5 ms·

Every user I know who has left Ubuntu has cited snaps as a push factor. And their only mention of snap in this post is to say that they are fixing a regression

Every user I know who has left Ubuntu has cited snaps as a push factor. And their only mention of snap in this post is to say that they are fixing a regression from native Chromium? Tone deaf.

phendrenad2 3y ago
But what is the goal of the distro? If the goal is appeal to every user, then they should remove Snaps. But what if the goal is to appeal to casual users only?
- wmf 3y ago
  Flatpak is probably less buggy than Snaps for casual users.
  - phendrenad2 3y ago
    Really? Can you provide citations for that? I went looking around the web to understand why people dislike Snap in the first place. The top reasons cited on Reddit are: (1) "Controlled by Canonical, not an open format" (This seems to be a mis-explanation of the complaint that the Snap server itself, which Canonical runs, is closed-source. As though a Snap server would be hard to create, it's a simple CRUD webapp) Anyway, this in no way causes problems for the "casual users" I mentioned, so irrelevant (unless the people who claim that closed-source software is invariably hopelessly buggy compared to open-source are right, that is). (2) "Ubuntu reinvented the wheel, Flatpak was fine" But does that affect the "casual user" in any way? People are still going to package software for Snap. The casual user isn't going to miss a minute of sleep over their packages coming from a store that existed after a perfectly-good store already existed. It's just not top of mind at all. (3) "Ubuntu did a bad job designing the system. You have to close Snap apps to update them, but the updater doesn't have a friendly UI for killing apps so they can be updated, which just confuses the average user" (This seems valid. Flatpak updates the app in the background and the new container isn't launched until you quit the app and reopen it normally). (4) "Forced updates" (This is actually a positive for most casual users, who don't want to think about updates, they just want it to happen).
    - michaelmrose 3y ago
      1A. Its a negative because it imposes both a third parties control on global open source software or possibly worse the control imposed by the parties country of residence. Literally the only reason one would keep in closed source is to profit from designing the system in a fashion that is disadvantageous to others. For instance if it works like channels its virtually impossible to charge a percentage like Apple's app store because people will just publish to a free channel, every distro will include the free channel, and users will just ignore the paid channel. Consider the paucity of software on the Mac app store vs the iphone app store. 1B. There will never be an open source Snap store backend because it would both be more work than you imagine and continued work to retain compatibility of both front and back. If you try you will most likely end up with something that sometimes work sometimes fails and takes a full time maintenance. You may as well call it "snap but shittier how I burned 200k figuring out how moats work" 2. The problem isn't merely re-inventing the wheel its reinventing it for no reason and doing it poorly then not integrating it in a fashion that makes it easy on the average user. The casual user of ubuntu may end up end up needing traditional packages, snaps, flatpaks, ppas. If I understand correctly the current state of software management they can easily install both traditional and snap packages but will have to turn to additional cli tools to integrate ppas and flatpaks. Arch with the AUR enabled provides funny enough an easier and simpler experience. 3.Agreed 4. The is a positive wherein new versions never fuck things up or remove features that users rely on. This doesn't seem to be the current state of play and pinning a version or launching an older version seems to be table stakes for dealing with flawed software.
    - 28304283409234 3y ago
      Snap is a resource hog. My server is on a constant load of 2+ because snapd is doing something. It is impossible to debug what it actually is doing. The only snap installed is lxd and certbot. Laziness is the reason I have not yet replaced those. Putting lxd/lxc in snap also baffles me. Layers upon layers of abstraction and virtualization for no reason. But that's a different story.
wmf 3y ago
The "if you're going through hell, keep going" strategy. I don't see any way out for Ubuntu; it's too late to cancel Snaps and also too late to fix the architectural problems.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  Why is it too late to change? They replaced Mir with Wayland, for example; why not replace snaps with flatpak?
martypitt 3y ago
Out of interest, what have people moved to? I'm a pretty happy Ubuntu user (and the Snaps issue doesn't really bother me personally), but I'm curious if I'm missing out on something better elsewhere?
- curt15 3y ago
  My distro-hopping ended at Fedora Silverblue.
- mablopoule 3y ago
  For me, ArchLinux. It was more painful at first (worried about installing it the first time), but the other side of the coin is that I understand my system much, much better. ArchWiki is a jewel. And yeah, it was because of Snap.
  - MSFT_Edging 3y ago
    I ironically get the most stability out of arch. Like you said, you front load a lot of the effort. Tweaking, setting up important packages, etc. Once that is done, as long as you update it really gets out of your way. Occasionally something will break and there will be a notice on the front page of the arch site. Ubuntu suffers something that effects windows really badly. In an attempt to polish, you obfuscate a lot of moving parts. When one of those parts break down, it becomes far harder to repair. I also understand the irony of wanting people to switch to Linux then being against a polished distro.
- ye-olde-sysrq 3y ago
  I've used ubuntu server for over a decade. I moved servers to debian and enjoyed it. My laptops have always been Arch.
- CameronNemo 3y ago
  Fedora, Debian, Arch seem to be common replacements.
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  I have two laptops, one with mint/x11/cinnamon that is working well, quite happy with. Another with fedora/wayland/kde and am mostly happy, although synergy/barrier doesn’t support wayland(may not be possible) which is a big problem on my desk. :-/
dismalpedigree 3y ago
I can’t say I have left because of snaps, but I sure am close. When they work, they are great. If you have to debug or diagnose something? Forget it.
- izoow 3y ago
  Even when they work I just can't handle the long startup times of most snap applications that are just instant without snap. Makes me feel like I'm running my system off a spinning disk again.
devn0ll 3y ago
Snaps.. I would not have minded it so much where it not for the fact that Canonical is: 1. keeping the store part of it closed. 2. forcing the use of snaps on me. Those two feel really off to me, like a poison-pill.

Every user I know who has left Ubuntu has cited snaps as a push factor. And their only mention of snap in this post is to say that they are fixing a regression from native Chromium? Tone deaf.

phendrenad2 3y ago

But what is the goal of the distro? If the goal is appeal to every user, then they should remove Snaps. But what if the goal is to appeal to casual users only?

wmf 3y ago
Flatpak is probably less buggy than Snaps for casual users.
- phendrenad2 3y ago
  Really? Can you provide citations for that? I went looking around the web to understand why people dislike Snap in the first place. The top reasons cited on Reddit are: (1) "Controlled by Canonical, not an open format" (This seems to be a mis-explanation of the complaint that the Snap server itself, which Canonical runs, is closed-source. As though a Snap server would be hard to create, it's a simple CRUD webapp) Anyway, this in no way causes problems for the "casual users" I mentioned, so irrelevant (unless the people who claim that closed-source software is invariably hopelessly buggy compared to open-source are right, that is). (2) "Ubuntu reinvented the wheel, Flatpak was fine" But does that affect the "casual user" in any way? People are still going to package software for Snap. The casual user isn't going to miss a minute of sleep over their packages coming from a store that existed after a perfectly-good store already existed. It's just not top of mind at all. (3) "Ubuntu did a bad job designing the system. You have to close Snap apps to update them, but the updater doesn't have a friendly UI for killing apps so they can be updated, which just confuses the average user" (This seems valid. Flatpak updates the app in the background and the new container isn't launched until you quit the app and reopen it normally). (4) "Forced updates" (This is actually a positive for most casual users, who don't want to think about updates, they just want it to happen).
  - michaelmrose 3y ago
    1A. Its a negative because it imposes both a third parties control on global open source software or possibly worse the control imposed by the parties country of residence. Literally the only reason one would keep in closed source is to profit from designing the system in a fashion that is disadvantageous to others. For instance if it works like channels its virtually impossible to charge a percentage like Apple's app store because people will just publish to a free channel, every distro will include the free channel, and users will just ignore the paid channel. Consider the paucity of software on the Mac app store vs the iphone app store. 1B. There will never be an open source Snap store backend because it would both be more work than you imagine and continued work to retain compatibility of both front and back. If you try you will most likely end up with something that sometimes work sometimes fails and takes a full time maintenance. You may as well call it "snap but shittier how I burned 200k figuring out how moats work" 2. The problem isn't merely re-inventing the wheel its reinventing it for no reason and doing it poorly then not integrating it in a fashion that makes it easy on the average user. The casual user of ubuntu may end up end up needing traditional packages, snaps, flatpaks, ppas. If I understand correctly the current state of software management they can easily install both traditional and snap packages but will have to turn to additional cli tools to integrate ppas and flatpaks. Arch with the AUR enabled provides funny enough an easier and simpler experience. 3.Agreed 4. The is a positive wherein new versions never fuck things up or remove features that users rely on. This doesn't seem to be the current state of play and pinning a version or launching an older version seems to be table stakes for dealing with flawed software.
  - 28304283409234 3y ago
    Snap is a resource hog. My server is on a constant load of 2+ because snapd is doing something. It is impossible to debug what it actually is doing. The only snap installed is lxd and certbot. Laziness is the reason I have not yet replaced those. Putting lxd/lxc in snap also baffles me. Layers upon layers of abstraction and virtualization for no reason. But that's a different story.

wmf 3y ago

The "if you're going through hell, keep going" strategy. I don't see any way out for Ubuntu; it's too late to cancel Snaps and also too late to fix the architectural problems.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
Why is it too late to change? They replaced Mir with Wayland, for example; why not replace snaps with flatpak?

martypitt 3y ago

Out of interest, what have people moved to? I'm a pretty happy Ubuntu user (and the Snaps issue doesn't really bother me personally), but I'm curious if I'm missing out on something better elsewhere?

curt15 3y ago
My distro-hopping ended at Fedora Silverblue.
mablopoule 3y ago
For me, ArchLinux. It was more painful at first (worried about installing it the first time), but the other side of the coin is that I understand my system much, much better. ArchWiki is a jewel. And yeah, it was because of Snap.
- MSFT_Edging 3y ago
  I ironically get the most stability out of arch. Like you said, you front load a lot of the effort. Tweaking, setting up important packages, etc. Once that is done, as long as you update it really gets out of your way. Occasionally something will break and there will be a notice on the front page of the arch site. Ubuntu suffers something that effects windows really badly. In an attempt to polish, you obfuscate a lot of moving parts. When one of those parts break down, it becomes far harder to repair. I also understand the irony of wanting people to switch to Linux then being against a polished distro.
ye-olde-sysrq 3y ago
I've used ubuntu server for over a decade. I moved servers to debian and enjoyed it. My laptops have always been Arch.
CameronNemo 3y ago
Fedora, Debian, Arch seem to be common replacements.
mixmastamyk 3y ago
I have two laptops, one with mint/x11/cinnamon that is working well, quite happy with. Another with fedora/wayland/kde and am mostly happy, although synergy/barrier doesn’t support wayland(may not be possible) which is a big problem on my desk. :-/

dismalpedigree 3y ago

I can’t say I have left because of snaps, but I sure am close. When they work, they are great. If you have to debug or diagnose something? Forget it.

izoow 3y ago
Even when they work I just can't handle the long startup times of most snap applications that are just instant without snap. Makes me feel like I'm running my system off a spinning disk again.

devn0ll 3y ago

Snaps.. I would not have minded it so much where it not for the fact that Canonical is: 1. keeping the store part of it closed. 2. forcing the use of snaps on me. Those two feel really off to me, like a poison-pill.