Snaps. Why? Please stop.

[MartyMint]

You clearly do not understand what Canonical develops, writes, supports etc...and what Snaps are.

[DAMIEN1307]

Yep...at least i will speak for myself, im quite well aware of what "canonical developes, writes, supports etc"...and what snaps are.
i have "railed" against snaps etc now for about 2 years now knowing exactly where canonical intends to go with this...are you living under a rock?...read what Clem himself is NOW saying about snaps...appimage i find ok...Snaps and Flatpaks...just let me puke...DAMIEN

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

[all41]

Will Mint devs vet the snap/flatpak packages 100%
I think not, just as google cannot vet all the store apps.
So there will be weasle-ware entering---wait and see

[Portreve]

With regard specifically to the Google Play Store and, frankly, Apple's App Store, because they are both huge companies with tons of capital to do so, if I were them, I would insist all program developers submit their programs in source code only. This way, you can review all the code (and use tools to do most of the work) to make sure there's no funny business going on. Then, compile the code and make it available. If developers balk, ask them if they want to sell their app(s) or not. Simultaneously, market this form of screening to your customers so they are on your side, and will refuse to buy apps not so vetted.

Now, whether GNU+Linux distros could as easily do that, I have no idea. Actually, I'd really like to know how this process works because how do we know there isn't some malicious developer(s) out there desiring to create malware (in whole or in part)? I mean, I'm a huge proponent of the open-source nature of libre software specifically the code can be both peer reviewed and independently audited, but to what extent is that simply a paper tiger, and to what extent does it actually have teeth?

[mattlach]

Maybe I'm wrong? Educate me.

It's a bit like complaining that the grocery store has too much variety and should only sell what you want.

My complaint is about the name: snaps. How lame. How not-unique and therefore hard to look up;

Search "flatpak" and you get stuff about flatpak.

Search "snap" or "snaps" and you get

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) | USDA-FNS

, then a restaurant, camera company, etc.

My take is that once snaps become ubiquitous, which they probably will despite their efficiency and security problems, those of us who would rather use the traditional package manager will likely be out of luck. It will be so comparatively easy to just create one snap rather than one package for each distribution and its associated package manager, that we simply will not have the packages for our package managers.

If experience has taught me one thing, it is that laziness and convenience always trump doing the right thing. Now rather than trusting that our distribution maintainers are keeping vulnerabilities and exploits at bay by maintaining the dependency tree and making sure all dependencies are patched, we have to trust a million little interdependent developers to do the right thing and include the correct, patched dependencies in their inefficient snaps/appimages and flatpaks.

If turning Linux into Windows is what you want, then it is snaps you want. IMHO, this move is an utter disaster.

[ajgringo619]

https://www.maketecheasier.com/snap-pac ... flatpaks/

some interesting reads

This article is pretty old. The complaint about Flatpak not having a centralized store doesn't apply now.

[michael louwe]

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments ... /?sort=old - TIL that Snappy package manager has a proprietary backend, its not open source software

[roadrash]

I recently replaced Mint with Ubuntu 19.10 on my desktop to give it a try for a change and every since installing it my boot up times have increased to 4m 50s. Ive been on the Ubuntu forums and I am told its these snaps that are responsible but even after disabling them its dead slow on boot up. But it seems there are a lot who are not keen on the new snaps.n Looks like I am switching back to Mint.

[Portreve]

I recently replaced Mint with Ubuntu 19.10 on my desktop to give it a try for a change and every since installing it my boot up times have increased to 4m 50s. Ive been on the Ubuntu forums and I am told its these snaps that are responsible but even after disabling them its dead slow on boot up. But it seems there are a lot who are not keen on the new snaps.n Looks like I am switching back to Mint.

I've recently been forced as a practical matter to stop using LM on my MBP due to issues with WiFi. As it happens, I'm running Ubuntu 19.10 and I have no issues whatsoever with bootup times. There was a little bit of a learning process for me vis a vis getting my printer installed such that I didn't get HPLIP Toolbox errors all the time, but with all of the little niggling bits behind me, I've settled in nicely there. I am running no Snap-distributed programs, so whether that could be a contributing factor I simply cannot say.

[trajamohan]

This is short introduction to Flatpak(same to other similar implementations like Snappy, AppImage, etc)

http://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/basic-concepts.html

Nothing to get feared when we know the underlying concepts, so research/read more about the underlying concept

[DAMIEN1307]

trajamohan said,

Nothing to get feared when we know the underlying concepts, so research/read more about the underlying concept

Be afraid...OK so the article tells you what they are supposed to do and how they are supposed to behave.

Clem is the person in charge of the LM project, These are his thoughts of snaps/flatpaks etc. and the endless possibilities of where the developers of snaps/flatpaks just might be going with this.

you say "nothing to get feared" ??? i would start being very afraid...read Clems blog below, scroll down to the heading of Snaps and start reading the indepth thinking about this issue, not just what the makers of flats or snaps would have you think with a very superficial article designed for the "short attention span theatre"...DAMIEN

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

[zpangwin]

I just find this problematic, causing fragmentation, and just all around a bad idea.

I am of a similar opinion. The snap apps that I've installed generally seem to need less "external dependencies" but as a consequence take up more space... this is pretty much just static vs dynamic linking but at the user-level instead of the developer-level. I can see the short-term benefit of "just getting it to work" and the "containerized" benefit (similar to having separate wine prefixes) but ultimately i think the best option is to address the problem further upstream and work on efforts to reduce existing and avoid further fragmentation. Plus, for me at least the "containerized" way of thinking doesn't hold out when pitted against "I want timely security updates".

I'm still researching but it also appears that all the excessive /dev/loop crap I'm seeing in output from various commands such as fdisk -l, blkid, systemd-analyze blame appear to be related to snap and if I can confirm that I'm honestly tempted to just do a wipe and reinstall (not solely because of snap but it's the proverbial hair on the camel's back, plus who doesn't like a nice clean new system install after awhile).

That said, I certainly wouldn't mind seeing something to unify the various package managers across all the various platforms. I'm not speaking to the technically difficult in accomplishing this; I am aware that it would be very very insanely massive effort. But from user (and app developer and documentation-writer) perspectives, it would be great to be able to introduce new users to one version of CLI package management across at least the big three silos (Debian/Ubuntu/Mint, RHEL/Fedora, Arch/Manjaro) and their derivatives instead of each having their own slightly different syntax (e.g. sudo apt install / sudo dnf install / sudo pacman -Sy )

UPDATE:
I am happy to report that after running

Code: Select all

sudo apt purge snapd

, I no longer see all that excess garbage "loop" entries added by snapd mounts whenever I run blkid, fdisk -l, etc. For me, if the security and bandwidth and design implications weren't enough then it's worth removing snap purely to get rid of all the mount point pollution it generates.

[NuBz]

justa saw this:

https://itsfoss.com/ubuntu-snap-replaces-apt-blueprint/

haven't even read it yet - on the net - yet neyt. heh heh heh

I wouldn't think that apt would be going anywhere soon, but if Snaps/Flatpak/Appimage take over, pretty soon we will have no choice but to use them. If a developer can check the box for distribution by just providing one of these, why would they even bother having a PPA? Why would the distribution bother including that software package in their official repos, if users can just get a snap?

It's a downhill slide towards mediocrity, where in the end we will all be forced to use this garbage whether we want to or not

How will we have no choice?
This is just a silly thing to say.
This isn't windows and I doubt that the option to build things on ones own isn't going away.

[Portreve]

justa saw this:

https://itsfoss.com/ubuntu-snap-replaces-apt-blueprint/

haven't even read it yet - on the net - yet neyt. heh heh heh

I wouldn't think that apt would be going anywhere soon, but if Snaps/Flatpak/Appimage take over, pretty soon we will have no choice but to use them. If a developer can check the box for distribution by just providing one of these, why would they even bother having a PPA? Why would the distribution bother including that software package in their official repos, if users can just get a snap?

It's a downhill slide towards mediocrity, where in the end we will all be forced to use this garbage whether we want to or not

How will we have no choice?
This is just a silly thing to say.
This isn't windows and I doubt that the option to build things on ones own isn't going away.

I see where mattlach and others are coming from. I guess the question is, then: will prepackaged software delivery systems encourage distros to become lazy? Because if they all did become lazy, then it's true we'd have little choice, short of doing our own compiling of every program we wanted to install.

[NuBz]

I wouldn't think that apt would be going anywhere soon, but if Snaps/Flatpak/Appimage take over, pretty soon we will have no choice but to use them. If a developer can check the box for distribution by just providing one of these, why would they even bother having a PPA? Why would the distribution bother including that software package in their official repos, if users can just get a snap?

It's a downhill slide towards mediocrity, where in the end we will all be forced to use this garbage whether we want to or not

How will we have no choice?
This is just a silly thing to say.
This isn't windows and I doubt that the option to build things on ones own isn't going away.

I see where mattlach and others are coming from. I guess the question is, then: will prepackaged software delivery systems encourage distros to become lazy? Because if they all did become lazy, then it's true we'd have little choice, short of doing our own compiling of every program we wanted to install.

Alright I might have missed the point and I agree.
But see I am stubborn and I would take the time to build my own stuff.
I actually do that now with some things and it isn't overly complicated unless you get into doing kernels from scratch.
But can be time consuming.

[Hoser Rob]

Can someone please comment on why we now have snaps (or flatpak or Appimage) in Linux?

Traditional package managers are perfect (especially Apt) ....

2nd sentence and you already revealed how much you have to learn. The reason for snaps etc in the first is the awful state of packaging in Linux in general.

[Pjotr]

The reason for snaps etc in the first is the awful state of packaging in Linux in general.

I disagree. The packaging in Ubuntu/Mint is generally fine, even in the community-maintained Universe repo. Applications usually install well and work well.

The main reason for Snaps / Flatpaks etc., is that some people want the latest version of some application, which they can't get from the official repo's in a fixed release like Ubuntu/Mint:
https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.c ... 2.html#ID3
(item 3 )

[Portreve]

About the only time I use one of these alternative delivery mechanisms is if there's a substantially newer version of some program and there's a legitimate need to use that over the one in the repos. Right now I have the latest version of GIMP installed that way. In times past, I've had Scribus and Audacity installed like that.

I do wish Debian/Ubuntu would get the newer 2.10.x branch into the repos because I'm really not so much a fan of bypassing the whole distro repo process.

[MrEen]

I do wish Debian/Ubuntu would get the newer 2.10.x branch into the repos because I'm really not so much a fan of bypassing the whole distro repo process.

Every version of Ubuntu AFTER Bionic has 2.10, so Mint 20 will have 2.10.

[vidtek]

I too struggle with snaps.
There is one particular programme I like Leafpad--a simple and elegant text editor. It has now been removed from the repositories no idea why, but it is gone.
I tried with 3 Ubuntu flavoured distros, Mint and Ubuntu Studio and Kubuntu.
They seemed to install with snaps, but leafpad just does not work. One of the distors -- I think it was Studio -- did sort of work but only for the one user that installed it, not even for root.

In the end I found a .deb file and that works well.....but for how many more months will I still be able to get it?

Snaps just suck for the end user. They seem great for developers though......

Just my 2 bob's worth. Tony.