It’s a shame that snaps are forced to use Canonicals closed source backend because they are really good, and a fully snap system is a very compelling idea for immutable systems
They’re not forced to do so. You can install snaps locally (or provide a distribution system that treats
snapdmuch the wayapttreatsdpkg), or you can point snapd at a different store. The snap store API is open and documented, and for a while there was even a separate snap store project. It seems to have died out because despite people’s contention about Canonical’s snap store, they didn’t actually actually want to run their own snap stores.I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. It makes perfect sense that Cannonical made it’s own proprietary package ecosystem and while technically anyone can build their own snap store, ain’t nobody got time for that.
Because people who just want their daily Two Minutes’ Hate rather than actually having nuanced takes.
Now also throw GNU Guix, Homebrew and some AppImages in there
Thread made by canonical employee
Lol imagine a canonical employee using nixos
I think most snap haters mostly hate, that Canonical forces snap upon them, an wouldn’t hate so much about it if they had the choice.
Thanks to snap I switched to arch. It gave a linux beginner so much drive to learn the terminal and install a harder os lol. The firefox snap was the worst shit.
Isn’t that kinda the same with, for example, Fedora and Flatpaks? Or Debian and debs? Or Ubuntu and debs? Or Fedora and rpms?
The packaging system that your distro provides gets you the packages you get. For a small number of packages that were a maintenance nightmare, Ubuntu provides a transitional debs to move people over to the snaps (e.g. Firefox, Thunderbird), but if you want to get it from another repo, you can do exactly what KDE Neon does by setting your preferences.
the thing people dislike about that is that you’re silently moved from an open system to a closed-source one.
Debian’s .deb hosting is completely open and you can host your own repository from which anyone can pull packages just by adding it to the apt config. fedora, suse, arch, same thing.
only Canonical can host snaps, and they’re not telling people how the hosting works. KDE seems to upload their packages to the snap store for Neon, judging from their page.
also, crucially, canonical are not the ones doing the maintenance for those apt packages. the debian team does that.
While Canonical’s particular snap store implementation is closed source, all of the client software as well as the store API are open, and snap isn’t even tied to using snaps from their store. One could easily make a client app that treats
snapdmuch the wayapttreatsdpkg. (In fact givenapt-rpmI think it would probably be feasible to quite literally use apt for that.)KDE seems to upload their packages to the snap store for Neon, judging from their page.
KDE also maintains most of the flathub.org packages for KDE apps. Not sure what the point is here.
canonical are not the ones doing the maintenance for those apt packages. the debian team does that.
This is wrong in two ways. First, Canonical are the primary employers of a lot of Debian developers, including to do Debian maintenance or development. This includes at least one of the primary developers of apt. Canonical also upstreams a lot of their work to Debian. Second, of the three (!) whole packages that Canonical decided to make transitional packages to the snap, none were coming from upstream Debian. Firefox was being packaged by Mozilla (and Mozilla were the ones who decided to move it to the snap), Thunderbird’s package had been something Canonical was packaging themselves due to the Debian/Mozilla trademark dispute that they never moved back to syncing from Debian due to technical issues with the port, and Chromium was, at least at the time, remaining frozen at old versions in a way that was unacceptable to Ubuntu users.
Good info. thanks.
One could easily make a client app
sure, and convince people to switch. it’s been done before of course but it’s a big effort. And anyway, the main point with the closed-server issue is that it’s impossible to know what the server does other than serving packages. this is true for other package repositories to a certain extent since there’s no real guarantee that they run the source code they show, but there’s a distributed trust network there. as for the snap store, they could be doing anything in there.
KDE also maintains most of the flathub.org packages for KDE apps.
what i was trying to get at is that they’re not hosting their own thing. they do host their own flatpak repo but it seems to be only for nightlies so that point wasn’t as strong as i originally thought.
Canonical are the primary employers of a lot of Debian developers, including to do Debian maintenance or development. This includes at least one of the primary developers of apt.
that does not mean that the particular developer agrees with or even approves of the snap thing. it’s good to know though. i know they upstream, but that’s sort of the bare minimum expected of them.
i’ve not really used ubuntu desktop lately, but i’ve been hearing more complaints from friends about it deciding to install snaps instead of debs lately. steam was a big one that a friend had trouble with, and they just installed that though apt i’m pretty sure.
sure, and convince people to switch. it’s been done before of course but it’s a big effort
I agree! But this, IMO, is a better argument for how flathub.org being (theoretically) open source doesn’t actually make it any better than snapcraft.io. The technical hurdle, either of writing another snap store or of setting up a flatpak host, pales in comparison to the social hurdle of getting people to switch. Which is likely why the previous open snap store implementation died. Nobody wanted to host their own and convince people to switch, because at the end of the day there wasn’t any benefit.
that does not mean that the particular developer agrees with or even approves of the snap thing.
Never said it did, although in the particular case of the developer I mentioned, he’s also an Ubuntu Core developer, which depends entirely on snaps. I can’t imagine he’d have put himself in that position if he were particularly anti-snap
steam was a big one that a friend had trouble with, and they just installed that though apt i’m pretty sure.
Ubuntu has never had a
steampackage in their apt repos, and thesteam-installerpackage still behaves the same way as ever. Personally, I do use the Steam snap and haven’t had any issues with it, though I do know that others have.
No, Debian doesn’t take your
apt install ...command and install a snap behind your back…I don’t understand how a transitional package that installs the snap (which is documented in the package description) is any different from a transitional package that replaces, say,
ffmpegwithlibav.$ apt show firefox Package: firefox Version: 1:1snap1-0ubuntu5 Priority: optional Section: web Origin: Ubuntu Maintainer: Ubuntu Mozilla Team <ubuntu-mozillateam@lists.ubuntu.com> Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug Installed-Size: 124 kB Provides: gnome-www-browser, iceweasel, www-browser, x-www-browser Pre-Depends: debconf, snapd (>= 2.54) Depends: debconf (>= 0.5) | debconf-2.0 Breaks: firefox-dbg (<< 1:1snap1), firefox-dev (<< 1:1snap1), firefox-geckodriver (<< 1:1snap1), firefox-mozsymbols (<< 1:1snap1) Replaces: firefox-dbg (<< 1:1snap1), firefox-dev (<< 1:1snap1), firefox-geckodriver (<< 1:1snap1), firefox-mozsymbols (<< 1:1snap1) Task: ubuntu-desktop-minimal, ubuntu-desktop, kubuntu-desktop, kubuntu-full, xubuntu-desktop, lubuntu-desktop, ubuntustudio-desktop, ubuntukylin-desktop, ubuntukylin-desktop, ubuntukylin-desktop-minimal, ubuntu-mate-core, ubuntu-mate-desktop, ubuntu-budgie-desktop-minimal, ubuntu-budgie-desktop, ubuntu-budgie-desktop-raspi, ubuntu-unity-live, edubuntu-desktop-gnome-minimal, edubuntu-desktop-gnome, edubuntu-desktop-gnome-raspi, ubuntucinnamon-desktop-minimal, ubuntucinnamon-desktop Download-Size: 77.3 kB APT-Manual-Installed: no APT-Sources: http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble/main amd64 Packages Description: Transitional package - firefox -> firefox snap This is a transitional dummy package. It can safely be removed. . firefox is now replaced by the firefox snap.Well, that’s your problem for not understanding the massive difference, not mine.
If you don’t want to explain, you’re perfectly welcome to not explain. But saying what amounts to “if you don’t know I’m not telling you”, especially when you weren’t specifically asked, is a pretty unkind addition to the conversation.
One selects a different package, same source repo.
The other completely changes the installation, invisibly to the user, potentially introducing vulnerabilities.
Such as what they did with Docker, which I found less than hilarious when I had to clean up after someone entirely because of this idiocy.
The differences seem quite clear.
In both cases, the packages are owned by the same people? (Fun fact: mozilla actually owns both the Firefox snap and the firefox package in the Ubuntu repos.) I’m non sure how that “potentially introduces vulnerabilities” any more than “having a package which has dependencies” does.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to with Docker. Canonical provides both the
docker.iopackage in apt and thedockersnap. Personally I use the snap on my machine because I need to be able to easily switch versions for my development work.
you are the reason people hate Linux users, so high and mighty.
