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The article accuses others of creating falsehoods, but goes on to create more itself. > Your correspondent personally likes the AppImage format, which needs no

The article accuses others of creating falsehoods, but goes on to create more itself. > Your correspondent personally likes the AppImage format, which needs no additional frameworks This isn't true at all, once you step outside the Debian/Ubuntu world, you'll see the format break down as they're nearly all compiled against Debian/Ubuntu and ABI comparability with anything else (e.g. Fedora) is a dice roll and requires installing additional or older libraries. Curl and OpenSSL are common libraries where the ABI is different between distros and is typically libraries where AppImage breaks down, unless the developer chooses to ship OpenSSL and Curl in their application which is a stupid idea, the Heartbleed bug would of been 10x worse if everyone shipped AppImages. > Second, you can't build an OS from Flatpaks, so you need OStree as well Why would you want to build an OS from Flatpaks? You don't see Apple build an OS from it's .app format. > Btrfs is complicated, and fixing it more so. Git can be really complicated, as its name implies. (Yes, "git" is a word, not an acronym or codename, with an existing meaning.) OStree is Git for binaries, which makes it at least twice as complicated as ordinary Git – and Flatpak is a wrapper around OStree These complications are completely invisible to the user and even OS developers don't need to know how they work to use or create additional stores for them. OSTree uses OCI container files, which everyone who works with Linux servers knows how to use. You don't need to know how Git works in order to use Git. > You can also block the Snap API via a firewall, with something like: Right, so Snap is open because I can block it via the firewall? Rather than just natively supporting multiple repos (or none) like every other Linux package manager that came before, including OSTree and Flatpak. Then it goes on to label everyone who has these concerns as trolls, what a shit article.

wkat4242 3y ago
Canonical seems to be heavy on the outreach to the press lately in an effort to save their pet project. The Dutch website Tweakers also had a series of articles on 'how to write your own snaps' recently. Though they normally rarely write about Linux. I don't suspect commercial motives (Tweakers is way too straight-laced for that) but I do imagine some whispering or press kits are being sent that are being picked up. Canonical is certainly a lot more active with press outreach than redhat or suse, not to mention the non-commercial distros. Of course the register has a more optionated approach which is exceptionally clear here. I stopped reading them regularly a few years ago but they still pop up here on HN every once in a while.
- eternityforest 3y ago
  I hope it works! If it weren't for snaps, I'd probably be using Windows by now or at least really wanting to. I suppose there's always Flatpak if snap goes away, but... like... could we please just pick something? Snaps work, and the snap store has almost everything I actually use.
  - PlutoIsAPlanet 3y ago
    The Snap Store is controlled by one single entity, as is the Snap project itself. These things make it impossible that many other distros can use it.
    - lproven 3y ago
      Comparison: the Mozilla website is controlled by Mozilla and Firefox users can't edit or copy www.mozilla.org. Therefore Mozilla Firefox is closed source! The Snap store is Ubuntu proprietary, yes. But that doesn't matter. You don't need to use it. You can build and sign your own snaps, distribute them yourself, use Snap without ever going near the store. Snaps can be downloaded from any source, over HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, NFS, CIFS, whatever you want: unlike Flatpaks, they are just ordinary files. No special protocol or mechanism needed. The snap format is FOSS (and used by almost all Linux distros for install media), the tools to create it are FOSS, the tools to run it are FOSS, and there are no special tools needed or recommended or supplied to distribute snaps. Which is what the article is about. I know because I wrote it.
    - eternityforest 3y ago
      Not technically impossible, Canonical seems to really want others to use it. Maybe it could be spun off into a separate Snap foundation. For me personally, I don't actually have to deal with any distros except Pi OS an Ubuntu and can pretty much ignore them, so I might be a bit biased.
- lproven 3y ago
  I wrote the article and submitted it to HN. I can tell you that there was zero outreach of any kind whatsoever from Canonical for this. In fact getting info for publication out of Canonical is as hard as it is from SUSE or from Red Hat. As an example, I asked for a demo of Landscape after the last Ubuntu Summit, a year ago. I am still waiting. The reason I go to events like the Summit is to get info. Canonical paid for my flights and my hotel, yes, but Red Hat and the Linux Foundation also do that. But they did not invite me to it: I had to ask, as I had to ask last year as well. (They did not pay for my travel last year, as I lived in Prague at that time. It was a 25min journey on the tram.) I am sure from the outside world it looks like Linux companies pumping journos with info, but it really is not like that. When I approached RH for distro differentiation info, the senior sales manager told me that the company only sold one single Linux. After a few days of arguing, I pointed him at: https://www.redhat.com/en/store/linux-platforms https://www.redhat.com/en/store/linux-platforms Where there are 5 product price points. (I think last year there were 6 or 8.) He then stopped replying to emails. Trying to get info from these guys is like pulling teeth, and that is one reason proprietary vendors do so much better and get more press coverage.

wkat4242 3y ago

Canonical seems to be heavy on the outreach to the press lately in an effort to save their pet project. The Dutch website Tweakers also had a series of articles on 'how to write your own snaps' recently. Though they normally rarely write about Linux. I don't suspect commercial motives (Tweakers is way too straight-laced for that) but I do imagine some whispering or press kits are being sent that are being picked up. Canonical is certainly a lot more active with press outreach than redhat or suse, not to mention the non-commercial distros. Of course the register has a more optionated approach which is exceptionally clear here. I stopped reading them regularly a few years ago but they still pop up here on HN every once in a while.

eternityforest 3y ago
I hope it works! If it weren't for snaps, I'd probably be using Windows by now or at least really wanting to. I suppose there's always Flatpak if snap goes away, but... like... could we please just pick something? Snaps work, and the snap store has almost everything I actually use.
- PlutoIsAPlanet 3y ago
  The Snap Store is controlled by one single entity, as is the Snap project itself. These things make it impossible that many other distros can use it.
  - lproven 3y ago
    Comparison: the Mozilla website is controlled by Mozilla and Firefox users can't edit or copy www.mozilla.org. Therefore Mozilla Firefox is closed source! The Snap store is Ubuntu proprietary, yes. But that doesn't matter. You don't need to use it. You can build and sign your own snaps, distribute them yourself, use Snap without ever going near the store. Snaps can be downloaded from any source, over HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, NFS, CIFS, whatever you want: unlike Flatpaks, they are just ordinary files. No special protocol or mechanism needed. The snap format is FOSS (and used by almost all Linux distros for install media), the tools to create it are FOSS, the tools to run it are FOSS, and there are no special tools needed or recommended or supplied to distribute snaps. Which is what the article is about. I know because I wrote it.
  - eternityforest 3y ago
    Not technically impossible, Canonical seems to really want others to use it. Maybe it could be spun off into a separate Snap foundation. For me personally, I don't actually have to deal with any distros except Pi OS an Ubuntu and can pretty much ignore them, so I might be a bit biased.
lproven 3y ago
I wrote the article and submitted it to HN. I can tell you that there was zero outreach of any kind whatsoever from Canonical for this. In fact getting info for publication out of Canonical is as hard as it is from SUSE or from Red Hat. As an example, I asked for a demo of Landscape after the last Ubuntu Summit, a year ago. I am still waiting. The reason I go to events like the Summit is to get info. Canonical paid for my flights and my hotel, yes, but Red Hat and the Linux Foundation also do that. But they did not invite me to it: I had to ask, as I had to ask last year as well. (They did not pay for my travel last year, as I lived in Prague at that time. It was a 25min journey on the tram.) I am sure from the outside world it looks like Linux companies pumping journos with info, but it really is not like that. When I approached RH for distro differentiation info, the senior sales manager told me that the company only sold one single Linux. After a few days of arguing, I pointed him at: https://www.redhat.com/en/store/linux-platforms https://www.redhat.com/en/store/linux-platforms Where there are 5 product price points. (I think last year there were 6 or 8.) He then stopped replying to emails. Trying to get info from these guys is like pulling teeth, and that is one reason proprietary vendors do so much better and get more press coverage.