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I don't have a problem with snaps as a technology. If you want to use them, then who am I to judge?
But what I do have a problem with is when I don't have a choice and I am being forced to use what the distro maintainers think is good for me. That is what finally made me quit Ubuntu and switch to Fedora.
Also, Snap is proprietary. That alone is reason enough for me to steer clear.
Well snap itself isn't proprietary, the backend server distributing the snaps is.
Explain how this distinction matters in the real world?
Snap distribution is as much a part of snaps as Snapd.
Who cares that part of it is open source if other parts aren't?
I do have a problem with them, the same problem was solved, better, with other technologies like appImage (which doesn't litter your mount list with 100 meaningless entries).
Even flatpak is better, snap is an also ran they're trying to force on us without being as good as any of the competitors.
Couldn't the same argument be made for any distro? They give you what they put in their repos. If you want a deb package, use the mozillateam PPA (which is built on Canonical's hardware, same as Mozilla's snap of it).
when I don’t have a choice and I am being forced to use what the distro maintainers think is good for me.
That's the case on literally any distro.
And just like on literally any distro, you can also install Firefox from FlatPak, the Mozilla repo or from source.
Except on Ubuntu it just installs the snap regardless. If you don't pay attention you may not even realize that it is a snap. Also the snap store is controlled exclusively by one company with a questionable history.
Read my comment again:
install Firefox from FlatPak
the Mozilla repo
or from source
In none of these cases will Ubuntu be able to install it from snap instead.
Only the Firefox "package" in the Ubuntu repos actually just links to a script that installs the snap.
This is why I switched from Ubuntu to Debian.
Same here. What especially irritated me was that even though I installed the .deb firefox and followed the directions to disable snap firefox, occasionally Ubuntu went ahead and reinstalled snap firefox for me.
Ubuntu was great, until Unity debacle, when I switched to Mint DE. Few years later I returned to an Unity free Ubuntu just to be welcomed with snaps and Ubuntu pro.
For me it was when I was trying to use some Android tools and it tried to install the snap version. The snap version was broken of course.
When I first returned to Linux several years ago I started with Ubuntu, since it was the only distro I had used. I got confused when I installed Firefox and other apps via apt but instead got snap versions. This (very miniscule) gripe is enough of a reason for me to not recommend Ubuntu to new users anymore.
This is literally the reason why I switched over to Debian. At least back then, snaps wouldn't work if the home folders were not under /home/, breaking all computers on the system I helped run.
At least back then, snaps wouldn't work if the home folders were not under /home/,
Do you mean that it literally had /home/ hard-coded instead of using $HOME? That's crazy if so.
Installed ubuntu on an rpi and firefox there ran snap. Was not very usable. Everything was so slow. Forcing an install of the dep package was the only way to use it. Not very well thought through bu cannonical.
8.10 was the last good Ubuntu. (It also had the best default wallpaper ever)
If you look at the "improvements" in every release since, you'll notice that shit like they do currently isn't an accident:
9.04 integrated web services into the main user interface.
9.10 integrated Ubuntu One (Ubuntu's OneDrive, upgradable for money) by default and introduced the slooooow Ubuntu Software Center
10.04 integrated an interface to post on social media
10.10 added app purchases in the Software Center
11.04 made Unity the default
11.10 removed Gnome as fallback to Unity
12.04 introduced the buggy HUD
12.10 added the famous Amazon ad lense to it by default
and it goes on like this...
Looks like a NiN album cover.
Wait... I'm just about to switch over to Linux on a laptop and was going to use Ubuntu. This looks kind of cursed though?
Tbf, Unbuntu works, but they're ran by a company which has made some questionable choices. You can still go with it if you don't care too much, it has the advantages of being user friendly and well documented.
If you'd rather not, but you want something not too far and equally easy, you can go with Linux Mint, which is based on Ubuntu but disables snaps. They also offer differently choices of desktop environments, the default being Cinnamon (which looks a bit more like windows), and another being Mate, which is closer to Gnome.
They also have a "Debian Edition", which aims to stop being dependant on Ubuntu and may or may not replace the default edition someday, but so far it's not the one they recommend for new users.
Switching to Ubuntu is way, way better than staying on Windows.
That being said, Ubuntu is maintained by the Canonical company, and they have made some really sus decisions in the past. Things like putting Amazon ads in the application launcher and then trying to gaslight people when the inevitable backlash arrived.
The meme above refers to Canonical's own Snap packaging format (think of it like UWP/Microsoft Store apps vs. "regular" Win32 apps), and the way they're pushing for its adoption. Snap is installed by default on Ubuntu and official Ubuntu flavors. You can uninstall it manually, but Canonical has modified the APT package manager so that when an application is available as a Snap package, it automatically installs the Snap back-end and the application as a Snap package without notifying the user (instead of installing the .deb-packaged applications, which is what happens on all other distributions that use APT). Canonical recently also ordered that official Ubuntu flavors (which are maintained by independent groups) can't include Flatpak, a universal packaging format that directly competes with Snap, in their default installations.
You could try out Linux Mint¹, they're Ubuntu based and disable Snap by default².
Linux mint has no GNOME or KDE variant, so while they fix many Ubuntu issues, they are still on XOrg.
So? There's nothing preventing someone from installing either, and they're adding Wayland support to Cinnamon.
It's not as bad as it looks, especially if you aren't hardcore, but for long-term linux users it's not great.
Debian has become what Ubuntu wanted to be: An easy, clean distribution that basically just works, which is a major reversal.
Also consider fedora.
But don't be worried about Ubuntu, it's still completely usable.
Just install something else like Linux Mint or Pop OS. Ubuntu doesn't seem to want to respect your rights as a user. You do one thing and the sneakily do something else. Its a bit like how Microsoft makes Edge the default after an update.
Pick whatever looks best. It's not a big of a deal as we make it out to be.
Fedora KDE is also an awesome choice though if you must choose something else.
Ubuntu's packet manager Apt was already kind of awful in many ways, especially with its PPA hell. But them adding Snap packages somehow managed to make them reach even new levels of awful.
Installs Thunderbird snap and the dialog crashes, on 12 identical upgrades
The nextcloud snap is the best and easiest way to selfhost nextcloud.
I said it. Fight me.
The AIO docker compose container is far better, and I've run Nextcloud in pretty much every installation path in the last decade, using baremetal, my own docker, snap, NCPi, and VMs. All of them have had issues with updating, backup and the host going sideways for some reason or another. The AIO has been flawless for far longer than any of them managed.
You are 👍, nextcloud needs like 2 admin per each user. The snap version works fairly well even after a lot of virtualization layers. Proxmox -> Ubuntu LXC -> Snap -> Nextcloud
Snap could have been great. Except it wasn't very good...........
IMO the biggest issue with snaps in the sandboxing. Makes so many apps unusable for development.
One of my friends spent like a month distrohopping just to find a debian-based distro that fits these two criteria:
First-class support for KDE
Isn't broken all the time
Ubuntu fails both. KDE Neon excels on the first one, but fails harder than ubuntu on the second one. Kubuntu as well. Debian has horridly outdated packages, and he refuses to use nix/flatpak. Tuxedo OS is obscure and broken. Mint is great, but installing KDE takes some effort.
He finally settled on Ubuntu Server with the native KDE package. Still has to do some weird incantations to banish snap tho.
How did things get this bad?
Imagine flatpack did smth like this
I am against container as they are slower to start and much bigger. I think they solve the problem the wrong way. Next step is probably a VM...
Firefox have always been possible to run without container so what is the problem for all Linux distributions that containers solve? Nowadays developers have do to both... That did not less the load.
I think they solve the problem the wrong way.
My thoughts exactly 👍.
I feel like I would be more okay with this is snap didn't still have a lot of very real flaws.
