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Are there any Snap fans out there that are championing the technology? I only ever hear bad things about it (and I too, have experienced pain from it), but perh

by amanzi 3y ago

Are there any Snap fans out there that are championing the technology? I only ever hear bad things about it (and I too, have experienced pain from it), but perhaps there's a bit of an echo chamber here. My most recent sneaky Snap experience happened on my Pop_OS laptop. I decided to enable that extra Ubuntu Pro security repository since it's free for 5 devices. I followed the steps to enable it but then noticed that apt was installing the snapd package and a whole heap of dependencies! I quickly cancelled it, reverted the steps and decided to not bother with the Ubuntu Pro stuff again.

wrenky 3y ago
"championing" it? probably not, but I'm a huge fan of the goal. Flatpack/Snap both try to take an application and isolate it from the system. Its like docker but for userspace application rather than services. Package managers like apt/yum modify the system at a root level, a bad package here (or a bad library) can cause problems if its a mistake, or compromise if malicious. You should only use them for stuff that needs root hardware access or root permissions at some point- everything else should be sandboxed and isolated from that critical portion of your system. [Shutteworth makes a pretty good argument for snap](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z3yusiCOCk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z3yusiCOCk) (and by proxy, flatpack) and the why we need virtual machines/docker/LXD/(snap/flatpack)/package managers. So I wouldn't say I'm championing snap, but I do believe the concept should be used everywhere. Flatpack? snap? Something new? Dont really care, I just want the containerization benefits at the userspace level.
- amanzi 3y ago
  Thanks for the link - watching it now. I guess I was referring to complaints about Snap specifically. My distro of choice (Pop!_OS) and many others have specifically excluded Snap in favour of Flatpak and I hardly ever hear complaints about Flatpak.

by amanzi 3y ago

wrenky 3y ago

"championing" it? probably not, but I'm a huge fan of the goal. Flatpack/Snap both try to take an application and isolate it from the system. Its like docker but for userspace application rather than services. Package managers like apt/yum modify the system at a root level, a bad package here (or a bad library) can cause problems if its a mistake, or compromise if malicious. You should only use them for stuff that needs root hardware access or root permissions at some point- everything else should be sandboxed and isolated from that critical portion of your system. [Shutteworth makes a pretty good argument for snap](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z3yusiCOCk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z3yusiCOCk) (and by proxy, flatpack) and the why we need virtual machines/docker/LXD/(snap/flatpack)/package managers. So I wouldn't say I'm championing snap, but I do believe the concept should be used everywhere. Flatpack? snap? Something new? Dont really care, I just want the containerization benefits at the userspace level.

amanzi 3y ago
Thanks for the link - watching it now. I guess I was referring to complaints about Snap specifically. My distro of choice (Pop!_OS) and many others have specifically excluded Snap in favour of Flatpak and I hardly ever hear complaints about Flatpak.