Laser

Everyone should use what suits them best. My negative opinion on snaps doesn't mean Ubuntu shouldn't ship it or that users shouldn't use it. It's Canonical's distribution, they can put into it whatever they want for all I care, and if users are happy with it, good for them. But I can still criticize it for perceived issues. (Edit: kind of a straw man since nobody said I couldn't, I just wanted to stress that I'm not authoritative on the matter)

But I understand that Ubuntu isn’t for you if you want to avoid snaps.

I used Ubuntu in the past, from I think 2004 or maybe 2005 to 2008, but switched away because of other issues that I don't remember anymore, but I do remember upgrades between major versions were always pain with an Nvidia card (this was before AMD or in the beginning even ATI cards were well-usable under Linux) and I honestly just prefer rolling release nowadays. But snaps are just not at all compelling anyways.

All that follows is my personal opinion, but for ease of writing, I'm gonna present it as facts.

Once you have grasped the advantage that Nix offers, all the fundamentally different solutions just seem s o inferior. When I first tried NixOS on a decommissioned notebook, the concept immediately made sense. Granted, I didn't understand the language features very well – I mostly used it for static configuration with most stuff just written verbatim in configuration.nix, though I did use flakes very early on because of Lanzaboote. But just the fact that you had a central configuration in a single language that was able to cross-reference itself across different parts of the system absolutely blew me out of the water. I was a very happy and content Arch user, even proficient enough to run my own online repository that built from a clean chroot for AUR packages (if you use Arch with AUR packages on multiple systems, check out the awesome aurutils!), but after seeing the power of NixOS in action, I switched over all my machines as soon as I could - desktop, virtual servers (thanks nixos-anywhere!), main notebook and NAS.

People often praise the BSDs for their integrated approach – NixOS manages to bring that approach to Linux. Apart from GUIX System that I never tried because Secure Boot was a requirement when I last looked at other distributions, none of them have tackled the problem that NixOS solves, and it's not even certain if they actually understand it. Conceptually, it plays on a whole different level. No more unrecoverable systems, even with broken kernels – just boot the previous configuration. Want to try changes without any commitment? nixos-rebuild test got you. Need an app quick? nix shell nixpkgs#app it is.

Plus the ecosystem is just fantastic. The aforementioned nixos-anywhere really helps with remote provisioning, using disko to declaratively setup filesystems and mounts, you have devenv which is a really good solution for development environments, both regarding reproducibility and features, and many more that I can't mention here. There is nothing comparable, and the possibilities are unlike in any other ecosystem.

It's not perfect for sure though, and documentation is sparse. The language concepts which allow one to "unlock" the most powerful features are different from what most people know.

I was lucky enough to have some downtime at work to get into the system a bit deeper (this was still for work though, just not my core skillset) by implementing a "framework" for our needs which forced me to not just copy and paste stuff, though I definitely did get inspired from other solutions, but to actually better understand the module system (I think?), thinking in attribute sets, writing your own actual modules, function library and so on. But in the end, it was definitely worth it, and I'm unaware of any other system that would allow what Nix and NixOS allowed me to build.

I don't like snaps because it's just another Canonical NIH thing. Everyone else agreed on flatpak which seems to have a good design with portals and all and being fully open.

On the other hand, you have snaps, which is being controlled by Canonical as the server component is l non-public. The packages sometimes work worse than normal debs and the flatpak version (steam being a notable example IIRC).

There is 0 motivation for me as a user to look into that. They have solved the problem in one of the worst ways possible. Even Mint, which is Ubuntu's biggest downstream, has opted against including it by default.

In addition to all of that, Canonical also installs applications as snap when using the apt\£* command line tools.

So you have a system that is

• proprietary
• worse than the alternatives
• pushed on users even through unexpected channels

Ubuntu's mission was always to build bridges between the user and tech and businesses that the gnu side of Linux wouldn't.

Which bridge did they build with snaps?

It's a good just works distro that has spawned a ton of just works distros

Which in turn have removed snaps by default and replaced the affected packages with native ones because it often didn't "just work"

And people say this election was all bad /s

It's like every generation loses the ability to do something in computer technology that was just abstracted away somehow. I as a millennial have never soldered a PC mainboard (modding an Xbox doesn't count), but I'd say that otherwise, my understanding is pretty good. And I think all of my friends understand the concepts of files.

I recently asked someone about 10 years older if he knew what partitioning and formatting means in the context, and he knew, despite initially saying he has no clue about computers, to show someone 10 years younger (who didn't know) that such knowledge was just basically required back in the day. And it's not like these terms are obsolete, the concepts are still the same, even though we went from MBR to GPT and from FAT32 or whatever to better filesystems. It's no different for phones, but not required and even hidden.

I'd say generally, the technology userbase broadened while average knowledge in the group declined, however I'm not sure whether the absolute numbers of people with a certain knowledge level actually went down.

They won't because this would require a trial where rich people wouldn't benefit, which is a waste of government resources, which goes against the Department of Government Efficiency's goals. More efficient to throw these poor souls' families under the bus.

Yeah, but if I'm not mistaken not because they're the same architecture, but because each WiiU had full Wii hardware inside it, so it was actually two consoles. The Wii was actually just a faster GameCube.

Right? It's like they're not even trying. Everyone knows you need at least a hundred machines

Oh yes, of course this was pure misogyny. Plain and simple

Yeah, TED as far as know invites you to present, TEDx you pay for a platform to talk on... which shows how much people value your message.

I don't want to argue against the concept and actually believe that the amount paid here is too low. What I tried to point out is that determining a good amount is difficult and arguing with work makes the matter more complicated.

The more pressing issue would be to make child daycare actually available.

#1 Bestselling Author of The Six Habits

Notice how Bestselling refers to author, not the book, and with her probably being the only author, she can prefix it with any superlative she wants.

CEO of Vision Advertising

Imagine calling yourself CEO unironically for the maybe 3 person gig you're running to have some overpaid management fill their calenders with instead of doing actual work.

TEDx Speaker

This is not the flex you think it is

America's Happiness Coach

Complains about other travelers... preemptively.