Monthly News – June 2019

[clem]

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3766

[AndyMH]

If chromium moves to a snap package, I will be switching to another browser.

[gm10]

If chromium moves to a snap package, I will be switching to another browser.

You can always compile it yourself/let Ubuntu do it via a PPA, or just use one of the existing PPAs.

Anyway, good blog, maybe except for the "we're all super happy" part - March wasn't bad, it was free PR, no reason to try so hard to walk it back now.

[karlchen]

Hi, gm10. As I understood the "super happy" part it was just meant to bring across the message that the "extended blues period" is over. Normal business again. Karl

[cliffcoggin]

I wasn't aware that snaps were so problematic, but then I don't use them so I wouldn't.

[AZgl1800]

If chromium moves to a snap package, I will be switching to another browser.

I wondered what was different about chromium....
it don't really matter to me, it is just a 'backup browser' used to test links.
I only use Firefox.

[gm10]

Hi, gm10. As I understood the "super happy" part it was just meant to bring across the message that the "extended blues period" is over. Normal business again. Karl

Yes, I know, it's how I understood it as well, it just sounded a bit forced to me. Might just be me though. Doesn't matter one way or another. It was a very good blog post otherwise.

[HaveaMint]

Thank you LM Team for all your hard work, It is appreciated very much so.

[all41]

A self-installing Snap Store which overwrites part of our APT package base is a complete NO NO.

This speaks volumes

[rambo919]

Well it's not as if they have much choice with 32bit support but there is going to definitely be problems with a complete crossover. It's like Firefox and the addon support drop, many STILL have not been redone to the new standard and I myself have to keep a outdated portable version around for one addon specifically which the dev has basically abandoned because he does not think it's possible to do the same thing with the new standard.

[unkilbeeg]

I didn't see any mention of Mate in this month's status. Is a Mate version still going to be supported?

I've tried Cinnamon several times, but I personally find the Mate experience more comfortable.

[JoeFootball]

I didn't see any mention of Mate in this month's status. Is a Mate version still going to be supported?

I expect that MATE and Xfce will indeed be supported for at least the rest of the 19.x series.

Specific to desktop environments, I think that Cinnamon gets news as it's Clem & Co. who are developing it, where MATE and Xfce are developed elsewhere.

Joe

[unkilbeeg]

It was my understanding that the MATE project was also associated with Mint. Did that change, or was I just misunderstanding the relationship?

[gm10]

It was my understanding that the MATE project was also associated with Mint. Did that change, or was I just misunderstanding the relationship?

MATE used to be mainly developed by the Mint team, but these days the Mint team concentrates on Cinnamon. Anyway, LM 19.2 will come with MATE 1.22.

[all41]

MATE used to be mainly developed by the Mint team

Are you referring to the Mint MATE DE here?

[Schultz]

Clem is mentioned here: https://mate-desktop.org/team/.

Not exactly sure what "helped bootstrap MATE in the early days" means though.

[all41]

Good reference @Shultz,
Not sure about the bootstrap call either, but it's something I was not aware of.
Imho Cinnamon is Clem's visionary breakaway.
The Cinnamon teams continue to impress so it's easy to see the resources tilting toward Cinnamon.
However I still support every Mint effort.

[That Random Guy]

I wondered what was different about chromium....
it don't really matter to me, it is just a 'backup browser' used to test links.
I only use Firefox.

Ditto—don't really get why folk are making a fuss about Chromium of all things.

If it were Firefox or something, then I'd be having a big tantrum.

Chrome's big brother? Nah.

[carum carvi]

Qute from the monthly LinuxMint news by Clem:

As long as snap is a solution to a problem, it’s great. Just like Flatpak, it can solve some of the real issues we have with frozen package bases. It can provide us with software we couldn’t otherwise run as packages. When it starts replacing packages for no good reason though, when it starts harming our interaction with upstream projects and software vendors and reducing our choice, it becomes a threat.

Chromium is only one popular example of SNAP becoming a sort of a monopoly interfering with the way other Linux distributions are organised and function. I guess the fear that Snap is becoming a monopoly is the danger Clem is warning us about. Spotify is mentioned by Clem as another example in which Feodora users are already dependent on 1 commercial company for their Snap release.


Qute from the monthly LinuxMint news by Clem:

If you’re a Fedora user and you want to install Spotify, you’re told to go to https://snapcraft.io/spotify. Spotify doesn’t distribute RPM packages, appimage, Flatpak or anything useful to a Fedora user who wants to download it....

...We (at LinuxMint) are in luck, we can still download the .deb. If Spotify stops caring, what do we do?

[smurphos]

Ditto—don't really get why folk are making a fuss about Chromium of all things.

If it were Firefox or something, then I'd be having a big tantrum.

Chrome's big brother? Nah.

Coz some of us can't stand Firefox and don't like Mozilla much either - their attitude to fixing bugs sucks, and they can't make any of their apps work properly with GTK themes. Plus if Canonical's Chromium as snap only experiment works out I bet Firefox will be on the list at some point.