9 ms·

Ubuntu Flavors Agree to Stop Using Flatpak

76 points by Vinnl 4y ago

rcarmo 4y ago
Well, Ubuntu got me to move to Fedora because of their decision to ship Firefox as a snap, so… I guess they’ll just keep losing desktop users, because Flatpak has been a vastly superior experience to snaps in almost every way. (I do prefer RPMs, though.)
Vinnl 4y ago
Interestingly, Ubuntu MATE lead at [1] saying it wasn't so much "agreeing" as it was complying with the requested change, for both them and Xubuntu. [1] https://fosstodon.org/@wimpy/109908489437633387 https://fosstodon.org/@wimpy/109908489437633387
- bdsa 4y ago
  They also posted this in the comments on the article: sed -e 's/agree/comply/g' http://disq.us/p/2t8ie09 http://disq.us/p/2t8ie09
- commoner 4y ago
  Not too surprising to see that these changes were the result of coercion from Canonical. I don't know why any FOSS distro maintainer would voluntarily stop including Flatpak (which supports multiple repos and has FOSS server and client implementations) only to replace it with Snap (which only supports Canonical's closed source Snap Store server).
NayamAmarshe 4y ago
Outrageous. I don't know why they'd follow Ubuntu, as long as the Canonical philosophy exists in this space, Linux will never grow an inch. I'm thankful to canonical for bringing Ubuntu where it is today but let's be honest, they've constantly been making weird decisions. Please stop and go take a look at ZorinOS, that's what a mainstream distro should look like!
- agilob 4y ago
  >I don't know why they'd follow Ubuntu Literally the first line of the article says they are official Ubuntu flavors: >Flatpak will no longer be available “out-of-the-box” in any of Ubuntu’s official flavors.
  - NayamAmarshe 4y ago
    > I don't know why they'd follow Ubuntu Official flavor does not mean that canonical is having a separate special team for them. Official distros also include Ubuntu Unity and other community maintained distros.
- nix23 4y ago
  Ubuntu ~always (around 12 years ago) try's to make a proprietary wallet-garden, and fail every single time. It's ridiculous and the complete wrong way to survive in the the Opensource space. The only thing they have at that point is the name Ubuntu.
  - causi 4y ago
    Do you mean walled garden or is wallet-garden a play on words having to do with financial schemes and open source?
    - nix23 4y ago
      >is wallet-garden a play on words having to do with financial schemes and open source? No it means a ->approximation<- of what Google and Apple is doing -> Snapstore/Appstore
      - tkfu 4y ago
        What was being asked is whether you're aware that the correct term is "walled garden" (and saying "wallet-garden" as a play on words), or if "wallet-garden" is a mondegreen[1] for you (also recently referred to as a "bone apple tea" thanks to the popularity of a certain subreddit[2]). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/BoneAppleTea/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BoneAppleTea/
monster_group 4y ago
After using Ubuntu for 15 years, I moved to Pop!_Os (it uses Flatpak and no snap crap). Have been very happy with it.
- doubled112 4y ago
  But that's just Ubuntu with another repo added on top, with some different default package choices.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - czx4f4bd 4y ago
    What does that even mean? Is Ubuntu just Debian with another repo on top? Either way, it doesn't change the fact that Pop ships with different functionality and is controlled by a different company that has made a lot fewer user-hostile choices than Canonical in recent years.
    - doubled112 4y ago
      Yes and no. Ubuntu tends to fork Debian's unstable branch then freeze it, patch it, rebuild it and call it their own. Pop_OS! is simply adding some software on top of Ubuntu. If Debian makes a change, Ubuntu is unaffected until they resync. They then have time to patch it and test. If Ubuntu changes a package, that change is immediate in Pop_OS! unless they ship their own version of the package. I agree that Pop_OS! is doing a great job with their DE modifications and other defaults, but I don't view that as them being in control. Unless a lot has changed since I used it last, Ubuntu and their infrastructure is still building most of the distribution. A lot of this is really where you want to draw lines in the sand. What makes a distro a distro and not just another derivative?
    - rlpb 4y ago
      Unlike Ubuntu, Pop doesn't really have full control over their users' experience, because their users are configured to consume directly from Ubuntu's repositories.
agilob 4y ago
A few days ago I wanted to update an Ubuntu laptop that hasn't been turned on for over a year. I had steam and brave browser installed using snap. Updating these two took as much time as updating everything else in the system (1.6Gb of downloads). Then I uninstalled brave, which took about 6-8 minutes. The laptop has NixOS today. NixOS has official GUI installer now https://nixos.org/download.html#nixos-iso https://nixos.org/download.html#nixos-iso
- doubled112 4y ago
  I've upgraded Arch machines after a year offline and it sounds like that was less painful. Ubuntu has been making some interesting choices lately.
  - nix23 4y ago
    >Ubuntu has been making some interesting choices lately. Interesting like the Chinese Curse...true ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_ti...
  - groestl 4y ago
    I found lxd very appealing in the beginning, but when they favoured snap as distribution channel, where, apparently, updates and restarts could only be blocked using the firewall [0], I moved away from it. And Ubuntu in general. [0] https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-automatic-refresh-for-snap-from-store/707/8 https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-automatic-refresh-for...
    - doubled112 4y ago
      I liked LXD but had the same issues. I think OpenSUSE and Alpine have it in their repos as not-snaps now.
      - groestl 4y ago
        Honestly, I could have packaged it myself, but it eroded my trust in the ecosystem. They seem to target a different use case. Which is fine by me, I just won't be in for the ride.
pmontra 4y ago
This made me even more happy to have moved to Debian 11 after 14 years of Ubuntu. Snap made me sick, then this. Not that I ever used Flatpack, apt and docker are good enough, but this is too much.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  Yeah, I go back and forth between Ubuntu and Debian on various machines and I usually hardly notice the difference in terms of my day-to-day. I just have in the past treated Ubuntu as a Debian with a fancier installer and default desktop. But the push towards snap is frustrating me. Unfortunately Ubuntu pushing Snap means that 3rd parties that would have produced debian-compatible packages before are now moving to just shipping snaps instead. e.g. I went to install Slack the other day and saw they only have RPM and Snap options now, they removed the deb entirely from their site (but still mention it in their Linux-install instructions). (And yeah, this could push me to the end of my 25+ years of debian usage, I could be tempted to switch over to NixOS.)
  - cocoafleck 4y ago
    Slack still has .deb files you just need to scroll down and find the small button for it. https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/downloads/linux https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/downloads/linux search for "Download .DEB app". Last I checked they also have an Ubuntu only dependency that has a Debian equivalent but they don't list it so it won't install unless you modify the dependency list. I used the following script to do so, but I haven't updated in a while. #!/bin/sh if [ "$#" -eq 1 ]; then\ tmp_dir="$(mktemp -d)" dpkg-deb -R "$1" "${tmp_dir}" && sed -i 's/libappindicator3-1/libayatana-appindicator3-1/g' "${tmp_dir}/DEBIAN/control" && dpkg-deb -b "${tmp_dir}" slack-fixed.deb else echo "Read it" fi
    - pmontra 4y ago
      dpkg tells me I installed a deb called slack-desktop. It boils down to a 150 MB executable in /usr/lib/slack plus some .so and other files. It's version 4.29.129. No idea if it updates itself.
ok123456 4y ago
sudo apt purge snapd
- plorg 4y ago
  Don't forget to fuss around with package priority so it doesn't try to reinstall the snap when you're installing a deb package from another repo.
  - ploum 4y ago
    And don’t forget to first uninstall every snap correctly and be sure that every snap virtual disks is unmounted else you will be left with random undeletable crap on your hard disk. (to use firefox without snap, I wrote the instructions here: https://ploum.net/2022-04-05-firefox-ubuntu.html https://ploum.net/2022-04-05-firefox-ubuntu.html )
mardifoufs 4y ago
For what's it's worth, here's some more context from a canonical employee: >This post has been flaired "misleading title" because it implies that Ubuntu is removing support for Flatpak software. >Instead, Ubuntu and Ubuntu flavors are focusing on a single, out-of-the-box experience for users: Ubuntu and flavors provide Debian packages and snap packages, and any deb or snap package provided in a default install has been built on the same Canonical infrastructure used to build Ubuntu itself. This sets an expectation for what users can expect Canonical and Ubuntu to support. >Flatpak support is available in the Ubuntu repositories as an optional experience, and any user who wants to work with Flatpaks can run sudo apt install flatpak in a terminal and have full access to the tools necessary to work with Flatpaks. This is and will not be installed by default, but Ubuntu has committed to maintaining it in the universe repository. >I was present when the flavor leads met to discuss this change (among quite a few others to unify the Ubuntu experience across flavors), and this was something that they all felt could be a positive change. It was not a requirement from Canonical. The only mandate from Canonical was that they committed to maintaining the flatpak package as an opt-in choice for users. The rest of the meeting was focused on fun things like the new Flutter-based installer and flavors coordinating what projects they were working on that could be coordinated together to maximize their efforts. >Ubuntu cannot support third-party software, be it via source code, tarball, PPA, Flatpak, or AppImage. An out-of-the-box install will focus on Debian packages and snap packages. Tools to work with source code, tarballs, PPAs, Flatpaks, and AppImages are part of the Ubuntu repositories and are simple to enable if you wish to use them, and that's part of what makes Ubuntu adaptable for your computing needs. >An official statement (that I provided feedback on) is available here. https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/118w7hb/ubuntu_flavors_decide_to_drop_flatpak/j9jp2sz/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/118w7hb/ubuntu_flav... https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-flavor-packaging-defaults/34061 https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-flavor-packaging-defau... Which I guess makes sense, but I'm wondering how (if?) they were supporting flatpack before this announcement if Ubuntu doesn't usually support 3rd party software.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
VeninVidiaVicii 4y ago
As a computational biologist, I've been struggling with performance issues on Ubuntu for months, which have made it difficult to work efficiently. Despite Ubuntu's popularity in academia, R runs much slower on Ubuntu than on my personal computer running Arch. This has forced me to do my work at home, where I have better performance. It's disappointing that Ubuntu's limitations are often assumed to be universal to Linux in academia, which can be a problem for those who require a more efficient system. I've tried troubleshooting the issue, but haven't found a solution yet, but just chock it up to Ubuntu just being more and more terrible
- nequo 4y ago
  > I've tried troubleshooting the issue, but haven't found a solution yet That is very strange. I assume you’re not using the same hardware in your home computer. Without knowing your setup, it’s hard to say anything. Are you using the same BLAS and LAPACK libraries? You can check with `sessionInfo()`.
  - VeninVidiaVicii 4y ago
    That’s a very interesting thought, and one I haven’t come across. How did you come up with this so fast?
    - nequo 4y ago
      I read about it before.[1] There is also a BLAS library made by Nvidia that makes use of CUDA. This post is about how to hook it up to GNU Octave but it also works with R: https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/drop-in-acceleration-gnu-octave/ https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/drop-in-acceleration-gnu-o... What sibling says about compiling R on your work computer so that it can make full use of your CPU can help too. I am curious if that closes the performance gap for you. [1] https://csantill.github.io/RPerformanceWBLAS/ https://csantill.github.io/RPerformanceWBLAS/
      - VeninVidiaVicii 4y ago
sirwhinesalot 4y ago
Sigh, Ubuntu would be my Linux distro of choice if not for Snaps. Still hoping they'll drop them at some point like they dropped Unity and Mir. Debian has a lot of annoying defaults unfortunately so I always have to tweak it to suit my preferences. Still better than dealing with snaps though.
- ploum 4y ago
  Same here. You forgot bzr and upstard in your list. https://ploum.net/2022-04-05-firefox-ubuntu.html https://ploum.net/2022-04-05-firefox-ubuntu.html
  - popey 4y ago
    bzr predated git. upstart predated systemd.
  - nix23 4y ago
    And not to forget the Amazon flavored Searchbar ;)
flakeoil 4y ago
Isn't it possible to improve Snap? What are the blocking points? - Apps installed as Snaps are slow to start-up. Why? - Snap from time to time asks to close a Snap-installed app to be able to update and often it seems it cannot update anyway. What is going on with this?
- Izkata 4y ago
  > Apps installed as Snaps are slow to start-up. Why? Part of the design, snaps are a compressed disk image that has to be decompressed the first time it's started after a reboot.
  - popey 4y ago
    That's only part of the story. There's other reasons, many of which have been improved over the years. For example the font cache would be generated on first launch, which was a slow operation. This was moved to happen when the snap is installed, which meant the install took longer, but first launch was much faster. For me, today, the Firefox snap and the Firefox deb take pretty much exactly the same amount of time.
  - flakeoil 4y ago
    Parent commenter here. Actually, as someone above answered in the thread above, the slow Snap startup seems to be fixed.
- rlpb 4y ago
  > Apps installed as Snaps are slow to start-up. Why? Apparently this is fixed, though I think only on new snap package builds. Benchmarks are available that demonstrate that slow snap load times are no longer an issue (but the grapevine persists in saying that it is). > Snap from time to time asks to close a Snap-installed app to be able to update and often it seems it cannot update anyway. Acknowledged and being fixed.
  - flakeoil 4y ago
    > Apparently this is fixed Thanks, good to know. I had this issue with Bitwarden. I'm testing it now and it seems to be much faster than some weeks ago so that's nice.
fareesh 4y ago
I switched to Arch a few years ago and I regret not having done it sooner. All the things I was assuming about stability being a problem or having to muck around with complex settings, were all wrong. It works extremely well. My OS and all my apps update once a day - no reboots, no loaders. The AUR is great. When I use my macbook or boot into windows the user experience feels outdated by comparison.
- noirbot 4y ago
  I always hear this and really want to jump in, and then I wasted a full week trying to get Arch to dual-boot on my Framework laptop and just couldn't get it to work. The Arch wiki installation instructions regularly were out of date with the current installer and told you to use flags that didn't exist when setting up your disks. I assume I'd love it once I got it installed, but for everything I hear about how good the AUR and the Arch Wiki are, it's been nothing but trash to get set up in my multiple attempts.
  - groestl 4y ago
    That's true, it was hard so set it up the first time and get all the details right. However, since then, my Arch Boxes have been an absolute breeze to work with (and my history includes Suse, Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, even LFS, ...)
    - noirbot 4y ago
      Installation when you're not working from a completely bare hard drive seems to stymie so many Linux distros. I keep finding myself back on Ubuntu and Fedora because they seem to be the only two that put any effort at all into making sure you can dual-boot without spending hours reading manpages and hoping a wrong flag won't destroy your bootloader and other OS.
  - pacifika 4y ago
    Perhaps manjaro would be a better fit? Similar to arch but with a good instaler
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
I think the Linux Desktop community needs to stop promoting Ubuntu as the "default" distribution. In 2008 it was certainly the obvious choice, but anymore Canonical seems to have done their best to burn any goodwill they generated back then. Of course, that means picking a new "default". Personally, I think SteamOS v3 might end up being a great choice, should it ever be officially released for general consumption. But until that happens my personal favorite is Fedora Kinoite.
Georgelemental 4y ago
I moved to Fedora a few years ago because of stuff like this. No regrets
- WaffleIronMaker 4y ago
  Me too! I've been really impressed with Fedora's performance and stability. I haven't had to spend any time configuring it since I installed it. It just works.
exabrial 4y ago
Omg please just kill Snap. Worst user experience ever.
w4rh4wk5 4y ago
Ok, now do the same for Snap.
tpoacher 4y ago
> Ubuntu Flavors Agree to Stop Using Flatpak Yayy!!! > And to focus their efforts exclusively on deb, Yayyy!!! > and snap. ... oh. Honestly I avoid flatpak/snap/etc like the plague. Every time I've used them, some sort of device or file can't be accessed, or something isn't working. If I need anything that isn't covered by apt repositories, I just compile from source now, and have my own system for detecting updates which works pretty well. (https://github.com/tpapastylianou/misc-updater https://github.com/tpapastylianou/misc-updater if anyone's interested).
- rlpb 4y ago
  On the other hand, I repeatedly recommend that ordinary users do not install software from third party apt repositories unless they really really have to. Fundamentally they're a hack, don't work right, and often result in latent packaging problems that cause future release upgrades to explode. People then unfortunately attribute those failures to the distribution rather than the broken hacks they themselves installed from third parties. It is fundamentally impossible for a third party deb to correctly declare the necessary metadata to avoid breakages on a future upgrade. In distribution packaging this kind of thing is dealt with in metadata provided by the distribution packages being upgraded to, but third party debs don't have that luxury, even when using a third party apt repository. For example, a "Breaks" metadata declaration can only declared from one direction, so if a newer distribution package Breaks a third party package, then it cannot be declared on the third party side so ends up just not getting declared, resulting in breakage. So apt/deb only really works in the curated distribution model where all your software comes from the distribution. This doesn't work when users want software newer than their distribution release, or want to install proprietary software that cannot be curated by a Free Software distribution. Further, third party debs have root on your system, which is terrible for modern security. Installing software from third party sources which aren't sandboxed should really be unacceptable from a security perspective nowadays. For example: do you really want some game to have access to your online banking session? How secure is that game's development infrastructure that will stop a bad update from resulting in you losing money? On the other hand Snaps and Flatpaks actually provide app sandboxing. That's the use case for these packaging formats. If you don't need them yourself, then that's fine. But it's disingenuous to declare that there's no need for them.
davidthewatson 4y ago
Personally, I'm not a fan of the way Canonical have integrated snaps into apt without complete transparency, i.e. you can be running along not even aware of what's going on under the covers, which seems like a bad idea for everyone from sysops to devops to devs. Is there anyone running Ubuntu that wants a package running transparently under the covers without knowing what's actually going on?
donatj 4y ago
Flatpak was one of the major reasons I moved to Debian after 14 years of Ubuntu. I prefer stability over novelty, thus the transition was nearly transparent for me.

76 points by Vinnl 4y ago

Well, Ubuntu got me to move to Fedora because of their decision to ship Firefox as a snap, so… I guess they’ll just keep losing desktop users, because Flatpak has been a vastly superior experience to snaps in almost every way. (I do prefer RPMs, though.)

Vinnl 4y ago

Interestingly, Ubuntu MATE lead at [1] saying it wasn't so much "agreeing" as it was complying with the requested change, for both them and Xubuntu. [1] https://fosstodon.org/@wimpy/109908489437633387 https://fosstodon.org/@wimpy/109908489437633387

bdsa 4y ago
They also posted this in the comments on the article: sed -e 's/agree/comply/g' http://disq.us/p/2t8ie09 http://disq.us/p/2t8ie09
commoner 4y ago
Not too surprising to see that these changes were the result of coercion from Canonical. I don't know why any FOSS distro maintainer would voluntarily stop including Flatpak (which supports multiple repos and has FOSS server and client implementations) only to replace it with Snap (which only supports Canonical's closed source Snap Store server).

NayamAmarshe 4y ago

Outrageous. I don't know why they'd follow Ubuntu, as long as the Canonical philosophy exists in this space, Linux will never grow an inch. I'm thankful to canonical for bringing Ubuntu where it is today but let's be honest, they've constantly been making weird decisions. Please stop and go take a look at ZorinOS, that's what a mainstream distro should look like!

agilob 4y ago
>I don't know why they'd follow Ubuntu Literally the first line of the article says they are official Ubuntu flavors: >Flatpak will no longer be available “out-of-the-box” in any of Ubuntu’s official flavors.
- NayamAmarshe 4y ago
  > I don't know why they'd follow Ubuntu Official flavor does not mean that canonical is having a separate special team for them. Official distros also include Ubuntu Unity and other community maintained distros.
nix23 4y ago
Ubuntu ~always (around 12 years ago) try's to make a proprietary wallet-garden, and fail every single time. It's ridiculous and the complete wrong way to survive in the the Opensource space. The only thing they have at that point is the name Ubuntu.
- causi 4y ago
  Do you mean walled garden or is wallet-garden a play on words having to do with financial schemes and open source?
  - nix23 4y ago
    >is wallet-garden a play on words having to do with financial schemes and open source? No it means a ->approximation<- of what Google and Apple is doing -> Snapstore/Appstore
    - tkfu 4y ago
      What was being asked is whether you're aware that the correct term is "walled garden" (and saying "wallet-garden" as a play on words), or if "wallet-garden" is a mondegreen[1] for you (also recently referred to as a "bone apple tea" thanks to the popularity of a certain subreddit[2]). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/BoneAppleTea/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BoneAppleTea/

monster_group 4y ago

After using Ubuntu for 15 years, I moved to Pop!_Os (it uses Flatpak and no snap crap). Have been very happy with it.

doubled112 4y ago
But that's just Ubuntu with another repo added on top, with some different default package choices.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- czx4f4bd 4y ago
  What does that even mean? Is Ubuntu just Debian with another repo on top? Either way, it doesn't change the fact that Pop ships with different functionality and is controlled by a different company that has made a lot fewer user-hostile choices than Canonical in recent years.
  - doubled112 4y ago
    Yes and no. Ubuntu tends to fork Debian's unstable branch then freeze it, patch it, rebuild it and call it their own. Pop_OS! is simply adding some software on top of Ubuntu. If Debian makes a change, Ubuntu is unaffected until they resync. They then have time to patch it and test. If Ubuntu changes a package, that change is immediate in Pop_OS! unless they ship their own version of the package. I agree that Pop_OS! is doing a great job with their DE modifications and other defaults, but I don't view that as them being in control. Unless a lot has changed since I used it last, Ubuntu and their infrastructure is still building most of the distribution. A lot of this is really where you want to draw lines in the sand. What makes a distro a distro and not just another derivative?
  - rlpb 4y ago
    Unlike Ubuntu, Pop doesn't really have full control over their users' experience, because their users are configured to consume directly from Ubuntu's repositories.

agilob 4y ago

A few days ago I wanted to update an Ubuntu laptop that hasn't been turned on for over a year. I had steam and brave browser installed using snap. Updating these two took as much time as updating everything else in the system (1.6Gb of downloads). Then I uninstalled brave, which took about 6-8 minutes. The laptop has NixOS today. NixOS has official GUI installer now https://nixos.org/download.html#nixos-iso https://nixos.org/download.html#nixos-iso

doubled112 4y ago
I've upgraded Arch machines after a year offline and it sounds like that was less painful. Ubuntu has been making some interesting choices lately.
- nix23 4y ago
  >Ubuntu has been making some interesting choices lately. Interesting like the Chinese Curse...true ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_ti...
- groestl 4y ago
  I found lxd very appealing in the beginning, but when they favoured snap as distribution channel, where, apparently, updates and restarts could only be blocked using the firewall [0], I moved away from it. And Ubuntu in general. [0] https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-automatic-refresh-for-snap-from-store/707/8 https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-automatic-refresh-for...
  - doubled112 4y ago
    I liked LXD but had the same issues. I think OpenSUSE and Alpine have it in their repos as not-snaps now.
    - groestl 4y ago
      Honestly, I could have packaged it myself, but it eroded my trust in the ecosystem. They seem to target a different use case. Which is fine by me, I just won't be in for the ride.

pmontra 4y ago

This made me even more happy to have moved to Debian 11 after 14 years of Ubuntu. Snap made me sick, then this. Not that I ever used Flatpack, apt and docker are good enough, but this is too much.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago
Yeah, I go back and forth between Ubuntu and Debian on various machines and I usually hardly notice the difference in terms of my day-to-day. I just have in the past treated Ubuntu as a Debian with a fancier installer and default desktop. But the push towards snap is frustrating me. Unfortunately Ubuntu pushing Snap means that 3rd parties that would have produced debian-compatible packages before are now moving to just shipping snaps instead. e.g. I went to install Slack the other day and saw they only have RPM and Snap options now, they removed the deb entirely from their site (but still mention it in their Linux-install instructions). (And yeah, this could push me to the end of my 25+ years of debian usage, I could be tempted to switch over to NixOS.)
- cocoafleck 4y ago
  Slack still has .deb files you just need to scroll down and find the small button for it. https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/downloads/linux https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/downloads/linux search for "Download .DEB app". Last I checked they also have an Ubuntu only dependency that has a Debian equivalent but they don't list it so it won't install unless you modify the dependency list. I used the following script to do so, but I haven't updated in a while. #!/bin/sh if [ "$#" -eq 1 ]; then\ tmp_dir="$(mktemp -d)" dpkg-deb -R "$1" "${tmp_dir}" && sed -i 's/libappindicator3-1/libayatana-appindicator3-1/g' "${tmp_dir}/DEBIAN/control" && dpkg-deb -b "${tmp_dir}" slack-fixed.deb else echo "Read it" fi
  - pmontra 4y ago
    dpkg tells me I installed a deb called slack-desktop. It boils down to a 150 MB executable in /usr/lib/slack plus some .so and other files. It's version 4.29.129. No idea if it updates itself.

ok123456 4y ago

sudo apt purge snapd

plorg 4y ago
Don't forget to fuss around with package priority so it doesn't try to reinstall the snap when you're installing a deb package from another repo.
- ploum 4y ago
  And don’t forget to first uninstall every snap correctly and be sure that every snap virtual disks is unmounted else you will be left with random undeletable crap on your hard disk. (to use firefox without snap, I wrote the instructions here: https://ploum.net/2022-04-05-firefox-ubuntu.html https://ploum.net/2022-04-05-firefox-ubuntu.html )

mardifoufs 4y ago

For what's it's worth, here's some more context from a canonical employee: >This post has been flaired "misleading title" because it implies that Ubuntu is removing support for Flatpak software. >Instead, Ubuntu and Ubuntu flavors are focusing on a single, out-of-the-box experience for users: Ubuntu and flavors provide Debian packages and snap packages, and any deb or snap package provided in a default install has been built on the same Canonical infrastructure used to build Ubuntu itself. This sets an expectation for what users can expect Canonical and Ubuntu to support. >Flatpak support is available in the Ubuntu repositories as an optional experience, and any user who wants to work with Flatpaks can run sudo apt install flatpak in a terminal and have full access to the tools necessary to work with Flatpaks. This is and will not be installed by default, but Ubuntu has committed to maintaining it in the universe repository. >I was present when the flavor leads met to discuss this change (among quite a few others to unify the Ubuntu experience across flavors), and this was something that they all felt could be a positive change. It was not a requirement from Canonical. The only mandate from Canonical was that they committed to maintaining the flatpak package as an opt-in choice for users. The rest of the meeting was focused on fun things like the new Flutter-based installer and flavors coordinating what projects they were working on that could be coordinated together to maximize their efforts. >Ubuntu cannot support third-party software, be it via source code, tarball, PPA, Flatpak, or AppImage. An out-of-the-box install will focus on Debian packages and snap packages. Tools to work with source code, tarballs, PPAs, Flatpaks, and AppImages are part of the Ubuntu repositories and are simple to enable if you wish to use them, and that's part of what makes Ubuntu adaptable for your computing needs. >An official statement (that I provided feedback on) is available here. https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/118w7hb/ubuntu_flavors_decide_to_drop_flatpak/j9jp2sz/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/118w7hb/ubuntu_flav... https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-flavor-packaging-defaults/34061 https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-flavor-packaging-defau... Which I guess makes sense, but I'm wondering how (if?) they were supporting flatpack before this announcement if Ubuntu doesn't usually support 3rd party software.

deleted 4y ago
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VeninVidiaVicii 4y ago

As a computational biologist, I've been struggling with performance issues on Ubuntu for months, which have made it difficult to work efficiently. Despite Ubuntu's popularity in academia, R runs much slower on Ubuntu than on my personal computer running Arch. This has forced me to do my work at home, where I have better performance. It's disappointing that Ubuntu's limitations are often assumed to be universal to Linux in academia, which can be a problem for those who require a more efficient system. I've tried troubleshooting the issue, but haven't found a solution yet, but just chock it up to Ubuntu just being more and more terrible

nequo 4y ago
> I've tried troubleshooting the issue, but haven't found a solution yet That is very strange. I assume you’re not using the same hardware in your home computer. Without knowing your setup, it’s hard to say anything. Are you using the same BLAS and LAPACK libraries? You can check with `sessionInfo()`.
- VeninVidiaVicii 4y ago
  That’s a very interesting thought, and one I haven’t come across. How did you come up with this so fast?
  - nequo 4y ago
    I read about it before.[1] There is also a BLAS library made by Nvidia that makes use of CUDA. This post is about how to hook it up to GNU Octave but it also works with R: https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/drop-in-acceleration-gnu-octave/ https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/drop-in-acceleration-gnu-o... What sibling says about compiling R on your work computer so that it can make full use of your CPU can help too. I am curious if that closes the performance gap for you. [1] https://csantill.github.io/RPerformanceWBLAS/ https://csantill.github.io/RPerformanceWBLAS/
    - VeninVidiaVicii 4y ago

sirwhinesalot 4y ago

Sigh, Ubuntu would be my Linux distro of choice if not for Snaps. Still hoping they'll drop them at some point like they dropped Unity and Mir. Debian has a lot of annoying defaults unfortunately so I always have to tweak it to suit my preferences. Still better than dealing with snaps though.

ploum 4y ago
Same here. You forgot bzr and upstard in your list. https://ploum.net/2022-04-05-firefox-ubuntu.html https://ploum.net/2022-04-05-firefox-ubuntu.html
- popey 4y ago
  bzr predated git. upstart predated systemd.
- nix23 4y ago
  And not to forget the Amazon flavored Searchbar ;)

flakeoil 4y ago

Isn't it possible to improve Snap? What are the blocking points? - Apps installed as Snaps are slow to start-up. Why? - Snap from time to time asks to close a Snap-installed app to be able to update and often it seems it cannot update anyway. What is going on with this?

Izkata 4y ago
> Apps installed as Snaps are slow to start-up. Why? Part of the design, snaps are a compressed disk image that has to be decompressed the first time it's started after a reboot.
- popey 4y ago
  That's only part of the story. There's other reasons, many of which have been improved over the years. For example the font cache would be generated on first launch, which was a slow operation. This was moved to happen when the snap is installed, which meant the install took longer, but first launch was much faster. For me, today, the Firefox snap and the Firefox deb take pretty much exactly the same amount of time.
- flakeoil 4y ago
  Parent commenter here. Actually, as someone above answered in the thread above, the slow Snap startup seems to be fixed.
rlpb 4y ago
> Apps installed as Snaps are slow to start-up. Why? Apparently this is fixed, though I think only on new snap package builds. Benchmarks are available that demonstrate that slow snap load times are no longer an issue (but the grapevine persists in saying that it is). > Snap from time to time asks to close a Snap-installed app to be able to update and often it seems it cannot update anyway. Acknowledged and being fixed.
- flakeoil 4y ago
  > Apparently this is fixed Thanks, good to know. I had this issue with Bitwarden. I'm testing it now and it seems to be much faster than some weeks ago so that's nice.

fareesh 4y ago

I switched to Arch a few years ago and I regret not having done it sooner. All the things I was assuming about stability being a problem or having to muck around with complex settings, were all wrong. It works extremely well. My OS and all my apps update once a day - no reboots, no loaders. The AUR is great. When I use my macbook or boot into windows the user experience feels outdated by comparison.

noirbot 4y ago
I always hear this and really want to jump in, and then I wasted a full week trying to get Arch to dual-boot on my Framework laptop and just couldn't get it to work. The Arch wiki installation instructions regularly were out of date with the current installer and told you to use flags that didn't exist when setting up your disks. I assume I'd love it once I got it installed, but for everything I hear about how good the AUR and the Arch Wiki are, it's been nothing but trash to get set up in my multiple attempts.
- groestl 4y ago
  That's true, it was hard so set it up the first time and get all the details right. However, since then, my Arch Boxes have been an absolute breeze to work with (and my history includes Suse, Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, even LFS, ...)
  - noirbot 4y ago
    Installation when you're not working from a completely bare hard drive seems to stymie so many Linux distros. I keep finding myself back on Ubuntu and Fedora because they seem to be the only two that put any effort at all into making sure you can dual-boot without spending hours reading manpages and hoping a wrong flag won't destroy your bootloader and other OS.
- pacifika 4y ago
  Perhaps manjaro would be a better fit? Similar to arch but with a good instaler

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago

I think the Linux Desktop community needs to stop promoting Ubuntu as the "default" distribution. In 2008 it was certainly the obvious choice, but anymore Canonical seems to have done their best to burn any goodwill they generated back then. Of course, that means picking a new "default". Personally, I think SteamOS v3 might end up being a great choice, should it ever be officially released for general consumption. But until that happens my personal favorite is Fedora Kinoite.

Georgelemental 4y ago

I moved to Fedora a few years ago because of stuff like this. No regrets

WaffleIronMaker 4y ago
Me too! I've been really impressed with Fedora's performance and stability. I haven't had to spend any time configuring it since I installed it. It just works.

exabrial 4y ago

Omg please just kill Snap. Worst user experience ever.

w4rh4wk5 4y ago

Ok, now do the same for Snap.

tpoacher 4y ago

> Ubuntu Flavors Agree to Stop Using Flatpak Yayy!!! > And to focus their efforts exclusively on deb, Yayyy!!! > and snap. ... oh. Honestly I avoid flatpak/snap/etc like the plague. Every time I've used them, some sort of device or file can't be accessed, or something isn't working. If I need anything that isn't covered by apt repositories, I just compile from source now, and have my own system for detecting updates which works pretty well. (https://github.com/tpapastylianou/misc-updater https://github.com/tpapastylianou/misc-updater if anyone's interested).

rlpb 4y ago
On the other hand, I repeatedly recommend that ordinary users do not install software from third party apt repositories unless they really really have to. Fundamentally they're a hack, don't work right, and often result in latent packaging problems that cause future release upgrades to explode. People then unfortunately attribute those failures to the distribution rather than the broken hacks they themselves installed from third parties. It is fundamentally impossible for a third party deb to correctly declare the necessary metadata to avoid breakages on a future upgrade. In distribution packaging this kind of thing is dealt with in metadata provided by the distribution packages being upgraded to, but third party debs don't have that luxury, even when using a third party apt repository. For example, a "Breaks" metadata declaration can only declared from one direction, so if a newer distribution package Breaks a third party package, then it cannot be declared on the third party side so ends up just not getting declared, resulting in breakage. So apt/deb only really works in the curated distribution model where all your software comes from the distribution. This doesn't work when users want software newer than their distribution release, or want to install proprietary software that cannot be curated by a Free Software distribution. Further, third party debs have root on your system, which is terrible for modern security. Installing software from third party sources which aren't sandboxed should really be unacceptable from a security perspective nowadays. For example: do you really want some game to have access to your online banking session? How secure is that game's development infrastructure that will stop a bad update from resulting in you losing money? On the other hand Snaps and Flatpaks actually provide app sandboxing. That's the use case for these packaging formats. If you don't need them yourself, then that's fine. But it's disingenuous to declare that there's no need for them.

davidthewatson 4y ago

Personally, I'm not a fan of the way Canonical have integrated snaps into apt without complete transparency, i.e. you can be running along not even aware of what's going on under the covers, which seems like a bad idea for everyone from sysops to devops to devs. Is there anyone running Ubuntu that wants a package running transparently under the covers without knowing what's actually going on?

donatj 4y ago

Flatpak was one of the major reasons I moved to Debian after 14 years of Ubuntu. I prefer stability over novelty, thus the transition was nearly transparent for me.