
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it - uncertainquark
https://personal.jatan.space/2020/09/05/ubuntu-snap-obsession-has-snapped-me-off-of-it/
======
jrockway
Snap was neat when I first discovered it. I could get some bleeding-edge
dependencies automatically delivered to my machine, without building it from
source or having to manually update it. Wonderful! But the problem is: it's
the slowest thing in the world. I've complained about this on HN before, but
it can be hundreds of milliseconds from when you type a command to when the
actual application starts running -- the intermediate time is being consumed
by Snap doing god knows what. The slowness is a dealbreaker for me. My disk
can read 500,000 4k blocks per second. My RAM can do 3400M transactions per
second. I have 32 CPU cores. How is loading some bytes into RAM and telling
the CPU to start executing instructions something that can take more than a
few microseconds!? Easy: run that app with Snap!

I blew up my Ubuntu install and switched back to Debian. I haven't missed
Ubuntu at all. I am resigned to the fact that if I care about a particular
piece of software because it's the reason I use a computer (go, Emacs, Node,
etc.) then I just have to maintain it myself. There simply isn't a good way
right now. And you know what? It's fine. Everything is configured exactly the
way I like, and it will never change unless I change it.

~~~
WD-42
> I care about a particular piece of software because it's the reason I use a
> computer (go, Emacs, Node, etc.) then I just have to maintain it myself.
> There simply isn't a good way right now.

Don’t do this to yourself! Debian is not going to give you bleeding edge. But
there are plenty of distros that can. Despite being a meme, Arch Linux is one
of the best distros available, and has been for years. Node, golang, are
usually updated within hours of upstream, while the core system remains
stable. If you’re looking for something more modern, Solus has been gaining
popularity and also has relatively up to date packages. Debian is great for
servers.

~~~
kelchm
Manjaro is a really great option too, if you want something Arch flavored
that’s a bit more user friendly.

~~~
SweetestRug
Definitely this. Manjaro is out-of-the-box ready, but based on Arch. Manjaro
stable is also two more testing steps away from Arch, so the packages are less
likely to cause issues. And there are four sources for software: Manjaro
repos, the AUR, flatpacks, and snaps. I have never been in a situation where I
could not install the latest software via one of those routes. I ran Debian
for years and often ran into situations where new software was just not
installable due to library incompatibility, etc. Manjaro feels like a Swiss
Army knife in comparison.

~~~
narwally
And with all the options you'll almost never have to rely on snaps.

------
jacquesm
Snap sucks. The way open source is straying further and further from its
principles is highly annoying. The whole idea that you'd need a container like
environment to install an application on a Unix system is very far from where
we should be. What's the point of dynamic linking if we then end up shipping
half an OS with an application just to get around dependency hell? Might as
well ship a pre-linked binary that just does system calls.

And it's yet another way to do an end run around repositories, instead you
will sooner or later get an app-store like environment that can be controlled
by some entity. These large companies should stop fucking around with Linux,
it was fine the way it was. Just fix the bugs and leave the rest to the
application developers.

~~~
zorked
Isn't the sandboxing a good idea though? It feels that Linux got caught in the
past and is actually one of the least secure OSes out there, and what keeps it
safe is just its small desktop market share.

Disclaimer: I never used snap and don't use Ubuntu.

~~~
1_player
Flatpak gives you a sandbox, and has basically skirted around any shortcoming
of Snap (faster, open, extensible, adopted by every other distro, doesn't
pollute /proc/mounts)

~~~
DoctorNick
Flatpak's sandboxing is an absolute joke and entirely voluntary.

~~~
1_player
> is an absolute joke

Please elaborate.

> entirely voluntary

Fedora Silverblue would like to disagree. And in any case all parties know
it's still in flux, but the stable parts are stable in my experience. I would
not want something like Snap or otherwise immature forced down my throat.

~~~
genghizkhan
Entirely voluntary in the sense that flatpak enforces sandboxes which the
application tells it to enforce. If the app asks for full system access
flatpak doesn't deny that. It kind of destroys the purpose of a system built
to run third-party code. If I download a malicious app from flathub or some
other repo which asks for full system access flatpak doesn't do anything in
the name of security.

Note: I'm not making a value judgement about flatpak's sandboxing, merely
describing it to the best of my knowledge.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Enforcing permissions and auditing third party code are two different things.
The point of app permissions is that when you know an app should never do
something, you constrain it from ever doing that. Then if it has a security
vulnerability, it's limited in the damage from the resulting compromise.

The people configuring the sandbox should be packagers that you trust. The
upstream developers might provide some recommendations to the packagers, but
if it's obvious that an application shouldn't need a permission, it shouldn't
have it.

But permissions can't save you from an actually malicious app. Constrain it
from accessing the camera and it will still be using your device to host
pornography. Constrain it from accessing the filesystem and it will still run
up your electric bill mining bitcoin. You either need to trust the developer
or you need to get the app through someone you trust to have audited it for
you.

------
wazoox
I switched to Pop_OS precisely because it doesn't support snaps. Snap is
arguably half-free : the server isn't free at all, no working free
implementation exists. Therefore I don't want any snaps. Flatpak is OK.

This is all part of a sneaky attempt to get free software in control:
Microsoft grabbing more and more power in the Linux Foundation, RMS ousted
from the FSF, GitHub becoming more and more central as a default go-to-hosting
(beware of Github!)...

All of these are part of a dangerous trend of appropriation and control by
well-known monopolists. Don't fall for it. The GAFAM aren't nice guys.

~~~
ancarda
>beware of Github!

I've been slowly moving off GitHub to SourceHut, and it's been a breath of
fresh air knowing that not only is all the software free (so you can self
host) but the maintainer (Drew DeVault) is also quite committed to keeping it
that way. I feel like I'm in safe hands.

Thankfully it's not yet another GitHub clone, but built around git+email -- so
it's far more decentralized by nature.

[https://sourcehut.org/](https://sourcehut.org/)

------
loopz
Mint steers away from snap by default. I like the approach, and Mint 20 Xfce
has been an absolute DREAM to install from scratch. Sane basic install, auto-
upgrades that lets you choose, possibility to restore OS to previous snapshots
and good polish overall. Intuitive and lean interface that lets you mute all
notifications.

Currently playing Elders Scrolls Online with Lutris (sorry for the internet
downtime, was my first character creation ;). Also playing with minikube and
docker to sharpen up some knowledge. All the modern toys easily within reach,
making this another year of linux desktop use, only happier with a new nice
clean install of a modern solution that mostly works very well. 1 search
resolved audio issue for good, everything else was provided from OS.

Something like snap breaks too much of all these community-efforts, that I can
only reject it vehemently.

~~~
inetknght
> _Sane basic install_

I think Mint's installation is too dumbed down tbqh. But, that said, I use
Mint on all of the computers that I don't want to spend time to personalize.

~~~
drdeadringer
I use Linux Mint on all of my home computers. I personalize all of them to my
needs and I do not find it hard or difficult or time-consuming. I find the
installation process straight forward.

Perhaps however you have more intense personal customization needs than I.

~~~
loopz
Just a hunch, but he probably means disk partitioning, allocating a partition
for swap and other such stuff you can customize most easily during
installation. It's nice to have excellent options for that, but I seriously
don't have that as a deep need right now personally.

------
CarelessExpert
Well, I'll be that guy: I don't get all the complaining about snaps.

First, I use the command line for package installation and couldn't care less
if the store experience is suboptimal.

Second, I use Firefox and anything that discourages people from feeding the
Chrome monopoly, frankly, that sounds like a good thing to me.

Third, for some desktop apps I _want_ auto updates. Having an option for some
software to be on the latest is pretty slick and previously could only be
solved with PPAs, which had their own problems (maintainer headaches,
dependency issues, etc).

Would I want them on a server? No.

As a desktop (well, laptop) user, do I want all my software deployed with
snaps and auto updating willy-nilly? Also no.

But as a desktop user, I appreciate that I have the choice.

And by lowering the barrier for maintainers who no longer have to worry about
multiple distro versions, dependencies, etc, it means I get _more_ software
options. Sounds good to me!

~~~
danielhua
You have a good point about making the desktop experience more painless and
idiot-proof.

The real problem for me though is that snaps are _slow_ as hell. I mean like
taking 4-5+ seconds to open on a box with an SSD, i7, and 64GB of RAM. That's
unacceptable.

The icing on the cake for me is that even through the command line as you
mention apt now seems to be giving me snaps instead of debs for a great deal
of programs, which affects much more than the store experience. And, also,
regarding said store experience: if stuff like Spotify takes 5+ seconds to
open I doubt a user coming from Windows giving Linux a try is going to want to
stick around long...it would be great if there was just a better solution.

~~~
CarelessExpert
> The real problem for me though is that snaps are slow as hell. I mean like
> taking 4-5+ seconds to open on a box with an SSD, i7, and 64GB of RAM.
> That's unacceptable.

Spotify is specifically one of the snaps I use and frankly, I noticed it
seemed to start a little slow but just assumed that was because of Electron or
something. I literally don't care and never thought anything of it. I run it,
it starts, and then I don't close it.

Besides, if Spotify users reject it, they can always switch to PPA or
something else. It's their choice.

> apt now seems to be giving me snaps instead of debs for a great deal of
> programs,

"a great deal"? I've seen two mentioned, chromium and lxd. Where else have you
encountered this where Debian has a package available from a maintainer but a
snap shim is used instead?

Apt will also tell you a snap is available if there's no deb but that's just
useful information.

~~~
jula432vdf
> if Spotify users reject it, they can always switch to PPA or something else

Some apps, like Chromium have no alternative ppas available.

I installed KDE Neon 20.04 and when I discovered that Chromium was being
switchted to snap, I searched for any current *.deb out there. NO proper ppas,
just found some outdated Chromium 1-3 versions behind the current version.

If it wasn't for the KDE from Neon, I would have switched of distro in the
hour. I switched to Chrome instead.

Got some old compiled Chromium just to have the thing available (I can just
run it when I need it, it takes maybe 1/4 of sec to start).

Just hope Canonical doesn't try its snap thing in more critical packages or
(FAR) worst, in the LTS server versions.

I would be getting popcorn to see the show when half the Internet start to
ditch the LTS overnight over some half-propietary half-baked software being
put in charge of its otherwise perfectly GPLed infrastructures.

~~~
jcastro
Right, this is why Canonical moved Chromium to snaps - It's a ton of effort
building Chromium for 20.04, 18.04, and all the intermediate releases every
few weeks for a package that's in universe.

It's cheaper/easier for them to publish one version across all of Ubuntu.

------
guiambros
Just remove snap [1] and move on with your life. That's the very first thing I
do in every single Ubuntu installation for years (including 20.04), and never
had any problem.

At least in my case I don't need / don't want any kind of app store in my
system (but I understand this is not for everyone; less technical users may
not be inclined to installing .deb packages using command line).

And I still follow this thread [2], hoping one day they will clean up the
$HOME/snap directory and fix the performance so gnome-calculator doesn't take
several seconds to load, but I'm keeping my hopes low.

[1] [https://www.kevin-custer.com/blog/disabling-snaps-in-
ubuntu-...](https://www.kevin-custer.com/blog/disabling-snaps-in-
ubuntu-20-04/)

[2]
[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snapd/+bug/1575053](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snapd/+bug/1575053)

~~~
timbit42
So how do you install Chromium without their snap? Is installing non-snap
Chromium as easy as installing non-snap packages in their repo? If not, I'd
rather use Linux Mint.

~~~
guiambros
The bad decision here is not " _Ubuntu 's snap obsession_" as OP claims, but
the decision by the Chromium team to piggyback on a half-baked packaging
mechanism, instead of simply distributing .deb packages (like the official
Chrome).

Thankfully there are plenty of fixes available. Here's one of them [1]:

    
    
      sudo add-apt-repository ppa:saiarcot895/chromium-beta
      sudo apt update
      sudo apt install chromium-browser
    
    

[1]
[https://launchpad.net/~saiarcot895/+archive/ubuntu/chromium-...](https://launchpad.net/~saiarcot895/+archive/ubuntu/chromium-
beta)

~~~
ShorsHammer
> Thankfully there are plenty of fixes available. Here's one of them

Sounds wonderful, along with the accrued online karma points. As great as one
person is, they will never be the upstream source.

Here's my ppa also, I have a proven track record of updating browsers with
security hotfixes hours before anyone else, but on the downside I really don't
secure my system at all and leave my laptop unattended in Starbucks, please
subscribe:

    
    
        sudo add-apt-repository ppa:TOTALLYNOTMALWARE/chromium-beta
        sudo apt update
        sudo apt install chromium-browser

~~~
guiambros
Of course you should pick the poison that matches your risk level. I agree
that installing random ppas brings all sorts of risks, just like any other 3P
code you install - pip/gem/npm-installed libraries, chrome extensions, etc.
All these are real attack vectors.

My original point was that replacing your OS because you can't install
Chromium seems ludicrous to me, when you can easily find alternatives.

Here's a few better options:

1) Use official packages from debian:
[https://askubuntu.com/a/1206153/161744](https://askubuntu.com/a/1206153/161744)

2) Use Pop!OS repositories (assuming you trust System76 folks):

    
    
      sudo add-apt-repository ppa:system76/pop
    

3) Compile Chromium from source [https://www.chromium.org/developers/how-
tos/get-the-code](https://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/get-the-code)

------
mikorym
If I may dare stereotype, I think that maybe OP is approaching this from the
perspective that operating systems such as macOS or Windows have instilled in
us.

I use Ubuntu 20.04 just as I have used 18.04 and 16.04, and the presence or
absence of snap doesn't alter the experience for me. GNU/Linux based operating
systems will always have a sort of idiosyncrasy inherent to it that stems from
the fact that it's really isn't built on fads, and fads are always what would
detract from it. Hence, Snap should be used by those who like it, and history
will tell us whether it were a fad or not.

I think Ubuntu in general tries to appeal to more of the masses and would try
to use things to draw people to it. Nothing wrong with that; you could always
use Arch.

But please don't regard a feature that really isn't forced on you by GNU/Linux
in general as a reason to, eh, be _snapped off it_. I use Xubuntu 20.04 and
have used Snap here and there and for the most part I couldn't be bothered by
whether it works well or not. I do think the topic of whether Snap makes
sense, whether it's too slow, etc., is a valid topic to discuss, but I don't
see how it should be an argument for or against Ubuntu.

In any case, being for or against something, when really it's only your own
business whether you use it or not, does always have a sort of political tinge
reminiscent of the aforementioned proprietary operating systems.

~~~
LucidLynx
I don't know why but Ubuntu (and Canonical) have always been the black-sheep
of the FOSS "community"...

I am 100% agree with you.

Also, people complain on other OS that they can't remove or replace an
existing software... Here, they can. But they prefer to move to another distro
just because of this. I don't understand this world anymore... :(

~~~
mixmastamyk
The problem is their engineering is not very good. Not horrible, but just not
great either. And they almost never respond to criticism, so canonical
projects are unable to improve significantly, post debut.

This is ultimately why their projects are doomed to a 95% failure rate.

------
lordgroff
I wonder if snaps will actually survive. The history of Ubuntu specific
innovations seems to be that they invariably fail. But it's never not for the
lack of trying, so it only makes sense that Ubuntu is trying to push this on
the users hard.

I do run 20.04, and one of the first things I did was disable the snap store
and enable flatpaks.

~~~
scaryclam
Do you have a link to a tutorial on doing that? If not, no worries, I'm sure I
can find one. I was going to install Ubuntu for my Dad as he's tired of
Windows and seriously don't want to have to do tech support every other week
because a third party decided it was upgrade time and he doesn't know why
something changed. That's the sort of WTF he's sick of Windows for :( Ubuntu
seem to be getting more and more user hostile as they go.

~~~
lordgroff
Sure:

[https://www.kevin-custer.com/blog/disabling-snaps-in-
ubuntu-...](https://www.kevin-custer.com/blog/disabling-snaps-in-
ubuntu-20-04/)

~~~
tsjq
thanks . that's helpful

------
3np
Peak Ubuntu was 18.04 LTS :(

But, maybe it's not a bad thing - consider that this maps closely to the app
store experiences on both Windows and OS X today. Perhaps it's a great
decision for the _future_ users of Ubuntu but not for the _current_ users of
Ubuntu. It could turn out beneficial for both Ubuntu and Debian, as I imagine
many will switch over. And as much as I'm married to my current X11, it's
pretty cool to see them push Wayland through.

Ubuntu is not for me anymore, but I still appreciate what they have done and
are still doing for Linux, regardless of what I think of their product and
market decisions.

Looks like Mint/MATE is the new Ubuntu for desktop and Debian has always been
for server?

~~~
stOneskull
MX Linux is good

~~~
3np
Yeah, but given the difference in ideology and stance on most notably systemd,
I don't think it can be called "a new Ubuntu" :)

------
tvaughan
Snaps aren't supported inside Linux containers. Chromium headless is now snap-
only, therefore Ubuntu can't be used to run our frontend tests. Switched to
Fedora 32 almost immediately. Didn't even bother to search for a workaround.

------
northrup
I LOATHE this direction that Canonical is taking as SNAP is such a steaming
pile of shit and it’s being shoved down everyone’s throats. It’s going to be
the thing that makes me abandon Ubuntu. It was a neat idea in concept, it’s
been horribly executed. If I wanted what you’re trying to push Canonical I’d
just rub Qubes OS. Please give SNAP the quick death it needs and deserves!

~~~
dheera
Same thing they did with Unity they keep shoving at everyone. I still hate
that stuff. I don't need my Linux system to be Mac-like. I'd be using a Mac if
I liked Macs.

~~~
Avamander
Unity was actually rather good though. Snap... has a ton of problems that
makes it very much not so.

~~~
mixmastamyk
There were several misdesigns in it that they would not allow the option to
change. That and other missteps always doom their projects.

------
BiteCode_dev
I run ubuntu 20.04 and don't have one single snap installed.

If you can switch distro, surely you have the skill to just ignore snaps and
use ubuntu like a regular debian system. It required zero effort on my part at
least.

~~~
kilburn
This comment seems very condescending and doesn't bring anything to the
conversation. There's many people in this thread stating that:

1\. Ubuntu is replacing "standard" apt packages with packages apt packages
that just install the snap version.

2\. Many snap packages have bugs that are caused by the snap setup itself.

Thus, it is _impossible_ for these users to "just ignore snaps and use ubuntu
like a regular debian system".

~~~
BiteCode_dev
Just use ubuntu like you did before snaps. No change to make. It works as
before. All the debs are still here. The ppa. The apt.

Let others figure out the snap debacle.

~~~
SahAssar
The chromium apt package isn't there, which is one often pointed to example.

------
jto1218
Linux Mint 20, which is based on Ubuntu 20.04, ships without any snaps or
snapd, and has some kind of mechanism to prevent snapd from being installed by
apt. Might be a good option for folks that like Ubuntu but want to avoid the
snap fiasco.

~~~
Shared404
Pop!_OS also avoids snap, opting for flatpak support instead.

------
jug
I’m still waiting to experience the issues snaps are even trying to solve.
It’s like having a worse experience for reasons I myself don’t even see.

My issues with snaps are part the ugly and clearly “non-native” startup time,
and part that many lack in system integration. For example sometimes their
font rendering is uglier or the open file dialogs look bad or present me with
the confusing “snap worldview”. Bah.

Auto updating? Who cares. Package managers makes it super easy to keep systems
fresh. I heard many distros even do it themselves or come with one click
interfaces for it...

------
dorfsmay
The only reason I have been using Ubuntu is because it was the distro with the
most installable software available.

I'm ok with default GNOME, I'm beyond cool desktop, I just want something that
works. On the other hand I need to be able to install a large selection of
software easily, and recent-ish versions of them (hence why not Debian). I
also can't have things that upgrade themselves on their own schedule (kids in
school with capped bandwidth).

Having done it myself in the past, I understand how taxing creating official
.deb and .rpm is for the developers, and how difficult dependencies issues
are. Given how Ubuntu is digging itself into the snap hole, what's the best
solution here?

Why pick Flatpack vs Appimage? Reading about it they both seem to have pros
and cons.

I see a lots of PopOS proponents here, but found that they don't produce that
many .deb packages, and the choice will dwindle as Ubuntu's moving more and
more stuff to snap. It also was a lot of work to un-customize (going back to a
vanilla GNOME).

I'd honestly be happy with even Fedora, if I could easily install most OSS.

~~~
Delk
Out of general interest, which kinds of OSS have you come across that aren't
packaged for Fedora?

I'm sure there are obviously some; anything proprietary or with patent
encumbrance requires using rpmfusion or something, and that may be a step
further than enabling multiverse. Some stuff just might not be packaged.
Ubuntu and Debian repositories are also exceptionally broad.

But I can't, right off the top of my head, think of that much of OSS that I
couldn't install either from the official repos or rpmfusion.

Maybe I've just forgotten about any loops I had to jump through, but I've been
using Fedora for about six years now (after moving from Ubuntu), and I've
found that the repos are much richer than I thought they were. But maybe I
just haven't run into the holes that you have found.

There are some things I preferred about Ubuntu, but generally things have been
working surprisingly well for me.

~~~
dorfsmay
Last time I had checked, the issue were with software with non-free codec and
smaller more niche software, but checking rpm repositories there isn't a
software I'm missing yet.

I'm definitely going to have another look at Fedora and OpenSuse for that
matter (specifically their rolling version for small single service servers).

Thanks for your comment.

------
nickysielicki
When Ubuntu killed Mir and Upstart and adopted Wayland/Gnome and systemd, they
really invested into a whole competing desktop ecosystem (freedesktop) and it
was shortsighted of them to not see that they would not be able to just take
bits and pieces. They were never going to compete with flatpak (aka xdg-
portals, from freedesktop).

My point is that this has been in the making for _years_ now. They didn't fail
to deliver a good product, snaps just should have died when the rest of the
Ubuntu differentiation on the desktop did.

It's frustrating because for most people, trying linux on the desktop means
trying Ubuntu. Freedesktop has succeeded in making a cohesive desktop
environment atop linux that is as polished as commercial offerings, but Ubuntu
doesn't make that accessible.

My advice to anyone who hasn't tried linux on the desktop lately: try Fedora
or Debian on a live CD. I think you'll be impressed, _especially_ if you're
coming from Ubuntu. Unadulterated gnome3 is a breath of fresh air.

------
rlpb
Remember that snaps solve the problem of third parties wanting to ship
software directly to users.

If you don't want to consume such software, then you don't need to use snaps,
and don't need to care that Ubuntu 20.04 supports snaps. The system works
perfectly well without them. Snaps aren't being "forced". If you insist on
using curl piped to sh to install third party software, you can still do that,
or use any other third party mechanism in between.

Too often snap critics conflate the installation of the third party software
use case with the distribution itself. Ubuntu 20.04 itself is based on debs,
not snaps, and the distribution itself continues to work using apt as always.
Claiming that installing another distribution to "solve" this nonexistent
problem is disingenuous.

~~~
oefrha
Except they’re pushing _first party, sometimes core software_ to snaps. TFA
lists Ubuntu Software Center as a victim first and foremost, makes me wonder
(guideline-breakingly) if you read TFA.

Now, I don’t use Ubuntu Desktop, but even in server space, lxd (again, first
party) has been pushed to snap, with the deb package being a mere shim.

~~~
rlpb
The Snap Store is a Snap, yes. That's surely entirely unsurprising?

~~~
oefrha
It is if you have zero interest in snaps and just want to install good old
debs with it.

~~~
rlpb
Don't use it then? The apt CLI, GNOME Software and Synaptic are all available
as debs.

~~~
codethief
What do you do if you've been using Chromium as your default browser, though?
(…and are concerned about privacy, so you don't want to install Chrome.) Yes,
as you say elsewhere, Chromium is not the default browser on Ubuntu. But what
do defaults mean, anyway? Ubuntu switches the default music player every other
year, too, and at some point people will just stick to the app they like
better.

I had always been under the impression that distribution defaults are
suggestions for novice users. We've never had a situation before where a
distribution like Ubuntu didn't properly support common alternatives to the
default app.

------
Yuioup
Here is the same article written 4 months ago:

[https://nsonews.com/ubuntu-20-04-lts-snap-obsession-has-
snap...](https://nsonews.com/ubuntu-20-04-lts-snap-obsession-has-snapped-me-
off-of-it/)

Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24383276](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24383276)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/gc7p1t/ubuntu_2004_l...](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/gc7p1t/ubuntu_2004_lts_snap_obsession_has_snapped_me_off/)

------
linuxhansl
That's why I'll stick with Fedora.

It's "pure", modern, and I really like the KDE spin.

The non-pure stuff - when needed - is available through rpmfusion (the non
free repo).

Sure, I'm kind of a "beta tester" for RedHat Linux, but on the flip side
there's nothing commercial in it.

------
michaelhoffman
I've been running Ubuntu 20.04 on WSL2 and haven't had any issues with snap
being pushed on me—mainly because I don't use the Ubuntu store and have
everything installed through apt on the command-line.

~~~
weikju
If you’ve installed Chromium, lxd, (or in prior releases the gnome
calculator), even with apt, you’ve installed snaps. Even without using the
snap store. That’s the sneaky part that bothers a lot of people and makes it
seem like snaps are forced on users.

~~~
Lev1a
In previous releases I wondered why such a small basic program like the Gnome
Calculator would take several seconds to start from the time I clicked the
icon in the "Activities" screen. Then when the whole 20.04 and forced Snap
thing came to my attention I simply uninstalled the snap version and installed
the proper version through apt. Now the program pops up instantly when I start
it.

This single interaction basically turned me off snaps from then on.

------
heavyset_go
I'm not a fan of Snap, in fact I've complained about it on HN before, but it
really isn't that big of a deal. It's a minor annoyance in the grand scheme of
things.

At least for me, it would be a spiteful decision to go to macOS of all
operating systems, where system package managers don't exist, and the only
viable option is a 3rd party Homebrew or Macports repository.

~~~
YetAnotherNick
It's true that builtin package manager doesn't exist for mac, but homebrew has
managed to become one of the best package manager in any os.

~~~
heavyset_go
I have to disagree. Homebrew doesn't even come close to what's been available
in Linux for decades. Whenever I have to use macOS I'm perpetually frustrated
by the state of package management on the OS.

~~~
Hackbraten
Homebrew maintainer here. Care to elaborate? We have lots of happy users but
it’s equally important for me to learn how Homebrew hurts people.

------
dddw
Don't know why Ubuntu keeps pushing it, especially on serverside this is very
undesirable. Also the extra options of flatpak and appimage on desktop are
more than adequate

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
They keep pushing it because it makes it much easier for Canonical employees
to package stuff like Chromium.

~~~
timbit42
So users are less important than their employees? Doesn't sound like sound
business plan.

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
Admittedly my source is the Ubuntu podcast, and it would probably take me
awhile to find the exact quote, but according to the employees, they
previously had one or two employees whose full time job was simply maintaining
the Chromium deb package. Switching to snaps made it much easier and freed
them up to do other things.

I think we should consider snaps like any other framework, be it deb, flatpak,
or even something like Electron: some of them have serious downsides, but
people choose them because it allows them to more easily push a single binary
out to multiple platforms rather than being bogged down in maintaining a
distinct build procedure for Windows/Mac/Deb-based/RPM-based/Arch/Solus/every
other percent-of-a-percent Linux distro.

I don't like snaps either--I much prefer flatpaks. But I don't think it's
constructive to insult Canonical employees for wanting to make their own jobs
easier while they work to provide you a free product.

------
FeatureIncomple
What's the best Ubuntu alternative out there?

I dislike Snap, but I like the stable / out-of-the-box nature of Ubuntu.

I don't like distros where I take a week to setup it the way I like.

~~~
benjaminjackman
So I asked that question a couple months ago and the response that sounded
most like a drop in replacement (and better in a lot of ways) was Pop!_OS.

I haven't had the time to try it out yet ... maybe a good weekend project.
I've been using Ubuntu for over a decade now so it might take some time to
switch over.

~~~
neckardt
I've been slowly switching over all of my desktops and servers from Ubuntu to
Debian.

The only annoying situation I've encountered is having to manually install a
non-free network driver, but once that's done I haven't found a single thing I
miss from Ubuntu.

------
siscia
Kinda hijacking the conversation, but I discovered a great FUSE filesystem to
distribute software over the network.

It allows to have HUGE amount of software available with the trade-off that
the files you are asking for are not in cache, it is slow to retrieve them
(need to retrieve each one of HTTP.)

Would people be interested in such filesystem distributed in the wild?

The /bin directory would be put at the end of your $PATH, as a fallback, you
got the local version, great use the fast one from your SSD, you don't have
that particular software, good, wait a tiny bit and get it over the network if
you didn't store it in cache before.

I would find it useful for development tools like compilers or interpreters,
that it is always quite a mess to install locally.

~~~
ColanR
Better to make your question an Ask HN, or a blog post describing whatever it
is you're talking about and post that on here.

------
MichaelStubbs
I have a similar outlook. I kept complaining and basically the answer comes
down to "if you don't like it, leave" \- so I did. I understand it's not
appropriate for all use cases but Manjaro has been an absolute dream for me so
far.

------
superkuh
All these containerization "solutions" are just the fever symptoms of the
future shock from the extremely rapid rate of features and improvement in the
underlying libraries (glibc, c++?, etc) used by programmers, and the
programmer's tendency to use those fancy new features asap. It makes
compiling, or even running, something written today on the dev environment of
a 5 year old linux distro pretty darn difficult and worse with time.

------
29athrowaway
Users and groups are not enough to secure Linux, especially on a desktop
environment.

Snaps have a permissions system backed by AppArmor and Seccomp that confines
the snap to a sandbox with limited privileges based on a security profile.

You can read about it here:

\-
[https://core.docs.ubuntu.com/en/guides/intro/security#headin...](https://core.docs.ubuntu.com/en/guides/intro/security#heading
--permissions)

\- [https://snapcraft.io/docs/interface-
management](https://snapcraft.io/docs/interface-management)

Flatpak does have a sandbox but in practice, many flatpaks do not use it
securely. You can read about it here:
[https://flatkill.org/](https://flatkill.org/)

AppImage does not seem that security is one of its goals.

So, for the time being I'll keep using snaps. They're a great idea :)

So, tl;dr: Snaps are not only about packaging. They confine software to a
sandbox with limited privileges.

------
systematical
I rarely find myself fixing things in Ubuntu, there is a level of acceptance
though on certain things not always panning out the way I'd want. I've gotten
very good a reading reviews on peripherals I buy to make sure they are
compatible. There is the occasional UI glitch as well. I will probably use a
different O.S. once I move laptops in three years (I buy a new laptop once
every 5 years).

Regarding MacOS. I am using this for the first time at work and I don't know
how you could go from a rich APT ecosystem to a so-so brew ecosystem. And
really fuck the Command Key and all the other weird Mac-isms. I don't see the
value in that over priced hipster operating system, but if thats where your at
home than enjoy your home. Oh and I'm still trying to figure out if Docker is
a comedy or tragedy on Mac.

------
IgorPartola
I will say that half of these complaints are not valid. For example: Snap
store navigation sucks? apt has no navigation at all. Chromium is a snap app?
Compile from scratch or add an alternative apt repo.

The only real complaint I see here is that automatic updates don’t allow you
to control them. That is a real shame but also isn’t inherent in the design of
snaps so could be fixed.

Part of the problem is that making .deb packages is an arcane art. I wish it
wasn’t. And dependency hell of “well this version of the distro comes with
libxxx 1.1 and the other one has 1.0.7 and now I need to build multiple
versions of the package just to make it work for 20.04 and 18.04” does suck.

I do love Debian as a platform and I don’t use snap, but I also use macOS as
my desktop OS and guess how Chrome is packaged and installed there?

~~~
jula432vdf
Snaps are SLOW, chromium, and several other apps I tried, they start
sloooowly.

It is clearly a NO GO Canonical, you can't ship slower apps (that start in 3-5
seconds), that out of snap (or in Windows), start in less than a seconds.

snapped Chromium takes 3-5 seconds in its first start in a 16GB ram, corei 5,
ssd based machine. WHAT?

In the same hardware the .deb Chromium takes maybe half a second to load and
be fully responsive.

The occurs with LOTS of software, and yeah, the start time of an app IS a
thing.

If something takes more than half a second to start, and you know it is A LOT
faster, you end up pissed off,

What have they done with MY hardware and why?

If Canonical start to annoy me with many more packages forced to snap like
chromium, I'll be jumping to whatever distro lets me start MY apps in less
than a second, as it is usual in 2020.

And if this unfinished, unpollished crap starts to show off in Ubuntu server
in its current sorry state, I cannot express how fast I will be ditching LTS
for Debian or anything "not snapped".

You NEED to make this thing to start A LOT FASTER,

and stop making "end user assumptions" about what you _could_ mess up behind
scenes in the system (yeah, you could end stomping actually useful things like
sleeping in notebooks).

~~~
IgorPartola
This seems like a legit problem. Hopefully one that can be easily solved, but
thank you for pointing it out.

------
franciscop
IMHO this was the wrong problem to focus on (from a user perspective) for
Canonical. The latest version is a mutant UI; you never know where the
"Confirm" button in any window will be, some times is on the top-right, some
times on the bottom right, and sometimes somewhere random. And like that for
all of the OS UI buttons. Even the toolbar apps I was using broke.

The last (LTS) great UI experience and where I think Ubuntu peaked was 16.04,
but of course it's not practical to keep running that forever. I've since
moved to using a mac last year and it's been okay. I'd _love_ to go back to
Ubuntu, but not to the thing it has become. Maybe I try another Linux distro,
but I also want something stable.

~~~
sergeykish
Funny how arbitrary peaks are, for me it was 6.06 — LiveCD, Gnome 2, awesome
orange-brown theme and no PulseAudio.

------
fractalf
Ubuntu has gone way to far in this. Reminds me of Microsoft in the 90s. It's
really really sad and totally unbelievable. Why on earth would they make such
terrible choises, I just don't get it. Linux Mint is an awesome alternative,
recommended!

~~~
Medicalidiot
I went from Ubuntu to Fedora because of the recent decisions made by the devs
and the hard push of Snaps. I use Chromium every once in awhile and am amazed
at how long it takes for it to start up; it's almost instantly on every other
distro.

------
avh02
Unrelated to the main thread, but

> "I have a soft spot for it, especially the amazing Unity days."

I found that funny since unity was why I left ubuntu (sort of, cos Linux mint)
until I discovered i3wm and came back without unity's stupidity.

------
hddherman
The handling of the 20.04 release was enough for me to switch my work machine
to Fedora 32. I had been running it on my personal laptop previously, so I
already knew what using it was like. Haven't looked back since.

------
ablekh
Snap can be disabled in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. See the following blog post:
[https://www.kevin-custer.com/blog/disabling-snaps-in-
ubuntu-...](https://www.kevin-custer.com/blog/disabling-snaps-in-ubuntu-20-04)
(discovered this before seeing relevant comment by @guiambros on the 2nd page
:-). Relevant HN discussion at the time can be found here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22972661](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22972661).

------
julianlam
> Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it. I have switched
> to macOS as my daily driver, for many other reasons. I don’t have the time
> to keep fixing things on Linux and be constantly finding ways to work around
> standard OS features that should otherwise just be available and work.

Funny, that's exactly what I thought when I tried a MacBook for the first
time. Everything just seemed off about it and I spent 11 months trying to
tweak it until it was just right, but never got to that point.

30 minutes on Pop!_OS and I'm good to go.

------
hn17
It seems that current LTS relase needs more bug and glitches fixing, quality
is worse than before :-( It's not just snaps, also software center have it's
problems (crashing, glitches/lags in listing and installing apps, driver
detection problems). I used Ubuntu for many years, it's normal that some
relases are more polished that other. Overally great OS and it's "free". Let's
hope they will fix it. I used error reporting functionality and also donated
to Ubuntu.

------
FpUser
I have Ubuntu 20.04 LTS installed on WLS2 (I've added and using desktop/GUI
layer as well) but the first thing I've done after installing original image
from MS is to wipe out any trace of Snap after disabling it. All nice and rosy
but yeah as I am not sure what other shenanigan Ubuntu will come up with in
the future I'll be switching to some other distro. I do not trust Canonical
after such f..up unless they will openly revert the decision and get rid of
that dreaded Snap themselves.

------
sunstone
I thought 20.04 would be the version where I went back to Ubuntu from Mint.
Then along came the Snap stuff and, looks like I'll be keeping Mint for a
while longer.

------
washadjeffmad
They haven't been on my radar since the Amazon Lens integration, but in light
of snap, what does Canonical's near-future goal for Ubuntu Desktop look like?

Also, why snaps?

------
coronadisaster
What I hate most about snaps is that they show up when I use "df -hl" ... but
I don't use Ubuntu anymore so I don't have that problem.

------
GekkePrutser
I agree.. This incessant pushing of snap, and the closed nature of the snap
store are also things I hate. And that practice with chromium is aim to
Microsoft resetting edge as default browser every update. And it is indeed
wasteful.

I'm sure they'll eventually abandon snap just like they did with all their
other attempts at introducing their own stamp on Linux (like upstart, mir).
Just hope it'll be soon.

------
bzb5
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23052108](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23052108)

~~~
jessaustin
TFA:

 _The article has been updated to accommodate changes since the original four
months ago._

------
rcarmo
I honestly don't see the issue here. Snaps may not be perfect, but they are
_optional_.

I use them to install Blender and Godot on my Elementary laptop because it's
simpler to do so than other ways, and (even the isolation is slightly broken
in Blender's case, which requires a legacy flag), it is _super convenient_.

But, again, why complain about an optional thing that benefits many people?

~~~
ayush--s
It's not optional for all software. Eg: Authy only publishes their electron
based app through snap

~~~
johnisgood
Quite a few software does that. I just avoid them at all costs, and boycott
them.

People who keep saying snaps are optional, and so forth are ignoring the
bigger picture here. You know, I am just going to use a Linux distribution
with saner defaults, where I do not have to disable Snap to begin with.

------
yycom
Has Canonical still said nothing about this?

The conclusion is inescapable: they do not care. And that is why we should all
find alternatives.

------
skee0083
Linux is only useful if your time has no value. I use it on my server but
that's about it. Couldn't use it on the desktop. it's just as bad now as it
was back in 2007 when i first tried it. in fact i think it's actually gotten
worse in some aspects. it' definitely slower and more bloated now for sure.

------
amelius
Sadly some vendors of computer hardware have based their offerings on Ubuntu.

For example, NVidia's Jetson platform is based entirely on Ubuntu 18. You
can't run it with other Linux distributions (or you end up with broken stuff
left and right).

Therefore, vendors, please (!) build your products around kernel drivers, not
around Linux distributions.

------
jarym
Once again I live mostly outside of the Ubuntu desktop world except for a few
servers I have running. Dumb question here, but why 'should' a package
management system (I imagine the job of which is predominantly
installation/update/removal of software) impact the load time of a package
once installed?

~~~
rlpb
Snaps are shipped as compressed squashfs images that are dynamically read at
runtime rather than being extracted to your filesystem at install time. The
trade-off is that you win on hard disk usage and installation / revert time,
but the payment is increased startup time.

------
ornel
Forced automatic updates are a dealbreaker for me as I need an OS to run on a
slow satellite connection on a ship with 35 people. I need total control over
updates. I guess Ubuntu is designed for an idealised sort of user that does
not need total control, and that's OK, no Ubuntu for me

------
ed25519FUUU
Can someone offer a good alternative to Ubuntu for a home server?

I tried Debian but was disappointed with the “latest” versions of software I
received on stable.

I do like the apt system and systemd and other features of the latest Ubuntu,
so something that doesn’t fall too far from that tree would be ideal.

Any suggestions for alternatives?

~~~
timbit42
If you don't want a stable server, use testing.

~~~
ed25519FUUU
How stable is testing? I want a stable build with relatively recent packages.
I don’t think they’re exclusive.

------
stakkur
You can remove existing snaps and disable snaps, because Linux. It's fairly
quick and easy:

[https://www.kevin-custer.com/blog/disabling-snaps-in-
ubuntu-...](https://www.kevin-custer.com/blog/disabling-snaps-in-
ubuntu-20-04/)

------
johnisgood
Snap is just goddamn horrible! It goes against the FOSS philosophy in every
way imaginable, seriously.

------
shultays
I tried Ubuntu, again, very recently and had to give up. This was like only
2-3 days of usage. And it is only the stuff I can remember now

I have two monitors, but Ubuntu thought their positions were swapped. I
swapped them back in settings and it looked good and I hit enter to accept "is
it good" pop up. Then I noticed my mouse was on left screen while it registers
the clicks on right. Took me quite a while to revert it back

Firefox was really unresponsive. Was hanging at times and generally felt
slower

This is subjective, but its UX sucks really. I tried to install some apps,
there is like 3 different application managers? None of them was pinned.

Can't even install 7z via application managers. There is one application but
it didn't work for me. Had to use console.

Can't install unrar by default unless you add some repositories. I guess since
it is not free. It is even harder for codes since they are just binaries I
think? And they come with a package that contains a lot of other stuff that
includes chromium? Wth

Tried to figure out what my local ip is, couldn't find it on any user
interface. Opened console typed "ifconfig" and it is not there now. I had to
google which command it was

It decided to do some random updates in the background and stuck I think. It
had apt-get lock, which was blocking me to install applications manually

\--

In my opinion Ubuntu Desktop is not improving, at least for average Joe (and I
am a bit above that). The opposite really.

------
fizixer
If you're a tiling wm user, you might want to try out regolith linux. It's a
i3wm desktop variant of Ubuntu (latest release based on 20.04 LTS) like
Pop!_os, and I just checked, I don't have 'snap' installed.

------
coldtea
> _Users wanting to install Flatpak apps need to revert to using the .deb
> version. It’s not an ideal solution when previous Ubuntu Software releases
> could handle all three formats. In all, the latest Ubuntu Software is a step
> back._

Supporting fewer competing formats (and eventuallu just one) sounds like
progress to me...

> _And that’s another place where snaps don’t shine. They are slow. I hate
> that Chromium’s snap takes more than 10 seconds to load on cold boot on a
> freaking SSD, whereas .deb and Flatpak apps load in 1-2 seconds. Snaps are
> simply not fast enough to be default anything yet._

That said, this sucks. How can this be? I though snap was just some packaging
wrapper format (so one wouldn't expect any difference in loading time) -- is
it more like ELF instead? Or is it some extra overhead like non-shared libs?

~~~
detaro
I'm sure Ubuntu considers it progress when they can push more people to use
their pet project and it's app store nobody can self-host and give less room
to its competitor. But is it progress for the users, for whom access to
software not available as Snap and not in repos became harder? The developers
who hoped supporting one of the competing formats would be enough to reach
most users, and picked for Flatpak for any number of reasons?

~~~
coldtea
> _I 'm sure Ubuntu considers it progress when they can push more people to
> use their pet project and it's app store nobody can self-host and give less
> room to its competitor. But is it progress for the users, for whom access to
> software not available as Snap and not in repos became harder?_

The progress being having a single standard -- then all the software will be
available for that.

Mixing and matching 2-3 different package/distribution formats to get all of
your software because some is available in one and not the other is not ideal,
and doesn't lead to a consistent sytem.

~~~
detaro
If there's anything approaching consensus about the "single standard" then
maybe, but to me it seems like a good chunk of the ecosystem right now wants
Canonicals idea of that to fail, at least in its current form, and instead of
attempting to fix the problems and trying to make the user experience more
consistent across the different options they try to force it.

------
tsjq
what is the main problem this snap thing is looking to address ?

~~~
rlpb
> what is the main problem this snap thing is looking to address ?

Third party software developers wanting to push their latest software releases
directly to users, and for users wanting to install such software.

For users who are happy to use the traditional distribution-curated model,
getting all "feature" software updates when doing a distribution release
upgrade only, snaps are not necessary and you can use Ubuntu 20.04 perfectly
fine, as normal, without using snaps.

~~~
tsjq
thanks, that explains . is it okay if such users get rid of all snap stuff
from their Ubuntu 20.04 installation ? would the Ubuntu continue to work fine
? Browser, terminal, vi, java, python, etc mainly .

~~~
rlpb
Yes - that'll work fine.

As others have pointed out, Chromium is no longer packaged as a deb. You can
use Firefox, or get Chromium from another source. An AppImage is available for
example. I haven't tried it, but it should be functionally equivalent to using
a distribution deb.

Or use Google's Chrome deb, for example.

------
bfrog
Yep, all debian and cent now, no more snap craziness for me

------
hendersoon
I'm not a snap fan either, for the reasons listed in this post-- slow starts
and forced autoupdates.

I do use it for LXD, where it's the only way to stay up to date.

------
LucidLynx
So, people are complaining that distributions _they can modify_ include
something that _they can remove and replace_ by another thing like Flatpak...

Interesting...

------
angry_octet
In the face of advances in security and usability brought about under
iOS/Android/MacOS and yes, Windows S, these complaints are frankly ridiculous.
The days of running applications without confinement, that run with the full
permissions of the user, are gone.

Ubuntu might have been able to make this a smoother process, but they lack the
literal BILLIONS of dollars that has been spent achieving that on other
operating systems.

If you want to be an old greybeard, use apt or build it from source.

~~~
mixmastamyk
> but they lack the literal BILLIONS of dollars that has been spent achieving
> that on other operating systems.

They could have just stepped aside and used one of the alternatives—priceless.

Not to mention it doesn't cost billions to develop a read-only chroot archive,
the building blocks are available to combine. Just have to have the humility
to choose the most elegant design, which already exist.

~~~
angry_octet
Just use the Red Hat tool chain for everything? How does that end up? Subject
to the whims of a few guys. Red Hat itself is better from having to compete.

The use of 'just a chroot' thinking brings all the problems and none of the
gains.

------
KozmoNau7
I'd been happy with KDE Neon for a while, but since the upgrade to the Ubuntu
20.04 base, snap became so annoying that I switched all of my machines to
openSUSE.

Snap is an endless source of frustration. Unless you jump through a bunch of
hoops, apps can't access network mounts, you have the obligatory ~/snap
folder, startup times are atrocious, and I'm seeing a number of weird glitches
especially in Chromium.

Flatpak is marginally better, but has a lot of similar issues.

------
fractalb
I haven't dealt with snaps yet. Isn't there really any way to disable snaps?
Not even an obscure one?

~~~
pmontra
[https://cialu.net/how-to-disable-and-remove-completely-
snaps...](https://cialu.net/how-to-disable-and-remove-completely-snaps-in-
ubuntu-linux/)

------
vffhfhf
I actually like snap.

At the end of the day users like me matter.

I cannot find 1 decent pomodrone app for linux. I now have 2 of those from
snap store.

I could not get that mycroft ai app to run for some reason. One in snap
actually works.

Ya the startup time is noticeable but they work.

For intermediate like me and noob users its awesome.

Edit: also purple task is good to do list maker. So at the end of the day what
ever attracts developer to make cool little app is a win for me.

~~~
saagarjha
It's nice to have as option, but I think the issue is that software that
becomes a snap doesn't stay a normal package anymore.

------
jsilence
Keep the Ubuntu apt package telemetry activated and uninstall Snap. Vote with
the uninstall.

~~~
timbit42
Or vote by leaving for Linux Mint or Debian.

~~~
jsilence
They won't be able to measure this.

------
rubyist5eva
Switched to Debian because of all this useless Ubuntu crap. Never looked back.

------
Animats
Yes. I'm staying with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS for now.

Maybe Mint next.

------
afrojack123
Canonical does not work for free. Open source has turned into a marketing
term. Canonical made Amazon a default install on Ubuntu and now they are
trying to turn the Snap store into something like the Apple or Android store.

------
mohas
That's a no no for Ubuntu, going back to Debian

------
ausjke
I just apt remove --purge snap and life is good

------
Zardoz84
my personal solution : Use Kubuntu and ignore snap stuff and use Firefox
instead of Chrome

------
unixhero
Which distro do you recommend?

------
guest4567890
\- Snap cannot be avoided in Ubuntu. Key parts of UI are or will be delivered
as snaps. \- Snap uses SquashFS, that is optimized for small size, not fast
extract speed. \- Snap share some functionality via other core snaps, but
overall files can be repeated on each snap and include files to run in all
platforms, resulting in more space needed in device. \- The location where
snaps are and key folder locations cannot be changed by user. \- Snap keeps a
unique machine id and unique per snap cookies that are used to collect
statistics and identify same instance, even after remove and reinstall of the
snap. User has not control over that. \- Snap store collects geo-location data
based on IP and install and usage information based on machine id and cookie
ids. \- Snap uses loop devices, a lot of them (all revisions are mounted). UI
tools are being patched to hide them, but gnu tools such as df look messy. \-
Snap daemon and server are closed source. \- Currently old revisions are not
removed. \- Manual remove does not remove snapshots and config unless --purge
is used. \- Cache and config folders as seen by a snap application cannot be
changed or pointed to other locations. \- Users can connect or disconnect
plugs that are already defined in a snap, but cannot add new ones. \- Snap
updates cannot be avoided. \- System misleads users by making it confusing to
know what is deb and what is snap. \- Many snaps do not really work. They
expect something that is different in my machine. I tried rclone snap, ended
up installing it manually. \- Many snaps have old versions of software, people
did them once to have them apper in store and do not maintain them anymore.
Users will be forced to leave away security of deb packages in official repos,
and install things manually on their own. \- Some snaps due to limitations
have limitations in functionality. For example, gimp snap cannot start xsane
anymore. \- I have no doubt that snaps are checked by Ubuntu team for
security, but as user I have no way to check that and there are many snaps
that have both :home and :network interfaces enabled, although :network is not
needed. Especially snaps from "Snapcrafters" are somehow liberal on plugs
combinations they allow. \- As other have notes, snapcraft.io is hard to use
to find things. \- The only winner I think of Chromium browser being a snap is
Google. We are forced to install Google Chrome directly as that is the easiest
alternative that works. Ubuntu could better decided not provide it than make
it a snap. \- I tried Chromium snap and my Gnome mouse cursor does not work
there. I read in some Ubuntu snap forum entry the fixing that (using user
themes) is against the idea of snap running same in all systems. I do not care
about that, I only care they respect my UI theme. \- The snap sandbox is not a
complete sandbox. Snaps still see XWindow data, and other variables and
memory. The main security behind snaps does not come from the sandbox, but
from review of Ubuntu security team. A non-transparent process done by few
people. \- These being said, if I want to run or test some app quickly and not
mess the system, snap is a choice, but forcing it over users without having a
choice, will increase the risks uses have to take to figure out alternative
installs for all cases where snaps do not work for the user needs.

~~~
mixmastamyk
You need to add two newlines to each bullet point or they combine to a single
paragraph.

------
codethief
> RMS ousted from the FSF

Wtf. Looks like I must have been living under a rock! What happened?

~~~
im3w1l
He was politically outspoken, like he has always been. But being outspoken is
not acceptable in modern times.

He said it was likely that some women of Epstein's _presented_ as entirely
willing to Marvin Minsky. This was twisted by the press into him saying they
_were_ entirely willing.

For this he was ousted.

~~~
rrss
also for the bit on the CSAIL email discussion where he objected to the use of
the term "sexual assault" when referring to statutory rape, the other bit on
the CSAIL email discussion where he was questioning whether statutory rape
actually counts as rape, and mostly for the new publicity that everything else
objectionable he's been doing and saying for the last several decades received
(e.g. his stated views that laws against child pornography are censorship,
that pedophilia, necrophilia, incest are actually fine (IIRC he revised his
view on pedophilia a few days prior to resigning), his MIT office sign reading
"knight for justice and hot ladies").

~~~
literallycancer
Statutory rape is not the same thing as rape, that's the whole point of having
a separate term for it.

If you look outside the Anglo bubble, you'll discover that sexual relations
between teenagers of various ages are not uncommon at all.

~~~
RandoHolmes
right. It blows my mind that anyone who considers themselves intelligent would
argue that statutory rape is rape.

Statutory rape _LITERALLY_ means " _consensual_ sex with someone below the age
of consent". Because if the sex was non-consensual, it's called rape
regardless of age.

RMS's biggest problem is that he was technically correct, but surrounded by a
society of idiots.

~~~
devenblake
Your idea of statutory rape not being rape fails at the definition you
specified for the former term. Someone below the age of consent has been
deemed by the law to be unable to make an informed decision about their body -
which is true in all cases; in cases where that may not necessarily be true,
the child would be smart enough to realize the act they're engaging in is
unhealthy if not for their development then for their partner. Sexual
relations with someone who cannot consent is rape. This doesn't include the
fact that a large age discrepancy between two parties engaging in sexual
relations will generally lead to an inequality in power, and sexual relations
between two inequal parties in that way may not be rape but certainly isn't
"good sex".

Many states have "Romeo and Juliet" laws, which decriminalize sexual relations
between people under the age of consent as long as they're similarly aged,
solving the biggest issue most people have with the idea of statutory rape
("what if children rape each other?").

I use the term "sexual relations" because the act of sex necessitates consent.
And although sexual relations with children may be uncommon outside of the
"Anglo bubble", they still harm the child whether via physical or mental
trauma.

~~~
RandoHolmes
Lets be clear here. When you say child you're referring to teenagers, not
prepubescent children.

The question is whether or not a 15 or 16 year old can consent to non-harmful
sex, and the answer is obviously yes. At that point they are sexual creatures
with their own urges. two 16 year olds having sex is not harmful in any
meaningful way, many many people start having sex at 16 (or younger) and go on
to be just fine.

At this point, as far as I'm concerned, it's been clearly established that
young people under the age of consent _CAN_ actually consent to sex.

Statutory Rape is not about consent, it's about manipulation. Due to the
differences in life experience between a 16 year old and a 20 year old, the 20
year old can manipulate the 16 year old to give that consent. This does not
imply that the sex between them is implicitly harmful to the 16 year old, just
that it's immoral for a 20 year old to do this sort of manipulation.

It's also clear that a 20 year old can rape a 16 year old. Actually rape. And
they'll be charged with rape, regardless of the age of consent. This is
because, by definition, with statutory rape the 16 year old DID consent.

And one last piece of evidence to show clearly that you are wrong here.

It's possible for 2 25 year olds to have sex and statutory rape charges be
brought. How? Because one of them is mentally handicapped.

Because Statutory Rape is not specifically about the age of consent, or giving
consent. It's about the coercion of someone who is not considered mentally
capable of protecting themselves from said coercion. It's about the morality,
not about any sort of inherent harm of the sex itself.

And to head off one argument that I KNOW is coming. The age of consent in
Japan is 13, pointing out that the age of consent is 16 in many places in
western civilization is not meaningful or useful here. It doesn't change the
ideas that I've presented in this post.

------
solvorn
It's a "I can remove it but instead I'll just switch distros" episode.

------
sugarsnaps
This reminds me of the whole systemd debacle - hundreds of Linux curmudgeons
getting unreasonably angry about an improvement to their distribution of
choice, just because it's different to what they're used to.

The great thing about free and open source software is, if a distribution or
package maintainer does something you don't like, you don't have to use it.
Simply modify to suit your desires, and enjoy.

But I guess it's easier to just complain loudly and with an inflated sense of
entitlement, despite not having put in any work whatsoever.

~~~
im3w1l
If your software auto-updates, then you no longer own your device. Anti-
features, spying can be pushed onto it from above and you have no choice but
to accept it.

I like auto-updates. I almost always turn them on. But _being able_ to turn
them off is an important bargaining chip, to pressure devs to behave. I'm not
excited about giving that up.

~~~
coronadisaster
I make sure to turn OFF auto-updates on Android... but I use automatic updates
on Linux.

------
marsdepinski
Stop bitching and moaning and compile it yourself. ./configure && make is
pretty easy and pretty much the way it was done up until mid 2000s

------
nickthemagicman
Counter to the current thoughts.

I love Ubuntu and haven't had any problems with Snaps via the software center
in Ubuntu.

I use apt at the command line so I may not be getting the brunt of snaps
problems.

But using Sublime, Chromium, Spotify, Intellij, has been pretty flawless for
me so far.

Maybe I'm not a snap power user.

Ubuntu desktop is wonderful. Not as good as Mac imo, but infinitely better
than Windows.

Just wanted to stick up for Ubuntu a little.

I think it's great there's finally an open source Desktop OS that is as nice
to use as the big two and I hope they continue their great work.

