The title is a quote from Mastodon. I’ve always seen dislike towards snap so I was taken back when I saw this stance. The person who wrote this was referring to Tuxedo Laptops.

What are your thoughts on this?

  • JustMarkov@lemmy.ml
    0·
    5 months ago

    Type this:

    apt install firefox

    Into your terminal on Ubuntu and you’ll see what is anti-customer.

      • JustMarkov@lemmy.mlEnglish
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        5 months ago

        You can install Firefox only as a snap on Ubuntu. There’s no native package on the official repo.

      • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
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        5 months ago

        I feel like they shot themselves in the knee. Even if it was buggy I would of still tried to use it for fun. However, when they first came out I found out about them because it caused me to be unable to work. I used apt to install a CLI tool and then the CLI tool wasn’t working. I tried to manually get it from the Ubuntu repo only to discover it was snap only.

        It really pissed me off.

  • Daeraxa@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    I think a lot of the flak directed towards snap would be mitigated if they made the backend open source. I know there are some efforts to produce alternative backends (although the one I knew about lol / lol-server seems to have gone dark).

    Another issue is Canonical’s rather strong armed and forceful approach to making people use snaps rather than the OSs native packaging system, again, not something that should be an issue in theory but when people already have a negative view of the format to start with.

    Personally I don’t really have an issue with Snaps. I’ve had more luck with them and fewer issues than Flatpaks (which I also tend to avoid like the plague) but that is probably just because I prefer to use appimages or native packages rather than having to fight the sandbox permissions and weird things it can do to apps that don’t take Snaps and Flatpaks properly into account.

    • BitSound@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      They won’t open source snaps because they want to control the snap ecosystem to make money off of it for an IPO

      • Daeraxa@lemmy.ml
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        5 months ago

        I wonder if it probably wouldn’t (or at least wouldn’t have) done any harm to do so seeing as if you look at Flatpak, its most obvious comparison, although it can have multiple remotes, Flathub is the only one that is realistically used and is the de-factor standard.

    • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      Yeah I wouldn’t hate snaps if it wasn’t for canonical saying they wouldn’t force them on people, then making apt install snaps instead of .debs without the user asking for it.

    • Shareni@programming.dev
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      5 months ago

      The more snaps you have, the slower your machine will boot. It’s uniquely shit technology that should die already.

  • hellofriend@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Snap annoys the piss outta me because of the forced updates. That said, never ever had a snap package not work for me. Whereas installing some things from apt just doesn’t work for whatever reason.

  • callcc@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I think it’s a short term vs long term debate. In the short term snaps are nice. They might help you get that software you want right now. In the long term though, it will only take away some of your rights and make you into a product.

    There are also some interesting things to say about wording. Specifically consumer vs user. Software is not consumed, it’s used and depending on the specific software, the user might be abused by the people producing and controlling the software.

  • ZWQbpkzl [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
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    5 months ago

    I have a standing fatwa on snap only because it comes installed and enabled by default on Ubuntu server. Maybe it’s good for grandmas laptop but it’s kill-on-sight in a server environment. Every Ubuntu server I’ve seen has eventually been taken offline without any warning because of snapd doing some auto update.

    Ubuntu server should have snapd disabled. Ubuntu shouldn’t be the default distro for VPS providers. AFAIK its only the default because its the distro most people might have prior experience with.

    While I’m at it, Fedora is also on my shit list as dnf requires over a gig of memory to do a major version upgrade.

  • Norah - She/They@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
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    5 months ago

    The difference comes when they actively *block* installation (just like Mint does).

    Dude’s anti-Mint as well. From a different comment, seems like he works (or worked) for Ubuntu.

    You know what seems more anti-consumer to me? Trash-talking your competition for making different choices to you with your FOSS they’re legally allowed to re-distribute with any changes they like.

    It’s almost like if people don’t prefer those changes or something then they won’t be popular? Oh wait, Mint is hugely popular…

  • sping@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
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    5 months ago

    My guess at the stance is I’d imagine it’s that switching away from snaps is switching away from Ubuntu’s support and security monitoring and updates to some less known/reliable/diligent third party?

    Popey (Alan Pope) used to work for Canonical / Ubuntu, so he’s presumably not inclined to jump on the bandwagon of Canonical/Ubuntu/snap hate since he knows a lot of Canonical and Ubuntu people and their motivations and work. Not that there aren’t good reasons to criticize snap or other Canonical decisions, but it’s also plain that a lot of people just join a hate bandwagon and don’t even know what about it they object to. There is masses of wrong-headed criticism of Canonical out there e.g. I’ve frequently seen people criticize creating Upstart, saying Canonical should have used systemd, or bzr vs git! Presumably these people were annoyed at Canonical for not inventing a time machine.

      • 0x0@programming.dev
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        5 months ago

        Didn’t bother to follow the thread?

        https://mastodon.social/@popey/112593520847827981>

        Sure. Other people can do that if they want.

        I don’t have a problem with companies bundling whatever packages they want on their distro.

        The difference comes when they actively block installation (just like Mint does). That is what is anti-consumer. It adds confusion to users as they have to go and find out what random file in /etc/ needs to be edited or removed, just to install some software. It’s stupid.

        You may disagree, that’s fine. It’s okay to not like things.

        • governorkeagan@lemdro.idOPEnglish
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          5 months ago

          Did you look at the timestamps? I posted my question here before this particular response from the OP. I asked the question on Lemmy out of interest and wanting to get a wider perspective.

          I also engaged with the OP on the thread so that I can get their perspective on their stance.

          • T (they/she)@beehaw.org
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            5 months ago

            Yeah they linked the reply I got for asking OP why he thought that and I just went there because of your thread. Seriously lol

  • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
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    5 months ago

    There already is Flatpak. Many proprietary apps are shipped as Snaps, which helps with Flatpak packaging as the binaries can just be packed into a different container.

    Snap developers kinda help with making the whole portals, isolated apps stuff work.

    But thats about it.

    • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      The Venn diagram of supported apps isn’t also a perfect circle. You can’t run VPNs as Flatpaks, and Flathub disallows CLI apps from being submitted (because the UX of using a sandboxed CLI app sucks). Snap doesn’t have these issues.

        • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
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          5 months ago

          Helix opens it’s own GUI when you run it. It’s not a CLI app in the same sense as git. I’m curious on the others you mention, since as a packager, I’ve seen firsthand CLI apps being declined (or allowed, but only with a hidden status on flathub.org)

          • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
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            5 months ago

            Interesting. Yes I had some other editor too, it opened a new terminal tab.

            There is some flatpak export bin directory where the binaries are, I think you can put that to your PATH and have a pretty good CLI experience.

      • Samueru@lemmy.ml
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        5 months ago

        because the UX of using a sandboxed CLI app sucks

        I think it is more because of this issue because as far as I know snaps have some level of sandbox and you can still use CLI apps as you said.