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Snaps per se are no better or worse than flatpak. Canonical's mistake, IMO, was to make their store the only place snaps can be hosted. That is the "proprietary
by Santosh83 1y ago
Snaps per se are no better or worse than flatpak. Canonical's mistake, IMO, was to make their store the only place snaps can be hosted. That is the "proprietary" bit everyone keeps talking about.
But in practice even for flatpak the only realistic place you can publish your flatpak if you want any traction at all would be flathub, so both formats have only one store right now. But flatpak allows a custom store while for some strange reason Canonical decided not to allow snap that freedom.
- bayindirh 1y agoAnother problem is, Canonical promised to release server components and enable alternative stores, and just forgot that they made that pledge. Also, rugpulling users and migrating things to snaps without asking their users in order to "create a positive pressure on snap team to keep their quality high" didn't sit well with the users. > But in practice even for flatpak the only realistic place you can publish your flatpak if you want any traction at all would be flathub But, for any size of fleet from homelab to an enterprise client farm, I can host my local flathub and install my personal special-purpose flatpaks without paying anyone and thinking whether my packages will be there next morning. Freedom matters, esp. it that's the norm in that ecosystem. I was neutral-ish about Ubuntu, but I flat out avoid them now, and migrate any remaining Ubuntu server to Debian in shortest way possible. I'm using Debian for the last 20 years or so, BTW.
- npteljes 1y agoYes, same. I started with Ubuntu back in the day, because the server I inherited ran Ubuntu, and it was just natural after that for me to run it on the desktop as well. I grew to dislike their NIH over the years, tried distro hopping, and settled on Debian.
- npteljes 1y agoYes, I agree. Snaps or Flatpak, not much of a practical, technological difference. What sets them apart is the way the distribution is handled, including the open source availability of the backend, which enabled for example Red Hat and Elementary to run their own stores.
- type0 1y agoIf you are making your own distro, creating your own flatpak store is trivial, that's all what matters. Linux Mint doesn't use snap exactly because Canonical forces everyone to use their snap store.
- dismalaf 1y agoCanonical doesn't force anyone to use anything. Snap is open source, just modify it to use a different store if you want. Mint literally forked a zombie DE, but changing a few lines of code in snap is an issue...
- fsflover 1y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44849691 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44849691
- npteljes 1y agoDefaults matter a lot, snap is not open source (client is, backend isn't), you cannot "just modify it (Ubuntu)" to use a different store, because Ubuntu installs snaps even with apt. Mint is not part of the discussion.