duration is specified, the time duration defaults to forever." Just running "snap refresh --hold" should disable snap updates permanently. If you configure your system update script/tooling to unhold the snaps so security fixes can still be installed at the appropriate time, this should mean that no unexpected updates should occur. You could probably even attach the snap unhold + snap refresh + snap hold flow to the APT hooks somehow, integrating snap updates with apt upgrade.
- timbit42 4y ago
  That doesn't fix any of the other problems Snaps cause.
orbit7 4y ago
Automated update processes that run at the expense of securing access to information when it's needed or that do so with the risk of data loss are a complete failure in my view.
dm319 4y ago
I get why snap is needed, but, like others, my experience has been poor. The first issue was Ubuntu 22.04 shipping the firefox snap only. It's ok for small occasional use programs that you need the bleeding edge version on. But it's not ok to wait 30+ seconds for firefox to open. They fixed that. But I hit into it's idea of security - being unable to open html files on my local drive, unable to load links from my mutt client, and unable to download and save directly into a specific folder. And worse, the snap updates just don't function well. They remind you when you are using the program, and they don't seem to update when you're not using it. Real shame, but these are fixable problems.
- cardanome 4y ago
  Snap is not needed. On Linux Mint you install Firefox normally through apt and it works fine. I decide when I update it. As it should be. (Sure tech like appimage or flatpack has its place but the browser can be handled perfectly fine by the normal package manager of your distribution.)
  - intelkishan 4y ago
    I was recently forced into using snap for Firefox by Mint. I had enabled snap for convenient installation of some packages. But I did not anticipate that it would force me to switch to the snap version of Firefox.
    - timbit42 4y ago
      So, Snap acts like a virus.
- alamortsubite 4y ago
  > Real shame, but these are fixable problems. Debian.
  - remram 4y ago
    Or just the Mozilla PPA.
bradwood 4y ago
TIL all about showmax.com - As a ZA expat living in the UK, I'm all over this. Looks like some good content from ZA, Nigeria, et al!
rubyist5eva 4y ago
Page isn't working for me but what happened? I use over a bunch snaps on my Ubuntu install (1password, firefox, docker, telegram, discord just off the top of my head) and updates don't happen until I restart the app, and it gives me a desktop notification something like a week out before it forces it, never had an issue with it personally. I can't think of any desktop app that I use that stays open for more than a week at a time that is a huge distruption to close it and reopen it.
chrsw 4y ago
I found Snap to be frustating. It's trying to address a real problem but imho it fails to make life easier. As soon as something breaks or goes wrong and I have to look under the hood, my mental model of how traditional Unix software managment "works" is almost useless. Why can't something be coherent and powerful behind the scenes but slick up front for users who don't want to think too much about the complexities of software managment?
happyjack 4y ago
Snap is one of the few reasons that made me ditch Ubuntu forever. I don't know a ton about Canonical's business model, but was the idea to get everyone hooked on snap and then force a subscription out of it? Snap is the antithesis of apt or dnf in regards to what I want out of a package manager.
anonymousiam 4y ago
Snap has its uses, but Firefox is most certainly not one of them. Firefox maintains personalized databases that aren't where they should be under Snap. Also, Snap completely ruins the ability to run Firefox remotely on a local X display. I was fine with Snap being part of Ubuntu, but when they migrated Firefox to Snap, I uninstalled Snap and manually installed Firefox directly from Mozilla.
tomjuggler 4y ago
Update: so as mentioned in my blog post, my panic force reboot during the Firefox Snap update has definitely done something bad to my system. It's now failing to boot most of the time and also crashing randomly when it does boot. Not sure what the root cause is but it's a 1 year old laptop. And yes I will definitely be re-watching the game after I have finished installing Arch. I also signed up to Cloudflare due to you all hammering my server last night!
darthrupert 4y ago
You shouldn't be watching that pile of regressive corruption anyway so no harm done.
alanhaha 4y ago
Well, I like this line in my Ubuntu customization: sudo apt remove --purge snapd
- josephcsible 4y ago
  How are you using software that Ubuntu stopped making available any other way, e.g., Firefox?
  - timbit42 4y ago
    I'm doing it by using Linux Mint. It's Ubuntu without Snaps. It's taking people a long time to remove from their brains that Ubuntu is a good desktop Linux.
torginus 4y ago
Yet another example of why the traditional champion companies of the Linux desktop (Canonical, Red Hat etc.) are like a poisoned apple - they are catering to their paying userbase (who are running servers, IoT, PoS, whatever), and don't give a damn about making technical changes that break the average users' experience. In short they are doing the exact same as Microsoft does with Windows, but the enemy this time is inside the gates.
mablopoule 4y ago
Honestly, I love snap because it's the main reason why I've switched to Arch after a decade of Ubuntu, and I couldn't be happier about it.
- timbit42 4y ago
  I switched to Linux Mint. It's Ubuntu without Snaps.
Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago
Autoupdate is always an abomination regardless of the software doing it. Snap, apt, steam, firefox itself.
major505 4y ago
The main reason I still use ubuntu based bistros is Pop OS. The rest, I prefer fedora this days.
throwaway67743 4y ago
This is not the fault of snap though, Firefox is just fucking useless - the current instance of the browser that's already loaded everything it has into ram since it will happily suck up a gig while doing nothing should not break because the on disk version has changed. But no, instead of continuing it will do one of several things: - show a blank page after entering URL or search term (no feedback, it just does nothing) - fail to refresh the tab - crash entirely - helpfully suggest you restart Firefox in one of those tabs that stopped working earlier. It is embarrassingly bad, just like the overall UX for Mozilla products is unfortunately, but alas the only other choice is brave and its even worse somehow. (Chrome proper would also be fine but Firefox is the only multi platform* browser that supports custom sync etc) * Firefox is horrific on android too - broken rendering, blank pages until you engage the address bar and hit go again, etc, add-ons basically unavailable...
amadeuspagel 4y ago
I got strange notifications telling me to close VS Code, so that it can be updated. But it's often closed, and I kept getting these notifications. I ended up uninstalling the snap and installing VS Code from the website.

206 points by tomjuggler 4y ago

Yeah, Snap updates seem cursed for the newest Ubuntu. I'm on Fedora these days, can't see ever leaving it the way things are going. It's rock solid and seems to be driving the state of the art in Linux things...

timbit42 4y ago
Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu/Debian but doesn't have Snaps.

baggy_trough 4y ago

Snaps are certainly a cursed technology. I've had one update in production and break things outside of our regular release process.

amelius 4y ago
I mean, providing executables is probably the main purpose of a Linux distro. Ubuntu is playing with their raison d'etre.

pitched 4y ago

Site seems to be having trouble keeping up right now: https://archive.ph/Hnr8P https://archive.ph/Hnr8P

tomjuggler 4y ago
Thanks - my $5 server is struggling, yes. Time to look at Cloudflare? Or maybe just a static blog like Jekyll..
- daguava 4y ago
  Free tier of cloudflare and the cache everything setting + maybe a page rule or so will probably do most of what you want.
- bauruine 4y ago
  You could also use e.g. nginx to cache the site you don't need Cloudflare for that.
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Cloudflare is trivial to set up. You should definitely use it. If you use a mainstream static site generator, you can just deploy to Cloudflare Pages as well.

CSDude 4y ago

Snap is an abomination. See my previous comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33173762 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33173762 I fought with a guy in 2015 that believed snap was the future, and this cost me almost my job back then.

vbezhenar 4y ago
I don't see snaps being phased out. I don't like them either, but there're plenty of abomination technologies being the future. The whole web might be one of them.
throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
based
forgotpwd16 4y ago
>* Oh, you want to install a package, here are two very distant versions in snap and apt. Select one! Well, Canonical has your back on that with apt installing snap packages.
- CSDude 4y ago
  That is immediate trigger to rm -Rf /
dunefox 4y ago
How did this almost cost you your job?
- CSDude 4y ago
  Ugly politics, guy was just trying to delay timeline

mesebrec 4y ago

Snaps don't update when the app is running. I don't know what happened here, but it seems the problem might be somewhere else.

josephcsible 4y ago
If that goes on for 2 weeks, doesn't it kill the app and update anyway?
- mesebrec 4y ago
  If you ignore the notifications for two weeks, yes. But you even get a notification at least four hours before updating saying you have little time left. That said, if you run `snap hold firefox`, it will wait indefinitely.
  - bauruine 4y ago
    Not updating isn't a solution. What works for me is a systemd service that does a snap refresh on boot. At least I have some controll on when it updates.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - bobmaxup 4y ago
      I know it is simple to do, but care to share the unit file?
      - bauruine 4y ago
        It's the most basic file possible but it does it's job. cat /etc/systemd/system/upgrade-system.service [Unit] After=network-online.target [Service] ExecStart=/bin/bash -c '/usr/bin/snap refresh && apt update && apt upgrade -y' [Install] WantedBy=default.target
  - 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

amelius 4y ago

Heh, I just tried to fire up a Snap instance of FreeCad on a remote machine (because snap on the local machine was broken). Got an "X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication", even though xeyes started just fine. It seems to be yet another Snap limitation. Found this thread from more than 2 years ago: https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/x11-connection-rejected-because-of-wrong-authentication/16528 https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/x11-connection-rejected-because...

renewiltord 4y ago

Crazy game for sure. The best WC ever (or over the last 20 anyway). This is a classic UX problem with automation: there are times when you don't know the operating condition. It's better to prompt with opt-out. Mac OS prompts, and that's better than anything else. Snaps are also abysmally slow. And while I'm complaining, they also occupy my `mount` output so that's annoying.

d1sxeyes 4y ago
The last 20 WC covers pretty much all of living memory, and I doubt many of us on here are qualified to talk about more than 5-10 WCs. 2006 I remember Italy v France was very exciting. 1954 was supposedly pretty exciting with allegations of doping, blatent fouling, and a very dodgy offside call against Puskas. '58 was also supposedly pretty exciting (certainly a lot of goals) '66 was a great one for me as a Brit, but also interesting because of the stolen trophy, yet more doping. The match itself was also tense, with a last minute free-kick pushing the match to extra time, the first (and only) hat trick every scored in a WC final, the controversial third goal and the final goal scored while the pitch was being invaded. '90 was interesting because of the sheer dirtiness of play. '98 is interesting for me because it's the first World cup I really remember following closely, but not particularly noteworthy as these things go. That said, 2022 was a very exciting final and will go down in World Cup History. And definitely nothing should kill a browser without explicit user confirmation.
- iso1631 4y ago
  It's odd because I have firefox snap on ubuntu 2204 on my laptop, an annoying popup crops up occasionally, but the only thing I've ever had kill firefox is oom-killer.
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Over the last 20 years hahaha not last 20 WCs. I've only seen the last 20 y worth.
- unethical_ban 4y ago
  Was there ever a time when faking injuries like a toddler wasn't an integral, unpunished part of the game? I like watching the WC because soccer is interesting enough to see once per Olympiad on the world stage. The final today had some amazing shows of talent and teamwork, but it is primally revolting to me to watch grown men writhe in faux agony with one eye on the ref, when their opponent's foot whiffed some air past their shin.

DuckFeathers 4y ago

I always disable auto-updates on my PCs. The OS has no business installing anything on it's schedule, or in any schedule. I do it on mine as I go. I just have update notifications and I install them manually when I feel like it. Also, it is bizarre that they desinged a software delivery system with no option to disable auto-updates... and only adding the option now. And the fact that Firefox frooze during the update is also strange. Not sure if it's a snap problem or Firefox problem. As a long-time Firefox and Linux user (started using Firefox when it was alpha version and Linux around 2002), the best decision I made around 3 years ago was move to Windows and Edge.

pmontra 4y ago
Latest time I checked it was impossible not to update Windows. The best I could do was to postpone the updates by 180 days. That was Windows 10.

bfrog 4y ago

Snap is terrible. Trying to solve the problem the wrong way. See nix/guix for how it’s done right.

hinata08 4y ago

To the defence of Snap, I have the same issues on my Firefox installed with PPA (Firefox updates at random time, then kindly asks to reboot by replacing each webpage by a grey one with a restart button, and it doesn't restart tabs in private windows) It's a very Firefox problem, not snap (I use PPA and not Snap because snap outright doesn't work when your home isn't /home/uname , and mine is /home/company_domain/uname ) (I can't believe that ubuntu forces you to use a software that isn't production ready)

capableweb 4y ago
I'm mostly using Firefox on Arch and it doesn't suffer from this problem. It updates when I want it to update, meaning when I do my daily update with my distros package manager.
- prmoustache 4y ago
  Same with most distros. It really is a ubuntu problem.
asddubs 4y ago
i've had the same thing happen in both chromium and firefox. what i hate most about snap though is the constant popups telling me the close the application. but closing the application doesn't actually trigger it updating, it basically wants you to close the application and then wait several hours until their cron job to update or whatever runs again. so I just get these constant pop ups
Izkata 4y ago
From what I've heard (haven't done this myself yet) if you install Firefox manually instead of through a package manager, it has an internal update mechanism that doesn't trigger the "please restart" page. That page is for when a package manager swaps files out from under it, while the internal mechanism waits for you to restart.
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j1elo 4y ago

They went to Arch, which is fine, although quite a steep change in the baseline system. New package manager, new update cadence, new "way to do things". Another alternative with much less change would have been Linux Mint: it still is a fine-tuned Ubuntu, but without the Snap Store.

alkonaut 4y ago

Can someone explain what’s going on here? Is there a design mistake here? Does the app update in-place rather than side by side so it simply launches the updated version on next launch? If it’s side by side then why does it even affect the old version it force a restart? And if it’s not side by side then who the hell designed it?

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voidfunc 4y ago

Snap is a pile or garbage and I really wish Ubuntu would just stop trying to be a little different all the time. They learned their lesson with Upstart but I guess it'll be a few releases until the abandon Snap.

pbhjpbhj 4y ago
Hmm, it's good to try to be different, bit they certainly shouldn't push "different" stuff when it doesn't even work yet. I've not minded the transition to systemd, for example. Snap has been awful, I don't like it and every time it's pushed that bit more I feel like Canonical are behaving like Microsoft somewhat. Debian is looking attractive. Abandoning snap is not enough, it's more about respecting users ... but they are obviously under no obligations to me, I'm not paying.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  Ubuntu moving window control buttons to the left circa 10.x was that straw for me. Not because it necessarily made anything harder, but because it was an arrogant change for no goddamned reason. UX should start with humility -- if you change things that lots of people are used to then you'd better have some damn good reasons.
  - unethical_ban 4y ago
    Keeping the clock and widgets in the upper right while unifying the header window and app window was the reason. You can dislike the reason, but you can't say there wasn't one. RIP Unity
    - tmtvl 4y ago
      What do you mean "RIP Unity"? Ubuntu Unity got accepted as an official flavour just recently.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  Canonical is doing a great job replicating the BOFH. It's an integral part of the traditional *nix experience.

neilv 4y ago

Snap getting more invasive was the final straw, which led me to move a startup away from Ubuntu LTS, to Debian Stable. (Was already leaning towards moving, because a rough monitoring of security updates over several months showed Debian was strangely more trustworthy. Snap making things even worse for some of our systems made the decision easier.)

napsterbr 4y ago
It was the last straw for me, as well. More specially, the annoying notifications telling me to update Firefox or "it will automatically update in 13 days". I don't know what was supposed to happen, but these notifications kept showing up for several months.
dogmatism 4y ago
Debian stable with flatpak and appimage is a good way to go

Broker0 4y ago

I like the conclusion. Factor 'X' messed up my 'Y', going back to previous solution.

guiambros 4y ago

Snap is a disaster, and full of problematic structural decisions that are now really hard to fix (e.g. [1]). I've decided to delay my upgrade to 22.04 given Canonical's increasingly aggressive push towards Snap, and now I'm considering moving to Arch or some other distribution. [1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snapd/+bug/1575053 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snapd/+bug/1575053

input_sh 4y ago
Funny thing is the biggest Ubuntu derivatives (elementary OS, Linux Mint, Pop! OS) are all going against Ubuntu on this one and shipping with flatpak support.
- Avamander 4y ago
  I wish things like lubuntu, kubuntu, kde neon would also adopt the same or rebase themselves on top of Debian.
Avamander 4y ago
> (e.g. [1]) Canonical employees in that thread have repeatedly said they basically don't care about the opinion of the people affected. The latest reasoning provided being that they don't have the resources... But either they have so little resources they shouldn't be pushing snap in its current form at all or they're lying (and the former reason still applies). Either case it's disappointing and will slowly destroy all the goodwill they had.

kybernetyk 4y ago

>I am going back to Arch. My computer is my computer, and I don’t care anymore how much work it takes, I’m going to take charge so nothing like this ever happens again. From my experience the only real work load with Arch was the set up. Once I installed it and configured everything to my liking there has been nearly 0 work with maintaining the system. I've been running my installation of Arch since 2016 and the system didn't break even once.

manchmalscott 4y ago
I recently switched back to arch, and when I updated my xorg a few days later, a few things started crashing (notably godot) with a “[xcb] Unknown sequence number while processing queue”, so as much as I love arch I definitely wouldn’t call it “nearly 0 work” unless you just never update.
- stevenhuang 4y ago
  Unlucky, looks like it was an libx11 upstream bug. Has since been fixed as of a few hours ago at least.
  - manchmalscott 4y ago
    That’s what I figured, yeah. I wish the Arch team used their news feed more often for things like this.
silisili 4y ago
Same. I love their archiso, you can build your own little custom live ISO. I put Gnome and networking on mine, then install via a terminal shell window. The only reason I reinstall is when I upgrade my box every 2 or 3 years. Years ago Arch was a bit more finicky, but today it's been perfectly stable for me, doing updates every Friday.
mort96 4y ago
I agree, Arch is amazing. I haven't been using it for a few years, I've been on Ubuntu in an attempt to be closer to how a "normal computer user" would experience Linux. But every single time Ubuntu Softwate messed something up, every single time I get a notification to close Firefox in <13 days to avoid disruptions, every time I click the "update all" button on Ubuntu Software and it tells me it can't because the Snap Store is running (as a background process which I can't close through the UI), I get the urge to go back. At this point, it's only inertia which keeps me on Ubuntu, I don't want to take the time to set stuff up anew. But at this rate, I'm sure I'll finally make the switch sooner rather than later. I'm not philosophically against Snap as an idea. But what I am against is all the absolutely terrible UX decisions and bugs which Canonical evidently considers "acceptable". It makes the whole Linux desktop look like a joke. Maybe it's time to realise it is a joke. That Linux will remain a programmer OS and an OS for locked-down consumer devices, but not a general consumer desktop-style OS. And maybe we should recognise that in such a world, there is no space for Ubuntu Desktop.

Darmody 4y ago

That's why the first thing you do once Ubuntu is installed is remove snap completely. It's sad that now we have to fight against the OS like on Windows.

doodlesdev 4y ago
You don't, you still have the option to switch distros. Stop being a slave to Canonica. With Ubuntu and Snap, Linux is no better than Windows. Try Linux Mint, Debian, Fedora, Arch, openSUSE. Options is something we're not short on in the Linux space.
timbit42 4y ago
But when you remove Snaps, how do you install the apps Snap was providing? I recommend Linux Mint which has no Snaps and everything is in the repo as normal.

silisili 4y ago

At this point I have trouble feeling sympathy. All of us former and some current users have been outlining the problems with snap for years, this one included. Just find any HN thread (or probably Reddit and Twitter threads) about ubuntu or snaps from the last few years and you'll see. At this point it's akin to starting smoking today then acting shocked when you get lung cancer.

thot_experiment 4y ago

Snap is awful, no arguments there. I think the more important thing here is that the very idea that something should update itself is so incredibly insanely broken and I cannot for the life of me understand why it's the norm. The number of times I've been hacked and suffered a data loss is astronomically small compared to the number of times I've had something update and suffered a data loss, or more importantly the number of times I've had something update and cause a regression or break something. Then I have to spend my precious time bringing something that was PREVIOUSLY IN A WORKING STATE back to a working state, which is one of the most infuriating feelings.

bombolo 4y ago
Doesn't apt also update itself?
- f1refly 4y ago
  Apt updates itself if you instruct it to, the updates also won't restart anything by themselves. I don't think unattended upgrades are enabled on debian or on ubuntu.
  - bombolo 4y ago
    I think they might be in ubuntu server installations. I think they aren't enabled by default on debian… at least not on my installs.
    - f1refly 4y ago
      I have a bunch of ubuntu containers at work, none of them self update by default, I know that because I had to enable unattended upgrades manually in all of them. Maybe it's a lxc template thing?
      - bombolo 4y ago
        If you got them from dockerhub or similar… that's not a default ubuntu install.

aborsy 4y ago

I have a snap installation of nextcloud. It has self updated for years with no problem. The set up took almost no time. Canonical tests the package before releasing it in their OS. Compared to bare metal and docker installation that were broken every few months and required maintenance, I have been pretty happy with snap. Based on this, would say snap is not a bad idea. Sure snaps might be slow, but that’s improving. I don’t have time to tweak applications. Let canonical package and test all dependencies for their platform, secure and update the apps.

tommica 4y ago
Thanks for sharing this comment, its nice to read about the positives of snap, and not just the negative. Helps in getting a better idea of it.
timbit42 4y ago
Snaps are available for other distros but I presume Canonical doesn't test their Snaps on all the other distros. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, making Snaps a bad idea.

simonebrunozzi 4y ago

Sorry to hear this. If you managed not to get "spoilered" on the result, try to watch it (I'm sure there's several ways to watch a rerun)... it was a phenomenal game.

bobmaxup 4y ago

You can set when snap refreshes take place: https://snapcraft.io/docs/keeping-snaps-up-to-date#:~:text=on%20the%20system-,refresh.timer,-Use%20refresh.timer https://snapcraft.io/docs/keeping-snaps-up-to-date#:~:text=o...

CoastalCoder 4y ago
On that page I'm seeing options for delaying snap updates for a limited time, but I'm not seeing anything to prevent them permanently.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  "Time duration units can be seconds (s), minutes (m) or hours (h), or a combination of these. A value of forever is also valid, to postpone updates indefinitely:" ... "If no duration is specified, the time duration defaults to forever." Just running "snap refresh --hold" should disable snap updates permanently. If you configure your system update script/tooling to unhold the snaps so security fixes can still be installed at the appropriate time, this should mean that no unexpected updates should occur. You could probably even attach the snap unhold + snap refresh + snap hold flow to the APT hooks somehow, integrating snap updates with apt upgrade.
timbit42 4y ago
That doesn't fix any of the other problems Snaps cause.

orbit7 4y ago

Automated update processes that run at the expense of securing access to information when it's needed or that do so with the risk of data loss are a complete failure in my view.

dm319 4y ago

I get why snap is needed, but, like others, my experience has been poor. The first issue was Ubuntu 22.04 shipping the firefox snap only. It's ok for small occasional use programs that you need the bleeding edge version on. But it's not ok to wait 30+ seconds for firefox to open. They fixed that. But I hit into it's idea of security - being unable to open html files on my local drive, unable to load links from my mutt client, and unable to download and save directly into a specific folder. And worse, the snap updates just don't function well. They remind you when you are using the program, and they don't seem to update when you're not using it. Real shame, but these are fixable problems.

cardanome 4y ago
Snap is not needed. On Linux Mint you install Firefox normally through apt and it works fine. I decide when I update it. As it should be. (Sure tech like appimage or flatpack has its place but the browser can be handled perfectly fine by the normal package manager of your distribution.)
- intelkishan 4y ago
  I was recently forced into using snap for Firefox by Mint. I had enabled snap for convenient installation of some packages. But I did not anticipate that it would force me to switch to the snap version of Firefox.
  - timbit42 4y ago
    So, Snap acts like a virus.
alamortsubite 4y ago
> Real shame, but these are fixable problems. Debian.
- remram 4y ago
  Or just the Mozilla PPA.

bradwood 4y ago

TIL all about showmax.com - As a ZA expat living in the UK, I'm all over this. Looks like some good content from ZA, Nigeria, et al!

rubyist5eva 4y ago

Page isn't working for me but what happened? I use over a bunch snaps on my Ubuntu install (1password, firefox, docker, telegram, discord just off the top of my head) and updates don't happen until I restart the app, and it gives me a desktop notification something like a week out before it forces it, never had an issue with it personally. I can't think of any desktop app that I use that stays open for more than a week at a time that is a huge distruption to close it and reopen it.

chrsw 4y ago

I found Snap to be frustating. It's trying to address a real problem but imho it fails to make life easier. As soon as something breaks or goes wrong and I have to look under the hood, my mental model of how traditional Unix software managment "works" is almost useless. Why can't something be coherent and powerful behind the scenes but slick up front for users who don't want to think too much about the complexities of software managment?

happyjack 4y ago

Snap is one of the few reasons that made me ditch Ubuntu forever. I don't know a ton about Canonical's business model, but was the idea to get everyone hooked on snap and then force a subscription out of it? Snap is the antithesis of apt or dnf in regards to what I want out of a package manager.

anonymousiam 4y ago

Snap has its uses, but Firefox is most certainly not one of them. Firefox maintains personalized databases that aren't where they should be under Snap. Also, Snap completely ruins the ability to run Firefox remotely on a local X display. I was fine with Snap being part of Ubuntu, but when they migrated Firefox to Snap, I uninstalled Snap and manually installed Firefox directly from Mozilla.

tomjuggler 4y ago

Update: so as mentioned in my blog post, my panic force reboot during the Firefox Snap update has definitely done something bad to my system. It's now failing to boot most of the time and also crashing randomly when it does boot. Not sure what the root cause is but it's a 1 year old laptop. And yes I will definitely be re-watching the game after I have finished installing Arch. I also signed up to Cloudflare due to you all hammering my server last night!

darthrupert 4y ago

You shouldn't be watching that pile of regressive corruption anyway so no harm done.

alanhaha 4y ago

Well, I like this line in my Ubuntu customization: sudo apt remove --purge snapd

josephcsible 4y ago
How are you using software that Ubuntu stopped making available any other way, e.g., Firefox?
- timbit42 4y ago
  I'm doing it by using Linux Mint. It's Ubuntu without Snaps. It's taking people a long time to remove from their brains that Ubuntu is a good desktop Linux.

torginus 4y ago

Yet another example of why the traditional champion companies of the Linux desktop (Canonical, Red Hat etc.) are like a poisoned apple - they are catering to their paying userbase (who are running servers, IoT, PoS, whatever), and don't give a damn about making technical changes that break the average users' experience. In short they are doing the exact same as Microsoft does with Windows, but the enemy this time is inside the gates.

mablopoule 4y ago

Honestly, I love snap because it's the main reason why I've switched to Arch after a decade of Ubuntu, and I couldn't be happier about it.

timbit42 4y ago
I switched to Linux Mint. It's Ubuntu without Snaps.

Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago

Autoupdate is always an abomination regardless of the software doing it. Snap, apt, steam, firefox itself.

major505 4y ago

The main reason I still use ubuntu based bistros is Pop OS. The rest, I prefer fedora this days.

throwaway67743 4y ago

This is not the fault of snap though, Firefox is just fucking useless - the current instance of the browser that's already loaded everything it has into ram since it will happily suck up a gig while doing nothing should not break because the on disk version has changed. But no, instead of continuing it will do one of several things: - show a blank page after entering URL or search term (no feedback, it just does nothing) - fail to refresh the tab - crash entirely - helpfully suggest you restart Firefox in one of those tabs that stopped working earlier. It is embarrassingly bad, just like the overall UX for Mozilla products is unfortunately, but alas the only other choice is brave and its even worse somehow. (Chrome proper would also be fine but Firefox is the only multi platform* browser that supports custom sync etc) * Firefox is horrific on android too - broken rendering, blank pages until you engage the address bar and hit go again, etc, add-ons basically unavailable...

amadeuspagel 4y ago

I got strange notifications telling me to close VS Code, so that it can be updated. But it's often closed, and I kept getting these notifications. I ended up uninstalling the snap and installing VS Code from the website.