7 ms·

Snaps are getting me off Desktop Ubuntu after 12 years of happily using it.

by CalRobert 4y ago

Gracana 4y ago
Same here. I was a happy Ubuntu desktop user for over a decade. Now I’m a happy Arch user.
- noloblo 4y ago
  Same here off Ubuntu and onto centos/fedora rpm dnf world
  - 2b3a51 4y ago
    Glad you have something sorted out. Just interested: why not Debian? i.e. still deb based distro? I'm guessing the poster above you wants recent package versions as they went to Arch.
    - groestl 4y ago
      For me it's now Debian on the server (debs) and Arch on the desktop (rolling releases, AURs).
      - wankle 4y ago
        Who controls quality and security in the AUR world? It doesn't seem like something I'd want to trust?
        groestl 4y ago
        Nobody, but the specs are so simple you can audit them yourself usually. For me it's mostly about low friction packaging my own software tbh.
        calvinmorrison 4y ago
        the AUR is user supported, no claims are made, but AURs are built off of short scripts called PKGBUILDs so it's easy to audit, you're gonna want to look for the line that links to a tar archive or git repository.
    - kitsunesoba 4y ago
      In my case Debian’s old package versions can often be awkward because I’m not using Linux exclusively… my macOS and Windows boxes are running latest releases of most things which can cause problems with e.g. sync features. I usually run Fedora rather than Arch though, because in my limited experience with Arch it really doesn’t like to not be booted into for extended periods of time — if you do that the piled up updates are much more likely to break somehow or things like required config changes will slip through the cracks, whereas I have yet to experience this with Fedora.
      - tomxor 4y ago
        That's kind of ironic considering how ancient some of MacOS's userland is.
        kitsunesoba 4y ago
        For my use case, the details of the userland CLI is mostly irrelevant (particularly since I maintain a FreeBSD server, which means I’m reasonably familiar with both BSD and GNU styles of these tools). Most of the time it just needs to exist, not be any particular version, and exceptions are handled well by Homebrew. Third party apps with UIs being up to date is more important.
  - noloblo 4y ago
    Need nixos for haskell as well
- markstos 4y ago
  Same.
- josteink 4y ago
  It’s pretty much a meme at this point, but yeah. Snaps just finally did it in for me. I’ve switched all my laptops and workstations from Ubuntu to Arch. There are rough edges here too, but on overall I’m much happier. I feel like I know how my machine works again. Ubuntu lately has been giving me that windowsy feeling with lots of things running for god knows what reason. Also in arch the repos seems to not only contain more current versions of things. They seem to bundle more things altogether.
pydry 4y ago
Same here. I used to use it coz it was one of the better debugged distributions that "just worked" and I didn't want to futz with deep config files like I would with arch or gentoo or deal with some confusing "nonfree" workarounds like with Debian. These days it's looking like Fedora holds that crown.
groestl 4y ago
I left Ubuntu server and lxd because of it. Maybe a bit emotional, but f*ck that, I don't need this in my life.
- josteink 4y ago
  I’ve switched everything off Ubuntu but my servers. That bit is just too much effort and I can’t be bothered yet. Next server though. Not Ubuntu for sure. Probably Debian?
  - groestl 4y ago
    I chose Debian, FWIW.
    - josteink 4y ago
      How is Debian-support for ZFS these days? Is it doable to setup Debian with a ZFS root file system?
- CoolCold 4y ago
  Can you share bit more details? I have no issues with that setup or at least I cannot notice the issues.
  - groestl 4y ago
    There were a few things wrt to clustering (which I don't need) and storage pool management that tripped me up at first, but not too bad. However, it made me worry about the fact that I might not be the target audience for the LXD project (I just need simple lightweight machines with snapshots, nothing more). When they decided to stop officially distributing debs, and promote Snap as distribution channel, that was the final straw. I don't understand what's their target audience anymore. Desktop users? My machines are sensitive about reboots, but pretty much sealed off the internet. Upgrades are tested, and happen in scheduled windows. Yet Snap auto-update insists on restarts, whenever it sees fit. Sure, I can find workarounds [0], but the complete disregard on this issue and the reason that they probably forced the LXD project to promote the dumpster fire that is Snap just didn't sit well with me. I'm gone for good. [0] https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-automatic-refresh-for-snap-from-store/707 https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-automatic-refresh-for...
lumb63 4y ago
Canonical seems to be trying to push users off of Ubuntu. I switched to Arch from Ubuntu about 6 years ago after seeing how aggressively Ubuntu would auto-update, and because of Zeitgeist. I would never look back. Arch is customizable, simple (in the sense that there are no surprises; things work as expected), and has a great community. Folks here can argue about snaps or flatpaks, and I can happily use AUR to install nearly anything. If it’s not there, I can publish it. I’m not forced to adopt whatever GUI Canonical thinks is best for me in a given year or whatever their trendy new craze is. I can enjoy i3, tmux, vim, and ignore the rest.
- wing-_-nuts 4y ago
  I also switched to arch for a bit, but then I was left with an unbootable system after the arch devs shipped grub's master branch as stable. The arch devs were completely unapologetic and told me 'well maybe you shouldn't use arch if you can't recover a system who won't boot' Immediately formatted and switched to pop OS and I've never been happier.
  - lumb63 4y ago
    Yeah, Arch is definitely geared toward a more technically proficient user base. Their users, myself included, are typically willing to wrestle with changes like that. Recovering a system that won’t boot is almost a rite of passage in the community, since there’s an expectation that you probably built up the entire boot process by yourself, so you ought to know what it’s doing. For some users, that’s simply not true. For future reference, if you ever decide to switch back, breaking changes or ones which require manual intervention are usually announced on archlinux.org.
    - wing-_-nuts 4y ago
      Yeah I was using endeavoros which was basically vanilla arch with an installer at the time. https://old.reddit.com/r/EndeavourOS/comments/wygfds/full_transparency_on_the_grub_issue/ https://old.reddit.com/r/EndeavourOS/comments/wygfds/full_tr...
pmontra 4y ago
I moved to Debian 11 and recreated exactly the same quite customized GNOME desktop I had on Ubuntu 20.04. Nothing is missing except snaps.
- wankle 4y ago
  I've had issues recently with WiFi on multiple different machines on Debian 11 and switched back to Ubuntu, is WiFi working for you?
  - Tuna-Fish 4y ago
    What wifi chip are you using? Debian by default has no unfree wifi drivers included, so that can cause issues with them. If you have a good wifi adapter by a vendor that pushes drivers upstream like Mediatek, it should work just fine out of the box.
    - 7speter 4y ago
      Would using debian non free address this?
      - Tuna-Fish 4y ago
        I presume so, but I wouldn't know because I haven't ever tried.
    - slim 4y ago
      or install from non-free ... which will not be needed anymore for next release https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/ https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-in...
      - wankle 4y ago
        Yes I was using the non-free version. It was working fine until I'd set the machines to auto-update then one day found out they had zero connectivity after an update. I thought about going around to each machine and manually trying to revert back whatever was in the updates that broke it and just decided to wipe and install Ubuntu back on them.
wing-_-nuts 4y ago
I switched to pop OS (after a brief stint with an arch distro) and have never been happier.
- ehecatl42 4y ago
  Pop really is a very pleasant experience, and probably the best I've had on a personal computer. 3/4 of my immediate family run it on Thinkpads; the only hold-out is a Gentoo teenager wanting to be "weird".
  - wing-_-nuts 4y ago
    Hey man, sometimes you want a distro where you can really muck about with the internals. I started with redhat 6.2 and then went to slackware until I cared more about being productive than learning internals. It's good to explore as a teen.
gtaylor 4y ago
Same. Just moved to Fedora about 6 months ago and have pleasantly surprised. Works better on my laptop as well.
bitcharmer 4y ago
Same, my next OS reinstall will be Fedora and I've been a loyal Ubuntu user for the last 20 years. It takes around 20 seconds to start a silly Spotify client on my dual Xeon workstation with 64 GB of RAM. Numerous users reporting slow startup times but Canonical just pretend the problem doesn't exist and proceed to shove snap down everyone's throats like their lives depend on it.

Snaps are getting me off Desktop Ubuntu after 12 years of happily using it.

Gracana 4y ago

Same here. I was a happy Ubuntu desktop user for over a decade. Now I’m a happy Arch user.

noloblo 4y ago
Same here off Ubuntu and onto centos/fedora rpm dnf world
- 2b3a51 4y ago
  Glad you have something sorted out. Just interested: why not Debian? i.e. still deb based distro? I'm guessing the poster above you wants recent package versions as they went to Arch.
  - groestl 4y ago
    For me it's now Debian on the server (debs) and Arch on the desktop (rolling releases, AURs).
    - wankle 4y ago
      Who controls quality and security in the AUR world? It doesn't seem like something I'd want to trust?
      - groestl 4y ago
        Nobody, but the specs are so simple you can audit them yourself usually. For me it's mostly about low friction packaging my own software tbh.
      - calvinmorrison 4y ago
        the AUR is user supported, no claims are made, but AURs are built off of short scripts called PKGBUILDs so it's easy to audit, you're gonna want to look for the line that links to a tar archive or git repository.
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    In my case Debian’s old package versions can often be awkward because I’m not using Linux exclusively… my macOS and Windows boxes are running latest releases of most things which can cause problems with e.g. sync features. I usually run Fedora rather than Arch though, because in my limited experience with Arch it really doesn’t like to not be booted into for extended periods of time — if you do that the piled up updates are much more likely to break somehow or things like required config changes will slip through the cracks, whereas I have yet to experience this with Fedora.
    - tomxor 4y ago
      That's kind of ironic considering how ancient some of MacOS's userland is.
      - kitsunesoba 4y ago
        For my use case, the details of the userland CLI is mostly irrelevant (particularly since I maintain a FreeBSD server, which means I’m reasonably familiar with both BSD and GNU styles of these tools). Most of the time it just needs to exist, not be any particular version, and exceptions are handled well by Homebrew. Third party apps with UIs being up to date is more important.
- noloblo 4y ago
  Need nixos for haskell as well
markstos 4y ago
Same.
josteink 4y ago
It’s pretty much a meme at this point, but yeah. Snaps just finally did it in for me. I’ve switched all my laptops and workstations from Ubuntu to Arch. There are rough edges here too, but on overall I’m much happier. I feel like I know how my machine works again. Ubuntu lately has been giving me that windowsy feeling with lots of things running for god knows what reason. Also in arch the repos seems to not only contain more current versions of things. They seem to bundle more things altogether.

pydry 4y ago

Same here. I used to use it coz it was one of the better debugged distributions that "just worked" and I didn't want to futz with deep config files like I would with arch or gentoo or deal with some confusing "nonfree" workarounds like with Debian. These days it's looking like Fedora holds that crown.

groestl 4y ago

I left Ubuntu server and lxd because of it. Maybe a bit emotional, but f*ck that, I don't need this in my life.

josteink 4y ago
I’ve switched everything off Ubuntu but my servers. That bit is just too much effort and I can’t be bothered yet. Next server though. Not Ubuntu for sure. Probably Debian?
- groestl 4y ago
  I chose Debian, FWIW.
  - josteink 4y ago
    How is Debian-support for ZFS these days? Is it doable to setup Debian with a ZFS root file system?
CoolCold 4y ago
Can you share bit more details? I have no issues with that setup or at least I cannot notice the issues.
- groestl 4y ago
  There were a few things wrt to clustering (which I don't need) and storage pool management that tripped me up at first, but not too bad. However, it made me worry about the fact that I might not be the target audience for the LXD project (I just need simple lightweight machines with snapshots, nothing more). When they decided to stop officially distributing debs, and promote Snap as distribution channel, that was the final straw. I don't understand what's their target audience anymore. Desktop users? My machines are sensitive about reboots, but pretty much sealed off the internet. Upgrades are tested, and happen in scheduled windows. Yet Snap auto-update insists on restarts, whenever it sees fit. Sure, I can find workarounds [0], but the complete disregard on this issue and the reason that they probably forced the LXD project to promote the dumpster fire that is Snap just didn't sit well with me. I'm gone for good. [0] https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-automatic-refresh-for-snap-from-store/707 https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-automatic-refresh-for...

lumb63 4y ago

Canonical seems to be trying to push users off of Ubuntu. I switched to Arch from Ubuntu about 6 years ago after seeing how aggressively Ubuntu would auto-update, and because of Zeitgeist. I would never look back. Arch is customizable, simple (in the sense that there are no surprises; things work as expected), and has a great community. Folks here can argue about snaps or flatpaks, and I can happily use AUR to install nearly anything. If it’s not there, I can publish it. I’m not forced to adopt whatever GUI Canonical thinks is best for me in a given year or whatever their trendy new craze is. I can enjoy i3, tmux, vim, and ignore the rest.

wing-_-nuts 4y ago
I also switched to arch for a bit, but then I was left with an unbootable system after the arch devs shipped grub's master branch as stable. The arch devs were completely unapologetic and told me 'well maybe you shouldn't use arch if you can't recover a system who won't boot' Immediately formatted and switched to pop OS and I've never been happier.
- lumb63 4y ago
  Yeah, Arch is definitely geared toward a more technically proficient user base. Their users, myself included, are typically willing to wrestle with changes like that. Recovering a system that won’t boot is almost a rite of passage in the community, since there’s an expectation that you probably built up the entire boot process by yourself, so you ought to know what it’s doing. For some users, that’s simply not true. For future reference, if you ever decide to switch back, breaking changes or ones which require manual intervention are usually announced on archlinux.org.
  - wing-_-nuts 4y ago
    Yeah I was using endeavoros which was basically vanilla arch with an installer at the time. https://old.reddit.com/r/EndeavourOS/comments/wygfds/full_transparency_on_the_grub_issue/ https://old.reddit.com/r/EndeavourOS/comments/wygfds/full_tr...

pmontra 4y ago

I moved to Debian 11 and recreated exactly the same quite customized GNOME desktop I had on Ubuntu 20.04. Nothing is missing except snaps.

wankle 4y ago
I've had issues recently with WiFi on multiple different machines on Debian 11 and switched back to Ubuntu, is WiFi working for you?
- Tuna-Fish 4y ago
  What wifi chip are you using? Debian by default has no unfree wifi drivers included, so that can cause issues with them. If you have a good wifi adapter by a vendor that pushes drivers upstream like Mediatek, it should work just fine out of the box.
  - 7speter 4y ago
    Would using debian non free address this?
    - Tuna-Fish 4y ago
      I presume so, but I wouldn't know because I haven't ever tried.
  - slim 4y ago
    or install from non-free ... which will not be needed anymore for next release https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/ https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-in...
    - wankle 4y ago
      Yes I was using the non-free version. It was working fine until I'd set the machines to auto-update then one day found out they had zero connectivity after an update. I thought about going around to each machine and manually trying to revert back whatever was in the updates that broke it and just decided to wipe and install Ubuntu back on them.

wing-_-nuts 4y ago

I switched to pop OS (after a brief stint with an arch distro) and have never been happier.

ehecatl42 4y ago
Pop really is a very pleasant experience, and probably the best I've had on a personal computer. 3/4 of my immediate family run it on Thinkpads; the only hold-out is a Gentoo teenager wanting to be "weird".
- wing-_-nuts 4y ago
  Hey man, sometimes you want a distro where you can really muck about with the internals. I started with redhat 6.2 and then went to slackware until I cared more about being productive than learning internals. It's good to explore as a teen.

gtaylor 4y ago

Same. Just moved to Fedora about 6 months ago and have pleasantly surprised. Works better on my laptop as well.

bitcharmer 4y ago

Same, my next OS reinstall will be Fedora and I've been a loyal Ubuntu user for the last 20 years. It takes around 20 seconds to start a silly Spotify client on my dual Xeon workstation with 64 GB of RAM. Numerous users reporting slow startup times but Canonical just pretend the problem doesn't exist and proceed to shove snap down everyone's throats like their lives depend on it.