Ubuntu Snaps: Universally Helping Linux or Snapocalypse?

22 thoughts on “Ubuntu Snaps: Universally Helping Linux or Snapocalypse?”

• Sigh. You guys lose me when you continue to defend a tech, and a publisher of same, that a) has issues b) demonstrably has been a laggard at addressing these issues c) Canonical's anti-community stance towards snap distribution, d) confinement not working on most non-ubuntu distributions, e) continued issues with security at a fundamental level…

  Flatpak is better in all of these concerns, even if it isn't perfect.

• I don't hate Snaps, not anymore, but I prefer to avoid them whenever possible.

• Michael's talk about size and dependencies of Snap compared to Deb really stood out to me. He really just either forgot or ignored one of the biggest perks of the classic package system. Different applications can share those dependencies and you don't need to package a copy of them with every application.

  Even without that what he was talking about applies to all of these formats.

  So much of this failed to give me a reason to want to use Snap over Flatpak. It just felt like apologizing and saying "No really they're not so bad", and I'm willing to listen but not one point gives me a reason to look at them more positively than Flatpaks. I think Snaps are entirely redundant and this video couldn't give me a single reason to think otherwise, and I was hoping it would. I don't use any of these formats so I wanted to fill in my understanding.

  DL, you guys say stuff I don't agree with pretty often but I can usually see where you're coming from and it's all good.
  This just felt wrong. It felt like shilling. I don't think it was but that's how it feels, and you guys are better than that.

• I don't know why you guys keep saying Flathub is the only remote? Elementary OS have their own remote that they use to highlight heir own apps, it was also the one active by default. For so long Fedora also had their own remote instead of Flathub. If I recall you guys actually discussed that before?
  At any case, the argument seems weird to me even if there was only Flathub. Open Source provides the possibility of doing something different if a given software or company started acting shady. The possibility itself tends to often keep that project in check and also provide choices even if no fork exist as of yet. We can't say open source doesn't matter because no one forked this or that project or used this or that remote.

• If Snap is installed on distros other than Ubuntu, its sandboxing silently does not work. It is dangerous and unprofessional.

• Snap: how to copy 1GB of an outdated entire Linux distro into each and every application. And with snap, two users cannot even use one snap on the same machine. You even need to different containers or virtual machines to run two copies of snap for two different users. It is just the mindset of systemd and Wayland.

• I like snaps, but if I had to critique, then there is one thing I can express. I wish snaps was supported by app developers themselves. A lot of snaps is made by snapcrafters and some are work great. But sometimes there is multiple snaps of same app made by devs themselves and some random contributor or worse case with multiple random contributors and non of them maintain that app.

• While I understand your position regarding the potential contribution of volunteerism to accessibility challenges in Linux, I must respectfully disagree on some points. As a person with a disability who has also utilised Linux for two decades, I believe the issue extends beyond a simple lack of care from "volunteers."

  It's true that many hardcore Linux users favour command-line interfaces (CLIs) and arcane shortcuts, often neglecting the accessibility needs of a diverse user base. While this may not stem from explicit ableism, a certain "techno-centrism" within the community inadvertently overlooks alternative means of interaction. This is evident in the historical development of desktop environments (DEs) like KDE and GNOME, which, while visually stunning today, initially lacked the polish and intuitiveness necessary for broader accessibility.

  However, focusing solely on visuals misses the core accessibility challenges faced by users with motor impairments, such as yourself. While text-to-speech (TTS) tools cater to visual limitations, speech-to-text (STT) capabilities are crucial for individuals with Cerebral Palsy. The existing availability of STT apps on Android demonstrates the feasibility of such functionality in Linux. Yet, integrating these features requires a shift in perspective within the community, prioritizing inclusive design principles and actively seeking input from users with diverse needs.

  To wind up while volunteerism may play a role in the current state of Linux accessibility, attributing the issue solely to "nerdism" or lack of caring is too simplistic. Addressing this gap requires a multifaceted approach, actively promoting inclusive design principles, fostering collaboration with users with disabilities, and porting readily available solutions like STT tools to the Linux ecosystem. Only through such concerted efforts can Linux truly live up to its ideals of inclusivity and empowerment for all users.

• Steam got frustrated when people report bugs when it's only on snap package becuz steam can't do anything to fix it.

• One thing in relation to accessibility that I'd like to see improved is the lock key notification. I'd like to see a unique sound for on and off on the Caps lock num lock and scroll lock keys. You can customize notification sounds in KDE, but I'd like to see something made by default in Gnome and just all DE's.

  Edit: replaced control lock with caps lock

• Precisamente estoy esperando a la inmutable de ubuntu con Snap como condicion para usar este sistema junto con windows, es lo bueno de ser libre, que tengo derecho a escoger lo que mas me guste no lo que le guste a otros.😀

• Y'all keep saying there is only one flatpak store, when that is not true at all. Several distros have their own flatpak repos, such as system76. My issue with snaps is more so that the only people who want you to use them is Canonical. Look at all the Ubuntu derivatives such as popOS and elementary, they all prefer flatpak over snaps. For me, I am an arch user, so I don't really use either very much.

• Michael your right it was 2015 in Back to the Future 2 about the hoverboard

• No snaps or flatpaks on KDE neon. Kind of forced instead off forced? Because sudo apt install firefox, installs the snap on Ubuntu🤔

• snap out off it!!!

• 👎

• Nice red hat hat Ryan

• I do. I disliked that Ubuntu did that to begin with. I also disliked Ubuntu because despite the fact I was a redhat and mandrake guy from way back all my friends did Ubuntu, and I hated their interface and i hated they had went more mainstream, and I hated the telemetry, and I hated all that other stuff. It left a bad taste in my mouth. And if everyone is going "Yeah I got into this, but I'm not giving yours a chance even though you've been preaching at me forever, but instead I am doing this other thing…" It tends to sour me on it too. You have points, I just…. It irritated me to no end. I've thought about giving it a try on an alternate laptop again after awhile but.. we will see.

  Far as the other stuff go, on most things I give it a chance much later unless I've already learned a new thing I can make do what I want and then … tend to get stuck in what I like and already know.

• lsblk

• I was warming up to Snaps, then turns out it's been causing problems for Valve as Canonical packaged Steam as snaps and then marked it as official even though it's not from Valve, leading to snaps-only bugs being reported upstream. The biggest apt issues I've heard has been with installing Steam – see LTT Linux challenge and others have had similar issues as well.

  This isn't just a Valve issue too. The management of snapcraft made it so that the FSearch had to shipped crippled, which causes feature disparity that eventually he didn't want to deal with.

  For me, the point of Snaps is in bringing proprietary stuff into Linux ecosystem. But, until it managed to reach the endgame of bringing Adobe into Linux, I view Snaps as getting in the way of having one definitive format for all of Linux for devs to target- something thay Flathub is well ahead in and people already liked. More proper parity between distro as well – Snaps is very much Ubuntu-first in comparison which makes it worse at solving the universal Linux package issue

  I liked snaps in server environment, but even in that matter it's falling behind Nix which allows you to customize a lot of things. I don't even know if snaps allows installing of explicitly older version, whereas the configurability of Nix is both comprehensive and legible with Options.

  I just think Snaps is inferior and it's only there because it's the default in the most popular Linux distro, not because it's genuinely the best at anything beyond pulling certain proprietary apps which, until it pulls in Adobe, I'm not going to forgive its existence getting in the way of a proper targettable universal Linux format.

• One of my concerns about snap is the sandboxing. The sandboxes for snaps, even the ones maintained by Canonical, are so open. So many snaps (like Firefox or Steam) have access to your home directories. Trying to change the sandboxes to be more locked down is also annoying.

  On the flatpak side, stuff is typically more locked down by default. And there's also a fantastic tool called Flatseal that makes it easy for me to globally block all apps from having host, home, IPC, X11 access and then I can manually grant apps the permissions they need to function.

• The main problem with Snaps is that Flatpaks exist. Flatpaks offer a better user experience overall and they've seen much wider adoption in the Linux desktop ecosystem. It's obvious that Canonical are sailing against the wind with Snaps. Snaps are a great packaging format for server applications (the Nextcloud snap is awesome) and maybe it's time for Canonical to focus on that use case and adopt Flatpaks for desktop applications instead of needlessly adding yet more fragmentation.

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