4 ms·

How much work is it to get snaps out of your way? Canonical seems to be going all in on them as their business strategy.

by curt15 9mo ago

unixhero 9mo ago
Just use Linux Mint
- abrookewood 9mo ago
  There are a few games I play that have native Linux versions available (e.g. Warhammer Total War) and getting support requires you to run Ubuntu. Not the end of the world, but that plus some dev work was enough to get me to stick to it.
  - unixhero 9mo ago
    Linux Mint is Ubuntu
    - abrookewood 9mo ago
      Not as far as the Game Devs are concerned. I was running Kubuntu and that wasn't 'supported' by them - only Ubuntu LTS.
      - unixhero 9mo ago
        You just install it. The debs work.
abrookewood 9mo ago
Not that much. TO be honest, I have a few installed (Heroic Games Launcher for one), but the main one I wanted to avoid was Firefox - which is easily doable. It is annoying that we have yet another way of packaging apps - would have been better if they just supported Flatpack
- jscyc 9mo ago
  Do you ever find it "updated" to the snap version? I have Ubuntu on my work laptop and every so often after an update Firefox will suddenly be the snap version and I'll have to reinstall it.
  - Brian_K_White 9mo ago
    I no longer remember all the exact steps I did but I only googled them in the first place so presumably they are there to be googled still. But it's possible to fully remove snapd and all snap support and then taboo it so that it never comes back. Or at least, it's been a few years and it hasn't come back. FF has remained a real .deb from the mozillateam ppa. It was a few different steps though not just uninstalling a few packages but also editing some apt config files I think. Sorry that sounds useless but like I say I just googled it up at the time, did 15-20 minutes of reading and poking, and never had to touch it again since then. It's been several version bumps. ..edit.. I installed a dummy package that displaces the nagware about the pro version too so I never get those messages during apt update any more. Taking a quick definitely incomplete look I see at least: /etc/apt/preferences.d/mozilla.pref Package: firefox* Pin: release o=LP-PPA-mozillateam Pin-Priority: 501 Package: thunderbird* Pin: release o=LP-PPA-mozillateam Pin-Priority: 501 /etc/apt/preferences.d/nosnap.pref Package: snapd Pin: release a=* Pin-Priority: -10 and removed ubuntu-pro-esm-apps and ubuntu-pro-esm-infra from that same dir but also there is a mozillateam ppa in sources.list.d, and I don't see any installed package name that looks like it might be that dummy ubuntu-pro-esm thing, so maybe it got removed during a version upgrade and I never noticed because ubuntu stopped that nonsense and it isn't needed any more? Or there is some other config somewhere I'm forgetting that is keeping that hole plugged. Anyway, it WAS a little bit of fiddling around one day, but at least it was only a one and done thing so far. I kind of expected to be off of ubuntu by now because once someone starts doing anything like that, it doesn't matter if you can work around it, the real problem is that they want to do things like that at all in the first place. Well they still want what they want and that problem is never going away. They will just keep trying some other thing and then some other thing. So rather that fight them forever, it's better to find someone else who you don't want to fight. I mean that's why we're on Linux at all in the first place right? But so far it's been a few version bumps since then and still more or less fine.
jakebasile 9mo ago
I also game on Ubuntu and snaps have never been in my way. I actually like them and wish more non-game software was distributed this way, but Canonical has a brown thumb when it comes to growing their weird little side projects.
hugmynutus 9mo ago
Setting up `apt` to pull from a different repo (to say install firefox.dpkg instead of snap) requires like 3-4 commands which are easily searchable. I'd had effectively zero issues avoid snaps.
veegee 9mo ago
[dead]
josteink 9mo ago
> How much work is it to get snaps out of your way? If you don’t want what makes Ubuntu Ubuntu, why not just run vanilla Debian instead?
- ahartmetz 9mo ago
  Ubuntu releases supported (aka "really supposed to work") versions much more frequently than Debian, or I would have switched already. As it is, I just make the appropriate changes to purge Snap and run Firefox from a Mozilla apt repo and Thunderbird from Flatpak via Flathub.
  - joe200 9mo ago
    You are talking about Debian stable which is released approximately once in 2 years. People who want to have more (most ?) recent software on Debian should go for Debian Testing. Or Debian Sid, which gets upstream updates almost instantly but requires more Linux knowledge in case something gets broken.
kstenerud 9mo ago
I just did this yesterday after my Kubuntu system got buggered up by snaps: https://gitlab.com/scripts94/kubuntu-get-rid-of-snap https://gitlab.com/scripts94/kubuntu-get-rid-of-snap Up until now I didn't care how my software was installed, but snaps REALLY don't play nice, so it's time to retire them. Canonical has lost this battle, and the sooner they accept it and move on, the sooner they can recover their reputation and put this madness behind them.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
yxhuvud 9mo ago
Honestly snaps are fairly painfree nowadays.
- abrookewood 9mo ago
  I mostly agree, it's just annoying that we have so many competing formats. I imagine it is even more painful for developers trying to release software - it's a very fractured ecosystem.

How much work is it to get snaps out of your way? Canonical seems to be going all in on them as their business strategy.

by curt15 9mo ago

How much work is it to get snaps out of your way? Canonical seems to be going all in on them as their business strategy.

unixhero 9mo ago

Just use Linux Mint

abrookewood 9mo ago
There are a few games I play that have native Linux versions available (e.g. Warhammer Total War) and getting support requires you to run Ubuntu. Not the end of the world, but that plus some dev work was enough to get me to stick to it.
- unixhero 9mo ago
  Linux Mint is Ubuntu
  - abrookewood 9mo ago
    Not as far as the Game Devs are concerned. I was running Kubuntu and that wasn't 'supported' by them - only Ubuntu LTS.
    - unixhero 9mo ago
      You just install it. The debs work.

abrookewood 9mo ago

Not that much. TO be honest, I have a few installed (Heroic Games Launcher for one), but the main one I wanted to avoid was Firefox - which is easily doable. It is annoying that we have yet another way of packaging apps - would have been better if they just supported Flatpack

jscyc 9mo ago
Do you ever find it "updated" to the snap version? I have Ubuntu on my work laptop and every so often after an update Firefox will suddenly be the snap version and I'll have to reinstall it.
- Brian_K_White 9mo ago
  I no longer remember all the exact steps I did but I only googled them in the first place so presumably they are there to be googled still. But it's possible to fully remove snapd and all snap support and then taboo it so that it never comes back. Or at least, it's been a few years and it hasn't come back. FF has remained a real .deb from the mozillateam ppa. It was a few different steps though not just uninstalling a few packages but also editing some apt config files I think. Sorry that sounds useless but like I say I just googled it up at the time, did 15-20 minutes of reading and poking, and never had to touch it again since then. It's been several version bumps. ..edit.. I installed a dummy package that displaces the nagware about the pro version too so I never get those messages during apt update any more. Taking a quick definitely incomplete look I see at least: /etc/apt/preferences.d/mozilla.pref Package: firefox* Pin: release o=LP-PPA-mozillateam Pin-Priority: 501 Package: thunderbird* Pin: release o=LP-PPA-mozillateam Pin-Priority: 501 /etc/apt/preferences.d/nosnap.pref Package: snapd Pin: release a=* Pin-Priority: -10 and removed ubuntu-pro-esm-apps and ubuntu-pro-esm-infra from that same dir but also there is a mozillateam ppa in sources.list.d, and I don't see any installed package name that looks like it might be that dummy ubuntu-pro-esm thing, so maybe it got removed during a version upgrade and I never noticed because ubuntu stopped that nonsense and it isn't needed any more? Or there is some other config somewhere I'm forgetting that is keeping that hole plugged. Anyway, it WAS a little bit of fiddling around one day, but at least it was only a one and done thing so far. I kind of expected to be off of ubuntu by now because once someone starts doing anything like that, it doesn't matter if you can work around it, the real problem is that they want to do things like that at all in the first place. Well they still want what they want and that problem is never going away. They will just keep trying some other thing and then some other thing. So rather that fight them forever, it's better to find someone else who you don't want to fight. I mean that's why we're on Linux at all in the first place right? But so far it's been a few version bumps since then and still more or less fine.

jakebasile 9mo ago

I also game on Ubuntu and snaps have never been in my way. I actually like them and wish more non-game software was distributed this way, but Canonical has a brown thumb when it comes to growing their weird little side projects.

hugmynutus 9mo ago

Setting up `apt` to pull from a different repo (to say install firefox.dpkg instead of snap) requires like 3-4 commands which are easily searchable. I'd had effectively zero issues avoid snaps.

veegee 9mo ago

[dead]

josteink 9mo ago

> How much work is it to get snaps out of your way? If you don’t want what makes Ubuntu Ubuntu, why not just run vanilla Debian instead?

ahartmetz 9mo ago
Ubuntu releases supported (aka "really supposed to work") versions much more frequently than Debian, or I would have switched already. As it is, I just make the appropriate changes to purge Snap and run Firefox from a Mozilla apt repo and Thunderbird from Flatpak via Flathub.
- joe200 9mo ago
  You are talking about Debian stable which is released approximately once in 2 years. People who want to have more (most ?) recent software on Debian should go for Debian Testing. Or Debian Sid, which gets upstream updates almost instantly but requires more Linux knowledge in case something gets broken.

kstenerud 9mo ago

I just did this yesterday after my Kubuntu system got buggered up by snaps: https://gitlab.com/scripts94/kubuntu-get-rid-of-snap https://gitlab.com/scripts94/kubuntu-get-rid-of-snap Up until now I didn't care how my software was installed, but snaps REALLY don't play nice, so it's time to retire them. Canonical has lost this battle, and the sooner they accept it and move on, the sooner they can recover their reputation and put this madness behind them.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

yxhuvud 9mo ago

Honestly snaps are fairly painfree nowadays.

abrookewood 9mo ago
I mostly agree, it's just annoying that we have so many competing formats. I imagine it is even more painful for developers trying to release software - it's a very fractured ecosystem.