this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2024

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353

Snap bad (midwest.social)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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(page 2) 32 comments

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I have NODE installed using snap lmao. Why? Installing it the normal way just gives me tons of errors that I'm too bored to deal with. I'm sure there's a fix, but I'm too lazy to debug all that. Of course, I don't use snap node for hosting servers and stuff. I just use it for react native. Regardless, it works n I'm happy lol

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Yeah. I don't mind snap at all for cases where a better package doesn't exist.

What made me give up Ubuntu was how it railroaded me into snap versions of packages that work better, for me, as native .deb installs.

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

I never used snap, always use official repo > multilib > extra > chaotic aur > aur > flatpak > FUCK IT, I BUILD FROM SOURCE CODE FROM SHADY GITHUB REPO

[–] [email protected] 30 points 7 months ago

FUCK IT, I BUILD FROM SOURCE CODE FROM SHADY GITHUB REPO_*

I feel seen.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago (5 children)

curl shit | sudo bash is just so convenient.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] -4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

They're not forced to do so. You can install snaps locally (or provide a distribution system that treats snapd much the way apt treats dpkg), 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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (5 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 114 points 7 months ago (5 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 74 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I also hate that it creates a loopback device for every installed snap

[–] [email protected] 48 points 7 months ago

There's a lot I dislike about snap. This is the thing I hate.

[–] [email protected] 83 points 7 months ago

Yeah, who'd hate using a package manager that increasingly slows down your boot time with every package installed, or that uses a closed source store to provide you FOSS

Maybe there's a reason canonical has to force it on their users

[+] [email protected] -16 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 7 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

the thing people dislike about that is that you're silently moved from an open system to a closed-source one.

Yeah. I didn't realize I had fallen for it until I tried to automate a system rebuild, and discovered that a bunch of the snap back end seems to be closed and proprietary.

And a lot of it for no reason. Reasonable apt and flatpak alternates existed, but Canonical steered me to their closed repackaged versions.

[+] [email protected] -7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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 snapd much the way apt treats dpkg. (In fact given apt-rpm I 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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 61 points 7 months ago (1 children)

No, Debian doesn't take your apt install ... command and install a snap behind your back...

[+] [email protected] -22 points 7 months ago (8 children)

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, ffmpeg with libav.

$ apt show firefox
Package: firefox
Version: 1:1snap1-0ubuntu5
Priority: optional
Section: web
Origin: Ubuntu
Maintainer: Ubuntu Mozilla Team <[email protected]>
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.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

People using Linux should take their heads out of their asses sometimes and just let people enjoy things they way they prefer.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Heck yeah! There's so much gatekeeping and tribalism that it kinda sucks out the joy a little bit

[–] [email protected] 25 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Fuckin preach it friend!

That's the joy of Linux, the "have it your way" approach to an OS

[–] [email protected] 23 points 7 months ago (2 children)

yeah well, you can't have it your way on Ubuntu when Canonical FORCES you to use snaps (heck they even hacked apt to prefer snaps instead of debs)

[+] [email protected] -12 points 7 months ago (4 children)

These are two incredibly persistent pieces of misinformation...

Canonical provides snaps for Ubuntu. This is no more "forcing" you to use snaps than they force you to use debs, or than Fedora forces you to use flatpaks/rpms.
Apt doesn't "prefer snaps" by any means. Canonical provides transitional packages for certain packages that got migrated from debs to snaps, but the steps for using another apt repository to replace one of these transitional packages are the same as the steps for replacing any other package provided in your base repos with one from a different repository: You add the other repository, and you tell apt to prefer that repository for the specific packages.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (2 children)

If that is true, then why are deb packages provided by Canonical for Ubuntu dummied out?

Canonical FORCES you to use snaps, there is no other way to look at this.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Canonical provides transitional packages for packages that they've decided to provide as snaps. They're not forcing anyone to use snaps, they're saying "if you want the default we provide you, we're providing you with a snap." KDE Neon (my current distro, which is downstream of Ubuntu) has decided that they want to use the deb packages from packages.mozilla.org, so they provide an override. If you want to use the deb from packages.mozilla.org, you could grab KDE Neon's repository deb and install that, or just set up the mozilla repository and use the same pin file they already have.

This is like saying "Debian FORCES you to use libav" Debian moved from ffmpeg to libav for a while. No, they provided libav and made transitional packages for this drop-in replacement. Some people didn't like that and made their own ffmpeg repos, and the process for using their separate ffmpeg rather than Debian's transitional packages was the same as the process for using Firefox from a different repository. (I was one of the people used some third-party ffmpeg repositories, and I was glad when they switched back to ffmpeg and provided libav to ffmpeg transitional packages.)

Does the fact that the Ubuntu repositories don't contain Keysmith mean "Ubuntu PROHIBITS you from using Keysmith?"

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (10 children)

Canonical provides transitional packages for packages that they’ve decided to provide as snaps. They’re not forcing anyone to use snaps, they’re saying “if you want the default we provide you, we’re providing you with a snap.”

Uhm... and why does the user have to transition to snaps? Why does Canonical provide those transitional packages while there are perfectly valid debs for the same thing? Certainly not because they have a vested interest in forcing it right?

you instantly refute yourself, kudos!

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

They do not prevent you from adding repos and installing from those. They don't even try to make it slightly more difficult to do so than it was before. Microsoft force you to use edge. Cannot really disable it. Can't remove it. Can't simply switch away from it. See the difference?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I haven't kept up with Edge Shenanigans since I no longer use Windows, but the last time I used it I had no issues using Firefox instead of Edge.

Yeah sure you can add repositories to replace Canonical Sources to evade those dummied out packages, but you really really shouldn't need to do that in the first place.

So the only difference is: MS enforcement is more stringent than Canonical, but they both force their respective ways onto the user (which may or may not versed enough to actually add/remove apt repositories).