Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Policy Forming For Allowing Snaps By Default

[andre30correia]

Does Snap need more disk space?

yes, they have all dependices build inside, the good thing is you can have new app in a old system without backports. Spotify and Skype are new examples, you can install from store not need repo or download from website and since they are apart of core system make the things more secure

[Spazturtle]

Am I correct in thinking that Snaps are similar to apps on macOS which are fully self contained and do not require insatalation?

[treba]

If I get it right, snaps are better suited for servers and embedded systems. For example ubuntus live kernel patching daemon comes as a snap.
On the desktop, I see more potential in flatpak, for it's stronger sandboxing techniques

[OneBitUser]

Debian package can be very simple (you might need to change the whole directory structure to have a root permission before packaging: sudo chown -R root:root bluetoothtransfer-1.0):

http://www.hackgnar.com/2016/01/simple-deb-package-creation.html

Snaps, flatpaks etc add duplicate binary code to the system. I have tried a couple of flatpaks and they failed to run. Many Linux distributions are like win virus hoover,: resource hogs, slow, buggy and difficult to use and maintain. Modularity is they key to a good software quality.

By the way, phoronix spelling checker does not recognize the word modularity

Although I agree with most of what you say, there is one other point to consider. Namely that for proprietary software vendors, flatpak and the like are a godsend... they allow cross-distro software support and complete control over the software's runtime environment.
For OSS, like LibreOffice I wouldn't consider flatpak either, but I'm quite looking forward to GOG and Steam shipping flatpak'd software as it would solve one of the biggest butthurt of end-user software vendors. Which in turn could mean better, more extensive linux support from these companies.

[AsciiWolf]

If only they fixed their deb packages support instead. Their default GNOME Software package manager GUI does not support uninstalling unused dependencies and has many other issues.

[jacob]

If I get it right, snaps are better suited for servers and embedded systems. For example ubuntus live kernel patching daemon comes as a snap.
On the desktop, I see more potential in flatpak, for it's stronger sandboxing techniques

Actually snap has stronger sandboxing than flatpak, at least in its reference implementation on Ubuntu. It may of course be weaker in distros that support snap but where apparmor and the other security features required are not available (Arch comes to mind). The same is true for flatpak, by the way.

[jacob]

Am I correct in thinking that Snaps are similar to apps on macOS which are fully self contained and do not require insatalation?

They are like macos apps in that thry are self contained (except for frameworks and runtime environments like core, gnome-3-26 etc.) They still require installation so that the confinement and sandboxing can work.

For apps that are self contained and don't need to be installed, look at appimage.

[MoonMoon]

Although I agree with most of what you say, there is one other point to consider. Namely that for proprietary software vendors, flatpak and the like are a godsend... they allow cross-distro software support and complete control over the software's runtime environment.
For OSS, like LibreOffice I wouldn't consider flatpak either, but I'm quite looking forward to GOG and Steam shipping flatpak'd software as it would solve one of the biggest butthurt of end-user software vendors. Which in turn could mean better, more extensive linux support from these companies.

The biggest problem for those software vendors, especially game publishers, though, is that they in many cases don't react to security problems in the libraries they use. Not a problem on a system with traditional packaging systems, since the distro developers will care about the problem, but an application in such a sandbox can potentially come with insecure libraries that get never fixed. When I then see packages that are not properly sandboxed by design because they need outside-of-container access coming as Snap packages, I see Linux going down the Windows way: a conglomerate of not trustworthy libraries lying around on the system for everyone to abuse.

Nope, not interested, broken-by-design.

[Guest]

Snaps, flatpaks etc add duplicate binary code to the system.

That's pretty much why I did not like flatpaks when I tried them. it installed a separate runtime in /var/lib/flatpak/ which was more or less a duplicate of my current system.
There are also more practical ways to control what software can and cannot do without the hassle of duplication or over exaggerating defensive security.

[Guest]

The biggest problem for those software vendors, especially game publishers, though, is that they in many cases don't react to security problems in the libraries they use. Not a problem on a system with traditional packaging systems, since the distro developers will care about the problem, but an application in such a sandbox can potentially come with insecure libraries that get never fixed. When I then see packages that are not properly sandboxed by design because they need outside-of-container access coming as Snap packages, I see Linux going down the Windows way: a conglomerate of not trustworthy libraries lying around on the system for everyone to abuse.

Nope, not interested, broken-by-design.

This pretty much sums it up. I moved from Windows to Linux in the early XP days because Linux didn't have duplication and instead had proper package management. It will be bad to see Linux regress to Windows state.