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Mir, Unity, now Snap. Ubuntu has a track record of wanting to go it alone. But, I'm all for competition, long may it continue. The only real negative here is

Mir, Unity, now Snap. Ubuntu has a track record of wanting to go it alone. But, I'm all for competition, long may it continue. The only real negative here is that some apps will only release Snaps, others will only release Flatpaks and people will end up having to just revert to copr/AUR like before. Choosing a distro is basically choosing a DE and package manager these days anyway - a single unified packaging format that works everywhere is more frustrating than an alternative DE or windowing system.

bibanez 4y ago
I've had some success with Nix. Still I would only generally recommend it for development (even though I use NixOs)
- sandwell 4y ago
  Also a Nix/NixOS user/contributer. I feel like Nix+nixpkgs could become the universal packaging solution adapted to build deb, rpm, etc packages. Through nix-env it even already has the idea (albeit discouraged) of imperative package management like apt. Having spent a while with NixOS, running containers for user applications seems like using a cannon to kill a fly. The 'simple' alternative is to drop FHS altogether - which containerization is kind of doing in a roundabout way by isolating the app filesystem from system fhs. As for it being for developers only... I get that perspective. Debian/Ubuntu packaging is also hard, AUR packaging has its quirks. A lot of this is hidden behind the package manager, wheras with NixOS it is more obvious. The killer idea for NixOS would be to make package management for Joe Q Public as easy to use as apt while. Tools like MyNixOS[1] are emerging which might bridge that gap. [1] https://mynixos.com https://mynixos.com
  - TobTobXX 4y ago
    The one advantage Flatpak provides for me over Nix is containerisation. Not the bullet-proof kind, which allows you to run malware, but of the "reasonable" kind, which stops apps from storing to any directory they like just like that (only chroot level of "security"/isolation would be fine for me). When there's a package manager / runtime that does both then I'm extremely interested.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      Looking things up, someone has linked the Flatpak containerisation tech (bubblewrap) into the Nix store: https://github.com/fgaz/nix-bubblewrap https://github.com/fgaz/nix-bubblewrap It looks... somewhat abandoned, but I'd wager it still works today. Failing that, setting up a shell alias to launch a regular binary in bubblewrap isn't too hard either.
      - TobTobXX 4y ago
        It's a long standing goal of mine to put together a distro with the system management aspect of NixOS, the isolation of bubblewrap and the lightness of Alpine. I'm gonna start this project when I have time™.
d33 4y ago
Why do you see it as more frustrating?
- petepete 4y ago
  For users who want to install something like Slack who realise their distro supports Flatpak but only Snap is available, it's definitely a source of frustration.
chr15p 4y ago
> Mir, Unity, now Snap. Ubuntu has a track record of wanting to go it alone. This. Also bzr. They seem to want to control their projects completely and so even when they have good tech they lose out to more open, community developed, equivalents that build wide engagement and momentum. I honestly don't understand it, you would have thought they would have learned by now that they don't have the engineering resources to do everything by themselves. Compare that to Red Hat who always try (and sometimes even succeed!) at developing projects with the community and are far more successful at getting their projects adopted (I know people don't like them, but you cant deny they are effective at it)
- necovek 4y ago
  Bzr is a great counter example. Bzr "lost" because git had GitHub, whereas Launchpad was one too many things and slow to optimize for modern sensibilities. (And Linux used a different VCS before git, so that didn't matter in adoption) Imagine a world without GitHub, and I don't think git would be our go-to VCS. Though maybe not even Baazaar, but there are things like Mercurial too.
  - account42 4y ago
    Git already had momentum before GitHub became popular. And yes, it is absolutely Linux and other high-profile projects that ensured its success in the OSS world. Claiming that Linux having used a different VCS before git means that Linux's use of git doesn't matter is really odd when git was developed for the Linux project.
    - necovek 4y ago
      It sure had momentum. As did a bunch of other distributed VCSes. If you were a party to voting what VCS to switch to for some of those high-profile projects, I'd very much like to hear about it. In GNOME, a decision was delayed and bzr and git were pretty evenly matched. Linux has previously used BitKeeper, but that didn't make it "win out", just like it didn't do so for Git. Sure, it wouldn't have existed if there wasn't a need for Linux. I am only pointing out that it was GitHub that helped popularize arguably the worst UX among DVCSes: I don't hear people say "your free software contributions portfolio" — they'll just say "your GitHub profile".
necovek 4y ago
To put things into context, snaps were created before flatpak: in a sense, RedHat wanted to go at it "alone" (or at least separately from Canonical) with xdg-app/Flatpak. These ideas were already present even before those times and outside of both RH/Canonical, so it was more of a who's committed first. Basically, Ubuntu phones were using click packages (predecessor to snaps) back in 2011 and 2012, with snapcraft shipped in January 2013, whereas xdg-app (later renamed to Flatpak) was started in December 2014. Another thing to consider is that Canonical is orders of magnitude smaller than RedHat, and they do have a problem getting the community involved, but part of that is the size and limited time their developers have. Now, even as a long time Ubuntu fan, I'll probably be switching to Debian just because I dislike the snap upgrade model.
- bantunes 4y ago
  I thought flatpak was a response to Ubuntu not open-sourcing the snap store code.
  - necovek 4y ago
    Sure, but I don't think it would have been much effort to build a snap store server with the client and package format open source. IOW, if RH wanted to "join in", there was a cheaper path forward.
    - toyg 4y ago
      You don't want to be a sharecropper; using a format you can't meaningfully influence for something as key as application installation, is an obvious non-starter for any serious distribution.
- SSLy 4y ago
  snap's original sin was the moat of server being closed source and client /really/ wanting to talk only to the Canonical's instance. The latter is shared by Docker, in a way.
  - 4y ago
creshal 4y ago
> Choosing a distro is basically choosing a DE and package manager these days anyway What distribution doesn't support at least half a dozen desktop environments these days?
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  >What distribution doesn't support at least half a dozen desktop environments these days? Most usually come out of the box with official support for only 2 DEs. Of course they can theoretically support every one out there if you manually install them.
  - creshal 4y ago
    Usually for all major distributions you get in the official repositories - Gnome - KDE - Xfce - Cinnamon - Mate - LXDE/LXQt - Several *box stacked and assorted tiling window managers and assorted glue scripts That's a fairly solid base of "support" even if the distributions don't provide live CDs with any particular setup preinstalled. The only exception I've seen are the "we took an existing distro, threw away half the repository, patched 2 packages and slapped our own logo on top" wannabe hipster distributions that last an entire two years before folding due to being pointless.
  - lelanthran 4y ago
    You make it sound like so much work, "manual installing". It's as simple as apt-get install $DE
    - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
      Try that command on Arch, Fedora or OpenSUSE and let me know how it works. Also, having multiple DEs in parallels rarely plays well with most distros. That's why they usually give you a downloads with one or two options already setup and tested.
      - creshal 4y ago
account42 4y ago
Competition of implementations is good but competition of standards less so. My biggest problems with Ubuntuland-alternatives is that they expect the world to pay the maintenance cost for their NIH syndrome. Mir as a Wayland compositor is fine. Mir as something that every toolkit needs to implement is a giant waste of everyone's time. The same is true for Snap - if you could make one package that works with flatpak and Canonical's implementation then I would be a lot less opposed. But you can't. Because Canonical doesn't care how much extra work everyone else has to do as long as they get their way. Thankfully, so far they don't in the end - I expect Snap to follow.

bibanez 4y ago

I've had some success with Nix. Still I would only generally recommend it for development (even though I use NixOs)

sandwell 4y ago
Also a Nix/NixOS user/contributer. I feel like Nix+nixpkgs could become the universal packaging solution adapted to build deb, rpm, etc packages. Through nix-env it even already has the idea (albeit discouraged) of imperative package management like apt. Having spent a while with NixOS, running containers for user applications seems like using a cannon to kill a fly. The 'simple' alternative is to drop FHS altogether - which containerization is kind of doing in a roundabout way by isolating the app filesystem from system fhs. As for it being for developers only... I get that perspective. Debian/Ubuntu packaging is also hard, AUR packaging has its quirks. A lot of this is hidden behind the package manager, wheras with NixOS it is more obvious. The killer idea for NixOS would be to make package management for Joe Q Public as easy to use as apt while. Tools like MyNixOS[1] are emerging which might bridge that gap. [1] https://mynixos.com https://mynixos.com
- TobTobXX 4y ago
  The one advantage Flatpak provides for me over Nix is containerisation. Not the bullet-proof kind, which allows you to run malware, but of the "reasonable" kind, which stops apps from storing to any directory they like just like that (only chroot level of "security"/isolation would be fine for me). When there's a package manager / runtime that does both then I'm extremely interested.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    Looking things up, someone has linked the Flatpak containerisation tech (bubblewrap) into the Nix store: https://github.com/fgaz/nix-bubblewrap https://github.com/fgaz/nix-bubblewrap It looks... somewhat abandoned, but I'd wager it still works today. Failing that, setting up a shell alias to launch a regular binary in bubblewrap isn't too hard either.
    - TobTobXX 4y ago
      It's a long standing goal of mine to put together a distro with the system management aspect of NixOS, the isolation of bubblewrap and the lightness of Alpine. I'm gonna start this project when I have time™.

d33 4y ago

Why do you see it as more frustrating?

petepete 4y ago
For users who want to install something like Slack who realise their distro supports Flatpak but only Snap is available, it's definitely a source of frustration.

chr15p 4y ago

> Mir, Unity, now Snap. Ubuntu has a track record of wanting to go it alone. This. Also bzr. They seem to want to control their projects completely and so even when they have good tech they lose out to more open, community developed, equivalents that build wide engagement and momentum. I honestly don't understand it, you would have thought they would have learned by now that they don't have the engineering resources to do everything by themselves. Compare that to Red Hat who always try (and sometimes even succeed!) at developing projects with the community and are far more successful at getting their projects adopted (I know people don't like them, but you cant deny they are effective at it)

necovek 4y ago
Bzr is a great counter example. Bzr "lost" because git had GitHub, whereas Launchpad was one too many things and slow to optimize for modern sensibilities. (And Linux used a different VCS before git, so that didn't matter in adoption) Imagine a world without GitHub, and I don't think git would be our go-to VCS. Though maybe not even Baazaar, but there are things like Mercurial too.
- account42 4y ago
  Git already had momentum before GitHub became popular. And yes, it is absolutely Linux and other high-profile projects that ensured its success in the OSS world. Claiming that Linux having used a different VCS before git means that Linux's use of git doesn't matter is really odd when git was developed for the Linux project.
  - necovek 4y ago
    It sure had momentum. As did a bunch of other distributed VCSes. If you were a party to voting what VCS to switch to for some of those high-profile projects, I'd very much like to hear about it. In GNOME, a decision was delayed and bzr and git were pretty evenly matched. Linux has previously used BitKeeper, but that didn't make it "win out", just like it didn't do so for Git. Sure, it wouldn't have existed if there wasn't a need for Linux. I am only pointing out that it was GitHub that helped popularize arguably the worst UX among DVCSes: I don't hear people say "your free software contributions portfolio" — they'll just say "your GitHub profile".

necovek 4y ago

To put things into context, snaps were created before flatpak: in a sense, RedHat wanted to go at it "alone" (or at least separately from Canonical) with xdg-app/Flatpak. These ideas were already present even before those times and outside of both RH/Canonical, so it was more of a who's committed first. Basically, Ubuntu phones were using click packages (predecessor to snaps) back in 2011 and 2012, with snapcraft shipped in January 2013, whereas xdg-app (later renamed to Flatpak) was started in December 2014. Another thing to consider is that Canonical is orders of magnitude smaller than RedHat, and they do have a problem getting the community involved, but part of that is the size and limited time their developers have. Now, even as a long time Ubuntu fan, I'll probably be switching to Debian just because I dislike the snap upgrade model.

bantunes 4y ago
I thought flatpak was a response to Ubuntu not open-sourcing the snap store code.
- necovek 4y ago
  Sure, but I don't think it would have been much effort to build a snap store server with the client and package format open source. IOW, if RH wanted to "join in", there was a cheaper path forward.
  - toyg 4y ago
    You don't want to be a sharecropper; using a format you can't meaningfully influence for something as key as application installation, is an obvious non-starter for any serious distribution.
SSLy 4y ago
snap's original sin was the moat of server being closed source and client /really/ wanting to talk only to the Canonical's instance. The latter is shared by Docker, in a way.
- 4y ago

creshal 4y ago

> Choosing a distro is basically choosing a DE and package manager these days anyway What distribution doesn't support at least half a dozen desktop environments these days?

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
>What distribution doesn't support at least half a dozen desktop environments these days? Most usually come out of the box with official support for only 2 DEs. Of course they can theoretically support every one out there if you manually install them.
- creshal 4y ago
  Usually for all major distributions you get in the official repositories - Gnome - KDE - Xfce - Cinnamon - Mate - LXDE/LXQt - Several *box stacked and assorted tiling window managers and assorted glue scripts That's a fairly solid base of "support" even if the distributions don't provide live CDs with any particular setup preinstalled. The only exception I've seen are the "we took an existing distro, threw away half the repository, patched 2 packages and slapped our own logo on top" wannabe hipster distributions that last an entire two years before folding due to being pointless.
- lelanthran 4y ago
  You make it sound like so much work, "manual installing". It's as simple as apt-get install $DE
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    Try that command on Arch, Fedora or OpenSUSE and let me know how it works. Also, having multiple DEs in parallels rarely plays well with most distros. That's why they usually give you a downloads with one or two options already setup and tested.
    - creshal 4y ago

account42 4y ago

Competition of implementations is good but competition of standards less so. My biggest problems with Ubuntuland-alternatives is that they expect the world to pay the maintenance cost for their NIH syndrome. Mir as a Wayland compositor is fine. Mir as something that every toolkit needs to implement is a giant waste of everyone's time. The same is true for Snap - if you could make one package that works with flatpak and Canonical's implementation then I would be a lot less opposed. But you can't. Because Canonical doesn't care how much extra work everyone else has to do as long as they get their way. Thankfully, so far they don't in the end - I expect Snap to follow.