
Ask HN: Thoughts on the universal Linux packages called “snaps”? - pablo-massa
I noted that Ubuntu&#x2F;Canonical is pushing Snaps recently but don&#x27;t hear much discussion about it, I see it as an &quot;Electron for Linux distributions&quot; (not necessarily in a bad way), sounds good for the Linux ecosystem!<p>How about performance?, anyone have experience working with this as a developer? (I&#x27;m a designer), share your thoughts!<p>I recently installed the Spotify Snap [1] on Ubuntu and was really easy and works flawlessly.<p>Snaps Wikipedia entry: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Snappy_(package_manager)<p>Snaps website: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;snapcraft.io&#x2F;<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.spotify.com&#x2F;t5&#x2F;Desktop-Linux&#x2F;Spotify-now-has-a-Snap-package-as-well&#x2F;td-p&#x2F;4220931
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mariuolo
There's also Flatpak on openSUSE (inter alia).

Personally, I'm torn. This will introduce the possibility for developers to
distribute self-contained applications like dmg on OSX, but it will also
create potential security problems.

Since the code won't be vetted by the distro maintainers, each "blobbing"
system will have to ensure proper sandboxing and it will be up to
authors/distributors that included libraries are kept up to date with regard
to vulnerabilities.

On the other hand, many less expert users will be able to simply download and
use their favourite program without much fuss. Moreover, applications that
can't be built on OSes on account of library versions will simply carry their
dependencies around.

