
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it - uncertainquark
https://jatan.blog/2020/05/02/ubuntu-snap-obsession-has-snapped-me-off-of-it/
======
shock
I am very diligent about applying updates as soon as I'm able and generally
read the changelogs of the updates I'm applying in Ubuntu's Software Updater.

One thing I will not do is willingly allow somebody else a way to deploy and
execute code on my computer without my say so (which snap is).

After reading the whole thread at [https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-
automatic-refresh-for...](https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-automatic-
refresh-for-snap-from-store/707) and seeing Gustavo Niemeyer's arrogance (we
know better than you when you should be applying updates) I will be voting
with my feet and will be installing Pop!_OS instead of Ubuntu, and if snapd is
present I will remove it.

The stated goal of Niemeyer, to have users use updated software, would have
been fulfilled in my case if I had a way to see what updates would be applied
beforehand, instead of the updates being force-installed.

Lengthy dialog with Niemeyer in the forum thread seems to have been a waste of
time for all the people who participated trying to convince him to allow
disabling of force-installed updates so I suggest you do the same as me and
vote with your feet!

~~~
kikoreis
It's probably not a surprise to you, but this is a hotly debated topic inside
Canonical. And I apologize for that thread, as it really doesn't represent our
best attempt at external debate.

Changing a paradigm usually involves pushing the envelope and breaking some
existing assumptions; systemd is everybody's favorite example of that in the
Linux world. The root of this issue with snaps is the trade-off between built-
in security and user control. Some points to consider:

1\. Browsers like FF and Chromium [on Windows] simply self-update, and
disabling that requires configuration. So there is at least some precedent for
taking the position that user applications should just update themselves.
Server apps are more complex and are a strong argument counter to the existing
behavior, as is the fact that many apps cannot be refreshed without user
impact.

2\. Ubuntu, since 16.04 LTS, ships with unattended-upgrades enabled, which
means that for debian packages the default behavior is already auto-updating
(although automated reboots are not enabled by default, as that would be crazy
for the general purpose case). That feels like the correct default, too, given
the risk of running code exposed to exploitable, public CVEs — and how
reluctant users (like my dad and my wife!) are to click on "Install now" in
the update-manager dialog.

3\. Debian package updates run as root. Snap updates run in userspace, and
confined. So in principle the risk exposure for snap updates is much smaller.
And snaps do have an auto-rollback mechanism for failed updates [a]. Counter
to that argument is the fact that snaps are meant to be under third-party
control, and that there is no clear mechanism to separate security patches vs
updates which you get with the debian pocket mechanism (i.e. focal-security vs
focal-updates).

The lack of any official [b] means of user control over the snap auto-update
mechanism feels wrong to many of us, including me. And while we may seem
somewhat opaque in these debates, the feedback we get in threads like this one
(and the snapcraft.io one) actually feeds into our decision making. So please
do keep pushing on this topic and we'll do our part internally.

[a] See [https://kyrofa.com/posts/snap-updates-automatic-
rollbacks](https://kyrofa.com/posts/snap-updates-automatic-rollbacks) for a
detailed guide on this topic. Of course, if your snap refreshes and you hate
the new version, downgrading isn't quite always possible.

[b] There are ways to, hmmm, control auto-updating (i.e. refresh.metered,
refresh.hold) if you really want to; that thread has a few. That doesn't help
the debate, but I'm sharing in case someone has a technical need for it.

~~~
canonicalwhistl
Sorry, but as a fellow Canonical employee, speaking from a throwaway
obviously, it's evident to me that you're simply not telling the truth here.

You know just as well as I do that if you criticize Snap within the company,
you get fired. Especially if Mark overhears you. There is no room for
criticism. You either drink the koolaid or you shutup. So, no, sorry, we're
going to keep pumping out Snap and those who don't fall inline will just fall
out of the company. This is how we've always done these things, despite it
failing repeatedly, and Snap is no exception. Actually, Snap is in particular
no exception, given how hard it's being pushed by top level management.

[An aside from the main point of this comment: your point 3 is nonsense, and
any security guy will tell you the same. For packages that the main sudo-ing
user executes, sandboxed or not, there still is effectively no difference
between that and root. Snap's sandbox is alpha quality at best, and major
platform hurdles remain to make it capable of doing anything remotely useful.
Say no to auto-updating snap backdoors. Please. There's a reason why Linux has
thrived and benefited with its vetted-by-distros traditional package
managers.]

~~~
kikoreis
OK, I've had breakfast.

First, has anybody actually been fired for criticizing snaps? Your comment
seems to imply through hyperbole that we don't debate inside Canonical, but in
my experience that simply isn't true. In fact, I've seen a lot more intense IC
to CEO debate in Canonical than anywhere else I've worked. It's not always
super constructive debate, but I don't know how much better it is in any
relatively small organization with the broad impact Canonical has.

Second, debate and reflexion is how these positions get refined. An idea
starts out crazy and radical -- "let's make an OS which costs zero and which
anybody on the planet can figure out how to use!", or "Launchpad will only
support bzr", or yet again "upstart, not systemd" \-- but over time it evolves
towards a place of greater consensus. So I don't think we're the destination
for snaps; in fact, if these blog posts are only coming out now, it signals we
are rather early in the journey.

Finally, I can understand creating a throwaway account to disclose something
you're not comfortable with at your workplace, but it's not cool -- nor
constructive, civil or all sorts of C words -- to create one to and start with
"you're simply not telling the truth". C'mon, I'm your coworker.

~~~
johnmaguire2013
I want to just say I appreciate your level-headed response to the anonymous
poster.

Separately... "In fact, I've seen a lot more intense IC to CEO debate in
Canonical than anywhere else I've worked."

As an outsider, this makes me wonder if the CEO is too involved in day-to-day
operations. (And overriding the work of those with more expertise than
himself.)

------
nromiun
> Snap applications auto-update and that’s fine if Ubuntu wants to keep
> systems secure. But it can’t even be turned off manually.

OMG. Is this real? This is the exact reason I use Linux instead of Windows 10
or macOS. I am not a grandma who can't stay up to date on tech news. At the
least there should be a toggle for power users. But no, you can only defer it.
Am I the only one who doesn't like it when your already slow internet slows
down even further? It feels like hell when you are working.

I am not upgrading to this. I have been using Arch Linux as my personal OS.
Maybe I should look into Debian for my VMs.

And just read this thread[1]. Is this how they treat their users? Even Reddit
is better then this.

1\. [https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/is-ubuntu-software-going-
to-b...](https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/is-ubuntu-software-going-to-be-remove-
for-snap-snap-store/14542/58)

~~~
ultrarunner
We work at remote sites on cell connections. Part of the reason we moved to
Ubuntu from Windows was the ability to control data usage, which is expensive.
Automatic updates quickly become a significant slice of the bill when random
decisions like these get pushed on users. Ubuntu was supposed to help prevent
us from needing to chase this.

~~~
aeyes
Windows 10 has an out of the box feature to mark connections as metered which
disables automatic updates.

~~~
ultrarunner
On Ethernet which ultimately has a cellular uplink?

~~~
DanBC
Yes, but this is something that needs to be set.

[https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4028458/windows-
met...](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4028458/windows-metered-
connections-in-windows-10)

------
stevepike
So I run Kubuntu on my work laptop (X1 Carbon) and just upgraded to 20.04 last
weekend. I had a vague idea there were different competing standards for
"linux apps that work across distribution" but didn't know people had such a
problem with snap. It just seemed like a useful tool for installing
proprietary stuff that wouldn't normally be packaged by the distribution. I
just checked and the snaps I have that aren't from canonical are: datagrip,
slack, discord, and spotify. I haven't noticed any slow app boot times and I
think it's great that it's so easy to install third party software. Is snap
somehow user-hostile?

~~~
blacksmith_tb
There are some downsides (footprint, forced updates, speed, etc.), though
depending on what you're installing those may not be deal-breakers. I'm using
plain Ubuntu 20.04 and I tend to install stuff via apt and not snap in general
(but I am fine with installing non-essential things via snap). The software
store has a subtle toggle in the upper right for choosing to install a package
as a snap or via apt when both are available.

~~~
stevepike
Yeah, is there a plan for it to long-term replace apt? I've just always used
apt as my first choice and then snap for random things like spotify.

~~~
toyg
They are making a very big bet on snap, I would expect most of their desktop
apps to be slowly moved there in the next few years. At that point apt would
be kept around strictly for essential system packages and (hopefully) for
server usage.

------
ordinaryperson
Maybe I'm in the minority but I like Snaps. I wish all software would auto-
update silently in the background -- when's the last time you even thought
about upgrading Chrome?

The author of this article claims it's too difficult to find Flatpak apps and
that the Ubuntu software center prioritizes Snaps over .deb. Are platforms
never allowed to migrate to a new standard? Why is it Canonical's fault that
authors of individual applications have yet to migrate Snaps?

If we all agree that on the whole auto-updating software is _generally_ better
and more secure than manually updated software, why not single out the
applications that haven't migrated instead of blaming the whole standard?

Maybe I'm just naive and not doing advanced super user stuff these Snap haters
are doing but from a distance to me this resembles the systemd vs init
controversy. One which, IMHO, Linux super users seemed unusually attached to
an older standard for not always clear reasons. Snaps offer real benefits:
maybe instead of complaining that 'this sucks' users could offer constructive
criticism about how to improve the new standard.

Just my opinion tho.

~~~
capableweb
My two cents, you don't have to agree but thought I'd just add a different
perspective.

I prefer my own package manager (pacman) over snaps for the following reasons:

1) I like to upgrade on my own schedule. I use my computer for work, and I
cannot have things break in the middle of the day or in the morning, just as I
get started with work. I usually save upgrades for when I less things to do,
so that in case stuff breaks, I can spend time fixing it. This has happened
twice during the last 2 years, or something like that. One time Firefox got
broken (or rather, the version upgrade broke an extension I use) and second
time some API in neovim changes to a couple of plugins broke. If this breakage
would just happen by itself, it would break the two most common tools I use on
a day-to-day basis.

I've used both Windows and OSX for my professional work and while Windows is
the worst offender when it comes to automatic updates, OSX is pretty horrible
as well. At least with Windows you can expect some sort of backwards
compatibility, while on OSX, one day you have to upgrade your entire OS,
otherwise Notes or some stupid application won't launch. On the other hand,
Windows eventually forces you to upgrade no matter if you like it or not. So
both of them suck equally, but in different ways.

2) snap seems to create mountpoints for the applications and never removes
them. When trying snap apps I always end up with bunch of pollution in my
environment. Could be that I'm using snap/snapd wrong, but left a sour taste
in my mouth, as I saw snap as something that wants to solve a problem that
existed for a long time. Instead, they look a bit amateurish because of this.

~~~
ordinaryperson
My position is not that certain users would prefer to update on their own
schedule. Of course there are.

Or that new updates sometimes break things and that's a hassle. Of course they
do and it is.

The problem is if you want to distribute an important security update, what do
you do? Ask everyone nicely to upgrade? How? Again, what % of users will
manually update their software? Not a lot.

For #2, that seems like a resolvable problem that can be brought to Canonical.
I'd prefer to see auto-updates fine-tuned rather than have super users
immediately dismiss the idea in general.

It's just my opinion but I think the greater good of the Linux community is
served by auto updates, even if occasionally it means an update to an
individual application has a bug here or there.

Maybe this doesn't apply to you but I wonder how much of the Linux community
just doesn't like change. Sometimes Canonical stuff does crazy stuff (Mir?)
but auto-updates seem like a noble principle worth attempting to adopt.

~~~
zenexer
Auto-updating isn’t the only issue. I’m a stickler for security updates; I’m
that crazy guy who always reboots his computer immediately whenever there’s an
update. I like that Windows forces updates.

Even I recognize that this doesn’t make sense in the Linux world, though.
Ubuntu is trying to be something it’s not—they’re trying to appeal to a new
demographic, and, in doing so, driving away their existing users.

Even with my stance on auto-updating, snaps are a problem for me because I
mostly use Linux in the context of servers. Like it or not, that’s where Linux
has the largest market share; Android aside, Linux’s consumer market share is
negligible.

In that context, snaps have problems:

\- I can’t have my servers updating on their own. Security updates rarely
break things, but most other updates need testing.

\- I use auto-scaling. That means servers need to come up quickly when load
increases. If a bunch of new servers come online and all decide to update,
that’s worse than no servers coming online.

\- I don’t want or need a sandbox. In a cloud environment, the server _is_ the
sandbox.

\- Environments and server states need to be reproducible for testing and
auditing. If I’m doing a post-mortem, I need the software on the relevant
image to be in the exact same state as when the problem occurred.

\- Performance is critical. I’m already paying AWS for sandboxing in the form
of many small EC2 instances; I don’t need the additional overhead of snaps.
I’m not working with bare metal.

All of these issues could be resolved, and I wouldn’t object to this
experiment running in a non-LTS or desktop-only release. But it is truly an
experiment: snaps aren’t ready for prime time. My options are to pay Canonical
for extended support for old software, wait it out and hope the issues are
sorted before I stop receiving security updates, or switch to something like
Alpine or Debian.

Keep in mind, this is coming from someone who loves automatic updates,
generally prefers systemd, rather liked Unity, and didn’t see what all the
fuss was with Upstart and Mir:

\- systemd works pretty damn well and is a big improvement, although it has
its hiccups

\- Unity was fine. It looked nice out-of-the-box and wasn’t a resource hog.

\- Upstart usually worked well enough, though it sometimes had reliability
issues.

\- Mir never really saw the light of day, so it didn’t matter.

Snaps are where I draw the line. They might be the future, but they’re not
ready for the present. And that’s not for lack of trying on my part—I had no
trouble embracing Upstart and later systemd.

~~~
lightrush
All valid points and as you say it yourself, all addressable. The thing is
though, Canonical can control this experiment by deciding on what debs get
migrated to snaps. They can easily conduct this experiment in an LTS so long
as they only keep it to desktop packages like GNOME components, browsers,
third party software, etc. That way they don't have to wait yet more years
before providing this system for use by all users and developers. For example
I love the fact that VS Code and Spotify update on their own with no
interaction required. I wouldn't love if something I don't want to update in
our server fleet gets updated but I don't see many snaps in that area. But if
we do see that I'm sure both of us can come up with a one liner stopping snap
from updating if and until that use case is supported. Besides, the server
space is gravitating towards immutability anyways, so doing something like
`chmod -x $(which snapd)` or `chmod -x $(which apt)` on a production machine
shouldn't be a big problem in that context. In fact that's one foolproof way
to make sure packages are what you want them to be after installing them. Or
read-only file systems.

------
beckler
We tried to make an internal IoT device using Ubuntu Core and snaps because
the capabilities of it were very promising. We started a PoC and about halfway
through we hit a major roadblock. Our enterprise network does certificate
substitution, and Ubuntu Core absolutely does not allow you to install your
own certificates globally, so our devices would never receive updates. We
tried EVERY hack we could think up, short of making our own core snap. We
talked to Canonical about it, and they didn't seem interested in our fixing
our complaints without a massive amount of money, so our PoC died, and we
dropped Ubuntu entirely because of it.

~~~
adrianN
Sounds like a solid decision from Canonical tbh. Certificate substitution is
terrible.

~~~
kanox
MITM should be completely illegal.

Why does this even need to be stated?

~~~
cortesoft
Should you not be able to MITM your own machines?

~~~
kanox
Only in dev environments. Not on machines used by employees.

~~~
PHGamer
are you european. because in america its perfectly legal to spy on your
employees usage of company assets.

------
tom_devref
I really dislike the way snaps create disk partitions. When I run $ df I want
to see what I defined during OS installation, not a dozen nasty snap mounts.
An application misusing fundamental system features like this feels like a
violation of some UNIX principle.

~~~
mrweasel
Very much agreed, the fact that nobody at Ubuntu noticed that the extra mount
points is a best annoying is kinda impressive.

I’m not blaming Ubuntu, nor Snaps for this issue, but we had a new server come
online and our monitoring noticed that two or three partition was already at
100% usage. Those where snap mount point.

~~~
tom_devref
I don't use Ubuntu on servers but I imagine snaps would cause monitors like
Munin and Logwatch to freak out.

------
commoner
Snap has an issue on certain Linux distributions (including Fedora and Arch)
in which many applications render tofu characters (□□□□□) instead of text.

[https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/snapped-app-not-loading-
fonts-o...](https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/snapped-app-not-loading-fonts-on-
fedora-and-arch/12484)

Canonical needs to invest in compatibility if it wants Snap to be adopted in
distributions other than Ubuntu. Flatpak doesn't have this issue, and unlike
Snap, its server implementation is decentralized, free, and open source.

~~~
simion314
Isn't flatpack designed from the point of Desktop users (GNOME) where snaps
are designed with a server in mind? This would mean that are very different
and you can't just substitute them.

~~~
commoner
While there are Snaps for server software, Snaps are marketed as a way to
publish applications "for desktop, cloud, and Internet of Things" "across
Linux on any distribution or version" \- and users expect Snap applications to
work properly on all Linux distributions, not just Ubuntu. Otherwise,
developers could just publish a .deb package for Ubuntu like they did before.

[https://snapcraft.io](https://snapcraft.io)

Yes, Flatpak is targeted to desktop applications while Snap has a broader
scope, but it's questionable whether Snap's mandatory automatic updates are
desirable in a server environment.

~~~
flatiron
I don’t even know how’s it’s questionable. Every single update we do to prod
gets regression tested except for “cross yer fingers” 0-days that we are
exposed to.

~~~
commoner
Snap's automatic updates apply to major versions as well as minor versions.
Major version upgrades in an automatic update could bring breaking changes or
require manual configuration at an inconvenient time, and this is precisely
what server administrators want to avoid.

------
ohazi
If you're looking for an alternative to Ubuntu but want to stick with a
Debian-based distribution, I'll continue to recommend Debian testing.

It's a rolling release, so you don't have to stop what you're doing every 6
months - 3 years to install a huge update that changes the way everything
works. It's more stable than the name would suggest, as long as you follow a
few reasonable best-practices [1].

Software available on Debian testing is pretty up-to-date... If you're
previously tried Debian stable but were put off by ancient packages, you won't
see this in testing. Keep in mind that Debian testing (not stable) is upstream
for Ubuntu's releases, so Debian testing's packages will be about as new as
Ubuntu's packages on release day (but they're updated continuously, so they
stay fresh).

I have personal systems running Debian testing or unstable that have been
running continuously for 5-10 years without issues. They don't look or feel
any different than systems I set up a few months ago.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23044878](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23044878)

~~~
darren0
I tried going this route and the desktop experience was rough. Debian doesn't
seem to have reasonable defaults for fonts so I spent way too much time
learning and configuring all the font systems. So literally just the font
configuration was enough for me to switch back to Ubuntu and just only install
the stuff I like (no snap, gnome).

~~~
wegs
I ran Debian for maybe 15-20 years before switching to Ubuntu. The first few
weeks are rough. But once you get it configured up the way you like, it keeps
on ticking for a decade with no announced changes or surprises. You front-load
a lot of the work, but then productivity stays high.

Those 15-20 years, it was the same Debian install. Everything else in the
computer changed, but Debian kept on ticking.

There was a while Debian was behind on supporting things like laptop power
management and graphics cards, when I switched to Ubuntu. For a while, it was
a more polished, user-friendly up-to-date Debian. That was nice.

Now that Ubuntu re-invents the wheel each new release (and quite often,
replacing a spoked, pneumatic-tired wheel with a square piece of wood), and
hardware support is a little more standardized, I think it's time to switch
back. It feels more like a tech gizmo, designed for Ubuntu developers, than an
end-user OS.

------
dopeboy
> 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.

Can someone verify this? As someone who will eventually upgrade to 20.04, this
is concerning.

~~~
Matt3o12_
Apparently, snaps are compressed to save disk space, which is why they take so
long to start:

\-
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/9scoif/snap_package...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/9scoif/snap_packages_are_very_slow_to_load_in_ubuntu/)

Saving disk space is certainly useful for rarely used apps, however, your web
browser (and any other frequencely used apps), shouldn't be compressed,
especially if there is ample disk space.

~~~
kleiba
_Saving disk space is certainly useful for rarely used apps_

Is it really? I can't recall the last time I ran into disk space issues, must
have been in the 1990s.

~~~
Matt3o12_
Really? I constantly run into disk space issues. Apple still ships their
flagship 13" macbook pro 128gb storage and they charge $200 for another 128gb.
While other manufacturer's laptops charge a lot less for storage these days,
most still only come with 256 which is not enough these days for development
IMO.

Even on my desktop, I managed to fill 750GB with various VMs and android
development tools (the SDKs, etc). While I am not sure how much compression
could have saved me, it could still be worth it (especially since I only use
certain VMs or SDK version once a month).

~~~
ssivark
Yeah, then stop burying yourself with Apple devices.

Anyways, it makes sense to maintain something like an LRU cache, and compress
only the least used things.

~~~
danieldk
Why would you? lz4 decompresses at ~5GB/s on a modern CPU [1] with good
compression ratios, that's still more than most SSDs can push nowadays. Most
applications are small fraction of that size on-disk.

The problems arise when you start using xz-compressed squashfs images. LZMA2
is optimized for compression ratio and typically decompresses several times
slower than even zlib deflate (which is already ~10 slower than lz4).

[1] [https://github.com/lz4/lz4](https://github.com/lz4/lz4)

------
greendave
> Auto-updating of snaps can only be deferred at best, until at some point,
> like Windows, it auto-updates anyway. Even on metered connections, snaps
> auto-update anyway after some time.

This attitude is obnoxious. Yes, not everybody is on a metered connection or
running a mission-critical system, but some are, and it is hardly unreasonable
to accommodate them.

~~~
harrygeez
This is a hard problem.

And Microsoft didn't have a choice. Given an option regular users will never
update their computers, perhaps partly due to fear of what they don't
understand, fear of change, or maybe due to past bad update experiences. I
witness this in my mom with technology all the time. Every time there's a
popup she mini-panics, and she has trained herself to click close every time
she sees something she doesn't understand.

Google started the trend of silently updating Chrome and everyone including
Microsoft followed after, except upgrading an OS is nothing like updating a
browser.

For most parts, I think auto update is necessary for tech illiterates,
especially now that everybody's jumping on the Agile bandwagon, including
Windows. There needs to be a way to ensure new versions reach their users
given everyone's just churning out barely working software these days.

Honestly I don't have a problem with that. But if they don't give power user
the option to opt out, this is just disrespectful

~~~
zerkten
> Honestly I don't have a problem with that. But if they don't give power user
> the option to opt out, this is just disrespectful

The problem is that "power users" can't be trusted to use this power
responsibly, or they operate based on assumptions that won't always be true.
Either way they end up hurting other people in enough situations that this
becomes an ecosystem issue.

Power users often help others set up their systems like they do, but those
users can't manage them. Other times, power users will move on. When they were
managing the systems, it wasn't a problem. Now that someone else is, the
systems stop getting updated and someone has to clear up the mess. Yes, good
power users help transition things properly, but don't kid yourself on the
number of times this actually happens.

This phenomenon is prevalent in software. Just looks at the defaults which
"power users" frequently choose (cf. JWT).

~~~
Enginerrrd
The arrogance in this comment astounds me. It's almost never appropriate to
assume that people don't have the right to make decisions for themselves, even
if you think those decisions harm them. People have different values and weigh
their own decisions against their own values, not yours.

~~~
close04
> It's almost never appropriate to assume that people don't have the right to
> make decisions for themselves, even if you think those decisions harm them

But when those decisions affect others? When your computer becomes part of a
botnet and is used to attack a target then it's no longer just your problem
anymore. The responsibility to prevent this must lie somewhere, either with
the user or with the manufacturer. And Microsoft would rather force the
updates on users and occasionally be in the news for a botched one than to
constantly be in the news for botnets of hundreds of thousands of "abandoned"
Windows PCs, or the constant complaint that Windows is insecure because people
keep their PCs stuck on the same version they came with.

To use some very current imagery, imagine if someone walked around coughing in
your face saying the decision whether to wear a mask or not is theirs.

~~~
michaelmrose
It would be appropriate if you didn't try to misuse the present crisis to lend
undue emotional weight to your argument. This is manipulative.

Further your argument draws a connection but its spurious a sufficient
difference in degree is a difference in kind. The way in which we comport
ourselves while sick have the potential on net to kill millions of people
where as the peril implied by users failing to update windows has never
resulted in peril of that magnitude. Further one can reasonably suppose that
one can with sufficient care design a system where updates are on by default
and we don't create perverse situations which inspire many users to turn them
off entirely.

For example one in which applications are updated without disturbing or
interrupting the users workflow, where updates aren't effective until the user
reboots, where applications are isolated from their underlying environments
where users can roll back and pin a particular version if a new version is
buggy or undesirable. Where major changes to entire user interfaces are rare
and opt in for years.

How many are going to bother disabling updates?

~~~
close04
> It would be appropriate [...] This is manipulative.

Please don't make unfounded accusations and personal attacks based on
suppositions. It was just an easy to understand analogy of how your decisions
can have consequences beyond yourself, and does the job without any hint of
"emotional weight". The rest is in the eye of the beholder.

> have the potential on net to kill millions of people

Talk about manipulative and lending undue emotional weight to your argument.
Nothing gives weight to your own words like not following them yourself.

> one can reasonably suppose that one can with sufficient care design a system
> where updates are on by default and we don't create perverse situations
> which inspire many users to turn them off entirely.

This supposition didn't fare well in reality because it's easy to suppose but
hard to implement. Especially when talking about a _very_ complex system that
has to be put in the hands of ~87+% of computer users out there, and work with
tens of thousands of combinations of hardware, software and different
configurations. And perhaps the most critical aspect is that the perverse
incentives are left to the judgement of users with little to no understanding
of the system or the wider implications of misusing it. They are more likely
to follow terrible advice because the explanation for the good advice is too
complicated. This is why the easy to understand analogy was useful.

~~~
michaelmrose
>perhaps the most critical aspect is that the perverse incentives are left to
the judgement of users with little to no understanding of the system or the
wider implications of misusing it.

This is true of capitalism and democracy. The worst choice for economics or
governance except for all the other choices. I want a system that respects the
users judgement not yours. No matter how well meaning you can't adopt the
perspective of all users nor do I desire to see the mediocre results of smart
people who know better than their users trying.

It's actually not that hard. If you make updates something that silently
happens periodically without interrupting the users or making many changes to
the UI that the users rely on they will let you update the parts they don't
directly touch all you want to secure their systems.

When you want to make major changes make them opt in and test them to ensure
they are actually substantially superior. After a while deprecate the old UI.
People will tolerate infrequent major changes far better than constant small
breaking changes to their workflow.

Again if you don't make updates suck you don't have to coerce people into
doing them. If you are figuring out how to coerce users for their own good you
are solving the wrong problem.

------
chrisma0
Good to see that I am not alone at being upset about the current snap vs. deb
vs. flatpak Ubuntu situation. I always considered a unified package management
system as a huge plus.

~~~
Glavnokoman
I do not understand that. Why being upset? If you do not like Ubuntu just
install some other distro and be done with it. There are many out there!
Fedora, Arch (Manjaro) and even plain Debian are all much better then Ubuntu
these days.

~~~
lonelappde
It's exausting to switch every time an upgrade is a betrayal

------
hedora
The last time I installed the Ubuntu, I noticed gnome calculator took over a
second to start in a VM on a new >$2500 laptop.

I switched to a .deb, and it was instantaneous. Then I switched back to devuan
and have been happy since.

~~~
aritmo
The calculator was a snap in Ubuntu 18.04 as an experiment.

~~~
MattPalmer1086
I was wondering why the calculator took so long to start on 18.04. I thought
there was some problem with my system.

Doesn't bode well for 20.04. I've been with Ubuntu for a very long time, I
like that it just works most of the time. May be time to try out another
distro if all the applications are this sluggish.

~~~
jandrese
The good news is that 18 is one of the super-LTS releases, so you don't have
to upgrade until 2028.

------
bgorman
Ubuntu is doing more harm than good to desktop linux at this point in time.

Continuing to push Xorg over Wayland. Removing support for flatpak (cross-
distro way of using sandboxed apps) Horrible PPA system that works much worse
in practice than the AUR or other ports systems. No daemonless docker (podman)

Lots of people try Ubuntu since it is the "most popular" version of Linux,
realize it isn't great and think desktop Linux is in bad shape. The reality is
Canonical doesn't seem to have good ideas and refuses to incorporate the good
ideas from other distros.

~~~
hocuspocus
If it's so bad, then why is it the most popular?

Arch is a no-go for most people and any sane IT department. Fedora doesn't
offer LTS and RH/CentOS feel quickly outdated on desktops, let alone laptops.

Ubuntu ships a distribution that works on most hardware and provides a
reasonable desktop environment. While snaps aren't the most elegant solution,
they do the job when your users need to install stuff like Jetbrains IDEs for
instance.

~~~
mrlatinos
> If it's so bad, then why is it the most popular?

Marketing and brand recognition.

------
verelo
So theres one huge issue with Snap no one in my circles is talking about - i
dont want my server changing without me controlling it! This seems like a)
Someone could get an update in without my knowledge and it'll get pushed to me
without my consent b) if the code changes, i want to control that, if a
package changes, i also want to control that....its my server, i want to
control it all! On a desktop, maybe I could handle this, but for a server, its
absolutely a no go. wtf are they thinking?

------
gjsman-1000
I filed a bug a few years back asking why Snap refused to allow any
repositories outside of Canonical's and had no open-source server
implementation. That blew up.

[https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/08/bug-report-asks-why-
snap...](https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/08/bug-report-asks-why-snappy)

------
diablo1
> Browsing the Snap Store sucks

Yeah a lot of the software you see in the store is legacy software that seems
to be stuck on an older version. Also many of the items are lacking a
screenshot and a comprehensive description of what the software does. I find
myself using the store to _discover_ software and then go to the software's
official website (usually on Github) and install it the oldskool way by doing:

    
    
        ./software.deb

------
securityfreak
Ubuntu 20.04 forced me to switch to Fedora Server on my home server. Pretty
happy so far. I have significantly fresher package versions and most of the
software tools I use offer a RPM package. I think I will wait for snap to
mature, before giving it another go.

~~~
lifeAsNerd
I don't understand. You stopped using Ubuntu server because of snap?

Can you clarify?

~~~
jablan
they didn't say it was ubuntu server, it might just as well be ubuntu desktop,
and used as a home server (i.e. a box used mostly for server software, but no
necessarily without desktop environment).

------
jnurmine
To disallow control of the updates by the users is probably well-intended as
some kind of a trade-off, but what if I don't want a new feature that is
coming in the next version? What if I already know it's broken in my system
configuration -- I hope for a fix for 60 days, and then what? What if the fix
never comes? Does my system stop working?

What if I'm a business relying on that specific version? Do I just say "oh
well" and close shop?

And what about airgapped systems?

I understand there's the "security", but then, on the other hand:

1\. If snapd gets forked because of this, the snap ecosystem becomes
fragmented and Canonical loses control of part of their baby.

2\. If snapd stays as-is, and Canonical keeps preventing user control of the
update cadence, then people will just run away from using snaps once the
magical auto-updates create any high-profile problem. Lxd is a snap as well,
so containers will be in the crosshairs.

All in all it feels like a silly decision if you ask me.

------
vanviegen
For largely this reason, I've just switched to Manjaro after over two decades
(ouch!) of using Debian and Ubuntu. I'm very happy with it!

Package installs are unbelievably fast. But mostly, the AUR repository of user
contributed packaging scripts is awesome! Although I'm a bit worried about
installing packages from random internet people, they are generally short and
very easy to check for unwanted *ware. Haven't been disappointed yet!

~~~
wayneftw
Came here to say this. I've been on Manjaro at work and at home for 2 years
now. It's the longest running Linux desktop distro I've ever maintained and
it's precisely due to the excellent AUR repo system.

I've had to install very few things from source, mostly small, opinionated
system tweak utilities. But even installing from source is easier than hunting
down a PPA and a key and trying to keep apt from getting corrupted somehow.

------
6a74
There was a thread on HN about disabling Snaps last week. I found the process
pretty straight-forward.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22972661](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22972661)

~~~
jablan
It's not about whether it can be disabled or not, but about the direction
Canonical is heading to. Also, I wouldn't call installing Chromium from .deb
in 20.04 exactly straightforward.

------
bproven
I know Snap maybe offered tighter sandboxing, but why didnt AppImage take off?
It seems like it solves the problems of deb/rmp/etc war and is easy to create
for app devs...

~~~
e2le
I much prefer AppImage, just recently I created one that packaged an old
windows game and included the required dependencies (wine, libopenal, etc).
Starting the AppImage is as simple as "./game.AppImage" and in theory would
work on any Linux distribution. I think it has good potential for preservation
of old applications and video games.

AppImage is awesome.

------
lmilcin
Not sure what was the thinking. I am, as of this moment, in the process of
migrating my laptop to from Ubuntu to Debian.

~~~
risho
It is worth noting you can basically get all of the benefit of using ubuntu(a
good gnome experience, ppa's, etc) but without any of the snap stuff by
installing pop os. It's a bit unfortunate that pop os is branded as something
basically for scrubs and new linux users, because it is still fully featured
and a great overall experience even for a more adept linux user.

~~~
lmilcin
I don't know Pop OS. On the other hand, I have been using Debian on my PC
since 1999 and only got Ubuntu for my laptop because I had trouble getting
everything to work properly and Ubuntu seemed to do the job.

------
daneel_w
I was asked by a friend to get Netflix working on his Lubuntu 20.04 Linux
laptop. He was running Chromium which comes without Widevine, and the
extension wasn't available in the Chrome Web Store, but it can be enabled by
simply making libwidevine.so available in Chromium's library path. But how to
add a file to the sandboxed lib/ directory of a Snap? You can't without
rebuilding the entire Snap as your own custom product, and then it's no longer
a standard package from the repo so you lose the blessings of package updates!
Maybe there's a better way, but I sure could not find one.

I had to ditch Chromium and unfortunately resort to Chrome directly provided
by Google, with all of its privacy problems.

~~~
CameronNemo
Did Firefox not ship with widevine?

~~~
SahAssar
Usually firefox does not ship with it, but it's a one-click install when
needed. It depends on the package though, some packagers build it with it
bundled some don't. Since it's not a FOSS component it can't be bundled in
FOSS distros though.

------
tkuraku
I feel like snaps are trying to do too much. Applications are slow to start.
Besides, I don't want the underlying system to be changing and updating all
the time. For me the stability of RHEL/Centos with flatpak for desktop
applications is perfect.

------
rohan1024
Not the best way to disable this but it works. My /etc/hosts:

127.0.0.1 api.snapcraft.io

------
ashtonkem
I’m sympathetic to most of these arguments, operating systems should typically
trend towards more clarity and user choice; especially ones likely to be used
by professionals like Linux. But I will say that the Ubuntu software store has
sucked for as long as I’ve ever used Ubuntu; they made it pretty years ago,
and apparently never once considered performance or behavior. I would
regularly search in the store for applications I knew existed, and it would
either take forever or not find them. I always gave up and used apt, at least
until I gave up on Ubuntu altogether.

------
GekkePrutser
100% agree! I hate snaps and Ubuntu is overdoing it too much now.

I've moved to Alpine for servers and Arch for desktop now.

------
dchyrdvh
Ubuntu has followed the same path of first building their user base on trust
and quality and then monetizing it hard with various shady schemes.

Even coffee shops do it. First they sell high quality coffee for little margin
and "don't expect or accept tips". Then they switch to the dark side to
monetize the trust: they cut hard on materials, they pay $2/hour to employees
and expect the customers to subsidize their minimum wages with tips (that are
now accepted and very much expected).

------
d_tr
I do not have an informed opinion on the different aspects of snaps, because I
haven't had to deal with them at all.

That said, the feature "automatic updates whenever the system feels like it",
is an annoyance for me, even if I can defer them. Typing "sudo apt full-
upgrade" takes a few seconds.

I just use Ubuntu Server and get only what I need, which is available through
the APT repositories. I have not noticed these repositories getting any
smaller in favor of snaps and I am already using the 20.10 development branch.
The Ubuntu Server installer does not install any snaps by default. However,
snapd is there but it is trivial to remove it if one wants to. Chromium is the
only "loss" I have witnessed and I also saw this mentioned in other comments.
Note that there exists a really nice PPA, maintained by Pop!_OS, that contains
quite a few packages, including Chromium.

I am wondering what security issues do snaps address that apparmor, whose
purpose is security, does not. I also think it is unfortunate that we need
snaps to deal with different applications / packages needing different library
versions...

------
errantspark
I used Ubuntu for 4 or 5 years as my daily driver for development. Snaps made
me swap back to Arch I haven't looked back. All it took was one `df`.

------
Iolaum
I moved from Ubuntu MATE to Fedora MATE for this reason. One reason I use free
software is that I get to have the final say in what my computer does. There's
a big thread at snapcraft forums asking for the ability to shut off updates.
Canonical wouldn't bulge. So I ve moved elsewhere and thank the Linux
ecosystem for allowing diversity so that I can still use it as I d like to.

------
robomartin
So...I guess we are done with Ubuntu then.

This is terrible. We use Ubuntu on systems where bad things can happen if
software becomes unstable due to an unwanted update. In other words, nobody,
_nobody_ would ever even dream of installing _any_ software of updating the OS
without authorization. And this authorization would require regression testing
in order to verify the changes would not compromise the system.

I don't understand how anyone working on Ubuntu could think this is a good
idea.

To be clear, if Linux (let's say Ubuntu) is going to become a viable OS for
the masses it probably needs something like this. I get it. However, there is
no reason to break the traditional stability of Linux and even risk creating
danger.

Disabling this mode should be as simple as one setting. In fact, it should be
offered as a choice during installation with a full explanation. This is where
they could make a pitch for the functionality. Those of us who don't need it
(or can't use it for other reasons) can opt out and move on. Consumers, sure,
I don't care.

------
Jedd
I've been running Debian since ~1994, and never really got the excitement
about Ubuntu. Some colleagues did, but it seemed to be more about the
marketing.

I've always been a KDE user, which was always a first class citizen option
during the Debian installation process. For Gnome / Unity users having that
default promoted and baked into the distribution might have been compelling.

The refrain 'but it's so much easier to install' never really sat well with me
-- I hand-install my desktop & laptop OS's infrequently, given the upgrade
process (with Debian) has always been wonderfully robust. I auto-install and
maintain, almost exclusively headless, every other VM, so a nicer installer
wasn't relevant there.

Claims of 'stodgy' versions are rebutted by using testing or unstable
branches, or even backports. For enterprise, stodgy's often a plus in any case
-- look at what you get with RHEL/CentOS.

~~~
d_tr
I also use KDE Plasma, but even the experimental Debian repository does not
yet have 5.18. Otherwise, I would just use Sid.

~~~
Jedd
Look, I'm a huge advocate of KDE, but objectively I'm struggling to see what's
ground-breaking and desperately urgent in 5.18.

Ubuntu (or rather Kubuntu's) schedule [1] unsurprisingly isn't faster than the
mothership's.

I guess there's been a lot going on in the world since February, so people
haven't been 100% focused on getting free software packaged up into a free
distribution as fast as normal.

[1]
[https://community.kde.org/Get_KDE_Software_on_Your_Linux_Dis...](https://community.kde.org/Get_KDE_Software_on_Your_Linux_Distro#Kubuntu)

------
Agitatra
Actually, I'm startled by the religious believe that nothing can go wrong with
"snap"! What is so new to snap that it is so reliable, in contrast to Debian-
packages? Currently I'm trying to update my 18.04 to 20.04 but get stuck,
because the Python3-Version shipped lately seem to have issues. So, the
upgrade process abruptly stops, leaving the system in a half-baked state.
While I do not complain, Ubuntu is free, I'm terrified by the thought such an
upgrade could be initiated, without me monitoring it, and having the chance to
try it on a non-productive system first. Currently I can live with the snap-
approach, because I don’t have to use it at the time being, but if this is the
way Canonical will proceed, I probably will have to vote with my feet too.
Mark (not Shuttleworth :)

------
bamboozled
We work on a product where we must deploy different Linux distributions for
customers but it’s imperative they’re stable and we’ve tested the image at an
exact point in time.

Snap is an extremely big pain when it comes to this. We have to workaround for
forceful updates by telling it to use a non-existent proxy, it’s very dumb.

------
bluedino
I'm a fan of Docker on the server so the idea of Snaps is great. Linux
packaging is a pain, and one of the reasons distros exist.

However, the implementation stinks right now. This isn't to say they won't get
it right in a year or two.

------
finnjohnsen2
this is one of those; ignorance is bliss. i havent noticed snap being slower
and now I risk noticing and getting annoyed over it.

~~~
aritmo
Someone told my sister about the RF radiation risks of WiFi and now she "has
headaches".

------
jlokier
I've been using Ubuntu Server non-stop on a wide range of differently
configured (real aka bare-metal as well as virtual) servers for over 10 years.

As a server OS I've really found it useful.

(Except for that time when they shipped buggy versions of high-availability
tools, warned against by the upstream maintainers, which segfaulted
occasionally and showed inconsistent state across different nodes - thanks :/)

I found it an improvement over Debian. And that an improvement over Red Hat
(before it was RHEL and Fedora). And that an improvement over Slackware.
CentOS and RHEL got used too in parallel on some sites, and were very solid,
but with their own annoyances.

But recently, on the server, LXD (aka LXC 2) switched from being a .deb
package to being a Snap. They made a policy decision to stop shipping the
.deb, to force server admins to start using Snap whether they wanted to or
not, I guess.

So I was forced to use Snap just to run LXD, which was annoying as things like
configs and paths to the container images are buried inside the Snap
somewhere, and various things with container-uids and host-container shared
mounts stopped working. At least, the upgrade broke a bunch of working
scripts.

But it wasn't too painful, just a bit of work that felt like it was caused by
an unnecessary annoyance.

Ironically given other comments, _the Snap does not seem to auto-update_
unlike all the other .debs on the system!

Now, hearing about Ubuntu 20.04 and application snaps, I'm extra cautious
before assuming Ubuntu 20.04 Server will be a smooth change. I'll take a look,
and if the server software is much like 18.04 (except for annoying LXD) I'll
use 20.04.

But if they've moved a lot of things away from .deb to Snaps-only on the
server, that's going to be some overhead to deal with, and it will at least
result in evaluating whether switching distro is no more effort and a better
choice.

I've not been a fan of CentOS, but that time I was burned by the high-
availability tools due to Ubuntu (and Debian) shipping a dangerously buggy
version in an LTS release did make me realise that RHEL/CentOS are well
maintained in that department and just wouldn't do that.

------
luizfelberti
For someone who has been out of the loop on the whole Snap vs Flatpak
situation, could anyone give (or point to) a comparison on their technical
merits, and why would one be better than the other?

~~~
coleifer
Google it bro

------
OrgNet
Not sure whats the point of using snaps in a stable OS release, but they are
fairly easy to remove: [https://www.kevin-custer.com/blog/disabling-snaps-in-
ubuntu-...](https://www.kevin-custer.com/blog/disabling-snaps-in-
ubuntu-20-04/)

ie: I thought they were more useful for installing a random app that is not
supported by your OS... Is it easier to include a snap then it is to create a
regular package? or are there any other advantages?

------
iknowstuff
Ok, a central store is a problem, but I don't get hn's bitterness about
autoupdates.

I don't mind autoupdates of apps, especially sandboxed ones like Snaps, and
especially when they can be rolled back if issues arise. Snaps do, in fact,
allow for easy reverting to a previously used revision:

    
    
        $ sudo snap revert vlc
        vlc reverted to 3.0.5-1
    

It will even remain on the reverted version without updating until another
version is published.

------
_xerxes_
My issue is that they still have not sorted out suspend and resume. Half the
time when I reopen my laptop lid my keyboard no longer works. Had the same
issue on 18.04.

------
gsej
I've been using kubuntu for a while and while I like it a lot, it seems very
"chatty" to me - way too many notifications which I have to disable one at a
time. I only discovered the snap situation when Chromium started prompting
before it would open files, and I couldn't find a way to disable it. In the
end I installed Chrome, but I am looking around for an alternative distro.

------
dbsmith83
Well, I'm out then. Sorry, but at the end of the day, it's a user's machine,
not yours, Snappy/Canonical. I will not use a system which will not let me
turn off something that installs shit on MY machine. I can't believe the
arrogance of the snappy devs. Just shut up and give the people what they want.

------
karmakaze
I don't use Software Center so the only thing I should be concerned about is
getting the snap flavor of Chrome instead of the .deb. My main browser is
Firefox anyway.

I get that the forced direction toward snaps seems premature. I wouldn't stop
using it though if there's simple measures to get around it. Also use
Xfce/Xubuntu.

------
thedevelopnik
Was going to suggest he try Pop, glad to see he already is! Solves the problem
while being excellent in every other way.

~~~
risho
I think that Pop has a bit of a branding issue. It has the reputation of an os
with training wheels for newbies and gamer bros, but it is actually an all
around great OS for anyone. It's a great gnome experience out of the box with
all of the benefits of using Ubuntu with none of the nonsense. I'm hoping to
see it gain popularity with the broader linux community. Everyone who used
traditional ubuntu and isn't happy with the direction it's headed should
really give Pop OS a shot.

------
nottorp
Can you still install debs with apt command line?

I started to ignore ubuntu's attempts at a graphical app store long ago.

~~~
mavhc
yes, and the stupid thing is you get a second copy of the application,
different version, different UI, seems very broken

------
dirtydroog
Is this an issue if we upgrade to 20.04 on our GCP machines? Is all this
nonsense there for server releases?

------
nullc
This kind of unconstrained and minimally accountable automatic update is
incompatible with strong security.

I already wouldn't use ubuntu due to their long established phone-home
practices, but this further strengthens the case.

FWIW, I'm pretty happy with the recently released Fedora 32 so far.

------
mixmastamyk
I only use the micro editor as a snap. The chromium snap was forced on me. I
keep it around to test and separate web stuff. From that minimal use I get a
daemon running and a dozen bullshit mounts. Wish they just statically compiled
it.

------
pkaye
I tried snaps and I'm okay with them atleast for non-core apps. Like games and
a few bigger programs I want isolated from the rest of the systems. But I
wouldn't want my calculator or browser as part of snaps.

------
Priem19
So that's why two applications suddenly couldn't install anymore. Aw man, I've
been so happy with Xubuntu the last couple of years, I really don't want to
have to find another distro.

------
badsectoracula
> I installed Pop!_OS 20.04 LTS just yesterday, hoping to get a better out of
> the box experience. I’ll log back with thoughts about it next week.

I tried Pop!_OS 20.04 in a VM just yesterday and my experience was dreadful
_especially_ with its "store" application. Things like the entire program
freezing randomly for seconds while trying to fetch things, images taking ages
to show up (btw, i have high speed connection), showing me ridiculous download
sizes for flatpak packages (think something like Geany requiring 1.1GB or
something like that), not giving _any_ indication about download processes if
you navigate away, wasting screen space when showing applications in a
category (it uses a list view where each entry gets a huge icon at the left
side, its title, some very short and useless description next to the icon like
"Goofy is a goof foogbar", an "Install" button at the right side and vast
swaths of emptiness in between), etc.

Also had UI screwups everywhere, like the Preferences application cutting out
the "Preferences" title in the titlebar to "Preferenc..." when a) those three
dots took the same space as the rest of the word and b) that title was the
_only_ thing in the entire titlebar with almost 500px of unused space at each
side. Or controls moving and windows resizing a few pixels after i start
typing something (e.g. trying to type some number in the calculator has the
divider between the buttons and the number move down a little the first time i
type something). And the entire "let's merge titlebar and toolbar" idea is as
awful as it was when GNOME 3 introduced it (well, actually it was iTunes but i
do not remember anyone ever saying that they liked iTunes). Trying some of the
preinstalled apps, i accidentally clicked some tool buttons trying to move a
window around (the UI being slow didn't help).

And it was dog slow. Terribly, irredeemably, laughably slow. Opening the icons
had the entire UI chug worse than my 386 running Windows 3.1 (and actually i'm
pretty sure if i wrote a program to move icons around in Windows 3.1 it would
be faster).

IMO the only time i felt Linux had a high quality desktop environment was
actually the first Linux distribution i used: Caldera OpenLinux 2.3 (to the
point that in my youthful enthusiasm i force installed it to every relative
and friend's computers i encountered :-P). That distribution was very well put
together and thought out (try to find it in archive.org and test it in 86box
or PCem with an emulated Pentium 200 and 32MB of RAM to see what i'm talking
about). It had some issues, but _two decades later_ things should have been
_much_ improved - instead everything went downhill after that and for most
Linux users their desktop use is mainly a matter of how much tolerance you
have for all the issues you encounter (ie. when you see someone having a
problem and there is a reply like "i never had that problem" or "i've been
using Linux XYZ for years and that has never been my experience", it is
usually from someone who had a high enough tolerance that anything non-major
does not even register anymore).

------
weakfish
Can someone explain why it's fashionable to hate Snap? I am a casual Linux
user (Ubuntu VM for schoolwork and projects that WSL can't handle) and don't
get the hate.

------
veesahni
Anybody have commentary on how this snap stuff impacts those who use Ubuntu on
their EC2 nodes?

So far I see complaints about Chromium, which typically doesn't exist in a
server environment.

~~~
McGlockenshire
Why did you choose to use Ubuntu on a server instead of Debian?

------
rwmj
Nothing about everything being statically linked into a big binary blob with
very little connection to sources? It's my main problem with containers in
general.

------
pxi
Snap is irritating, but for a single desktop, easy to remove and easy to live
without. It's not half as annoying as owning a samsung android device.

------
Stierlitz
There was nothing wrong with Synaptic + Deb files that needed fixing. Same
with Systemd and now they're going after our home directories (never mind that
it breaks SSH). My home directory is already portable as in all my config
information is in .dot files. As for snap, yet again a solution in search of a
problem. you can download a nightly-build as a compressed archive and run it
without installing. I too will be moving with my next installation. any
recommendations for a small fast distro where the GUI doesn't get in your way?

------
woofie11
Is there any sensible documentation on this somewhere?

I've been running Debian, and then Ubuntu, for a quarter-century now, largely
because things just worked. .deb is nearly perfect.

Having used Docker, it's the last thing I want on my desktop, for a whole slew
of reasons.

It's odd, Windows and Linux switched spots in that time. Windows 10 is faster,
more stable, and more understandable than Ubuntu. Ubuntu is increasingly
layered, convoluted, and bloated. Windows runs on light systems. Ubuntu
requires a ton of RAM and CPU.

I think this might be the thing which will makes me give up Ubuntu.

~~~
josteink
> It's odd, Windows and Linux switched spots in that time. Windows 10 is
> faster, more stable, and more understandable than Ubuntu.

I mean, you can claim a lot of stuff about lot of things, but saying Windows
is _understandable_ is pretty rich. You can’t even reliably cron a single
script to run once an hour without weird, unfathomable, undebuggable bugs
starting to pop up.

Care to elaborate exactly what you mean?

~~~
woofie11
I have three machine, one is Windows, one is Ubuntu, and one is Mac. The
statement was relative. I never said Windows was _understandable_. I said
_more_ understandable. Nineties-era Debian, I felt I understood every piece
of, to where I could fill in details with documentation or code in a few
minutes.

2020-era Ubuntu developed the same layeritis as Windows, only worse. Microsoft
cleaned up a little bit from the bad, old Windows 95 days too. Windows 10 is
_slightly_ simpler than Windows 95, but a heck of a lot more stable.

------
hakube
Snap is really terrible. Flatpaks and AppImages are the way to go. I wish they
are supported more (especially AppImage)

------
djhaskin987
This is the first time in years I've tried Fedora again and it has to do with
snap in part.

------
tenkabuto
What are other distros where snap isn't an issue/isn't installed?

~~~
detaro
As far as I know only Ubuntu uses it by default, because it is their thing.

------
hypnotist
Can anyone recommend good rpm based distro for desktop(business env)?

~~~
BenjiWiebe
CentOS or Fedora?

------
gertrunde
And for some reason the server installer doesn't set up any kind of swap at
all. And forces snaps and lxd on you, which also brings in lovely things like
cloud-init... You spend 10-15 minutes cleaning up a supposedly minimal
install.

------
jmgpeeters
Oh god. What a shame. Another distro down the drain.

------
coleifer
This old saw again?

Shit. Just don't use Ubuntu. The writing is on the wall.

------
0x8BADF00D
Why not install Alpine Linux? It follows the principle of minimalism and
doesn't have a lot of package bloat, like a lot of .deb based distributions.

