this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2024
843 points (97.5% liked)

linuxmemes

21234 readers
30 users here now

Hint: :q!

Sister communities:

Community rules (click to expand)

1. Follow the site-wide rules

2. Be civil
  • Understand the difference between a joke and an insult.
  • Do not harrass or attack members of the community for any reason.
  • Leave remarks of "peasantry" to the PCMR community. If you dislike an OS/service/application, attack the thing you dislike, not the individuals who use it. Some people may not have a choice.
  • Bigotry will not be tolerated.
  • These rules are somewhat loosened when the subject is a public figure. Still, do not attack their person or incite harrassment.
    • 3. Post Linux-related content
  • Including Unix and BSD.
  • Non-Linux content is acceptable as long as it makes a reference to Linux. For example, the poorly made mockery of sudo in Windows.
  • No porn. Even if you watch it on a Linux machine.
    • 4. No recent reposts
  • Everybody uses Arch btw, can't quit Vim, and wants to interject for a moment. You can stop now.

    • Please report posts and comments that break these rules!

    founded 1 year ago
    MODERATORS
    [email protected]
    [email protected]
    [email protected]
    843
    Snap out of it (lemmy.zip)
    submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
    178 comments fedilink hide all child comments
     

    How do you guys get software that is not in your distribution's repositories?

    you are viewing a single comment's thread
    view the rest of the comments
    [–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

    That was a fantastic explination, but you forgot to explain SNAP. Oh snap, you forgot SNAP. Intrusive though won. So what is SNAP, how does it work, and why is it bad?

    [–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

    Yeah, sorry couldn't resist.

    snaps are very similar to flatpaks and, honestly, is technically better in a lot of ways.

    Snap can be used for basically an entire system, while flatpak is limited to graphical apps. (Ubuntu core is built basically entirely off snaps.)

    Snap is controlled by canonical, and the backend for the snap repo is entirely closed source. I've heard snaps are also easier for developers to work with, but I haven't experienced that side of them.

    Snaps automatically update by default where flatpaks don't.

    Snaps also get treated as loopback devices when they're installed, which bloats a lot of utilities. (And they keep a few old versions around which makes it even worse). For example, you could run lsblk and if you're using snaps like 90% of it will be snaps you've installed instead of actual devices.

    Flatpaks are also noticeably faster to start up, which for desktop apps matters, but wouldn't really matter for a server that's aiming for a lot of uptime.

    The loopback device issue is the main reason I don't use snaps. I also like flatpak being completely open, but realistically that doesn't matter for much. There used to be an open snap store, but that shut down because nobody used it.

    [–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

    I tried to install Ubuntu and it kept uninstalling Command Center every reboot. Not a fan of SNAPs. Or Canonical. But thanks for the explination.

    [–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

    Yeah, imo the problems solved by using snaps for core system stuff are better solved with immutable distros, and I see very little reason to use snaps for anything else.