Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Looks To Drop Its Partner Archive In Favor Of The Snap Store

[dremon_nl]

Some observation points snaps vs flatpaks. I've been using both for years. This is non-technical, purely from user perspective. I don't care about the excellence of sandboxing implementation, open-sourceness of app repository or political licensing issues.

Snaps integrate much better with the desktop environment, for example themes, HiDPI support, filesystem access.
For example the VSCode installed from flathub shows a warning: "This version is running inside a container and is therefore not able to access SDKs on your host system!"
And then it requires a pain in the ass process of setting it up properly by fiddling around with flatpak "SDKs", especially when some non-standard toolchains are used. I don't really want to know what is "flatpak SDK" and how to set it up. I have no time and desire for this.
With snaps it just works.

Another issue - theme integration. GTK flatpaks require some ugly manual workarounds to be integrated (more or less) into Plasma desktop, otherwise they don't look good at all. Aesthetic look and feel is important if Linux desktop is to be competitive rather than amateurish DIY garbage.

Flatpaks use namespaces so running a command requires typing something like "flatpak run com.acme.whatever.SomeName" or setting up an alias manually in the shell startup script. While I can understand the rationale behind the namespaces it's mostly made for publisher convenience while I'd prefer user convenience.

Snaps used to be very slow in startup but it's improved considerably recently. Flatpaks don't have this issue.

Popular flatpak-published apps are mostly repackaged and often maintained by volunteers rather than publishers themselves. So they lag behind in updates. Example: Spotify client.

Last, but not least, how can I display detailed app information from the remote repository before installing it?
For example "flatpak remote-info flathub com.visualstudio.code" only spews some technical info while "snap info code" shows a user-friendly description.

[zexelon]

Wow... the smell of this threasspit (yah... terrible portmanteau of thread and cesspit...) can be had a hundred km away... Haven't seen this since Nvidia announced their "open source" endeavors (which yah... that was the joke of the year).

All in all though... its a rather pointless topic... WSL2 is making any Linux desktop discussion irrelevant sadly... Maybe snaps work for the server, but even there I think they are a pointless waste of resources. I have used them several times and found them to be deeply painful. If you have a use case for snaps in a server environ, probably docker would be better and faster!

If you have a use case for snaps on the desktop... you dont... just use Windows with WSL2...

Now time to jump off the soap box

[jo-erlend]

Quality control is key there, Though at times I don't think Microsoft and/or Apple fully understand the term 'Quality Control'.

There is no doubt that Snapd is a work in progress and that the most basic features are more mature than the most advanced. But that's just Linux; things take time and you have to start somewhere if you want to get anywhere.

[DanL]

The partner archive repository is the first thing I disable after I install Ubuntu.

Why would that be the first thing you do to an Ubuntu install? Other than making "apt-get update" a tiny bit faster, it doesn't accomplish much. I could think of a lot of other things to do to an install before that.

[jo-erlend]

Why would that be the first thing you do to an Ubuntu install? Other than making "apt-get update" a tiny bit faster, it doesn't accomplish much. I could think of a lot of other things to do to an install before that.

Was the partner repo ever even activated by default?

[franglais125]

jo-erlend Personally I dislike, avoid and never recommend Snaps to anyone, out of principle.

The sleazy way in which Canonical presented them to the community was quite dishonest ("new universal format for all distros", heavily implying everyone was in).

The other important reason is the closed-source nature of the repository, fully opaque to any user.
Yes, I'm fully aware that I can make my own repository, which would make my store empty and useless. This is a non-argument.


The reason I'm quoting you is my disbelief in your wanting to defend Canonical at all costs. At this point I doubt you are impartial.

[jo-erlend]

jo-erlend Personally I dislike, avoid and never recommend Snaps to anyone, out of principle.
The sleazy way in which Canonical presented them to the community was quite dishonest ("new universal format for all distros", heavily implying everyone was in).

Do you think that a normal person who did not already hate Canonical would see it that way? I certainly don't.

The other important reason is the closed-source nature of the repository, fully opaque to any user.

Can you name a distro that allows their users to log onto their web-servers in order to inspect how the web server is run? Debian and Fedora obviously run their systems as proprietary services that are fully opaque to users, but you don't hate them, so you are not holding it against them.

Yes, I'm fully aware that I can make my own repository, which would make my store empty and useless. This is a non-argument.

This is exactly the same for all Linux distributions. If you wanted to, you could just download all snap packages from Canonical's store and distribute them from your own server. But I wonder why you want to make a Linux distribution if you have no intention of doing any packaging? That's what distributions do; they package and distribute software.

Again, it seems fairly obvious that what you are trying to do, is invent reasons to defend your pre-existing hatred. But trying to sell the idea that the snap format is bad because it doesn't automatically generate packages, is a really desperate and weird attempt.

The reason I'm quoting you is my disbelief in your wanting to defend Canonical at all costs. At this point I doubt you are impartial.

It is always the moderates who are the fanatical extremists. Right? People who consider actual facts are totally crazy?

[leo_sk]

I still like how they handle that. Yeah, it may not be ideal, but... I find myself going to the snap store to get up to date packages, and avoid the ubuntu repos most of the time, so I don't think droping the partner archive is a bad decision.

Snap get a lot of hate, and I keep reading it as:
"a random, often anon, internet user complaining about things they don't understand, or that they understand but have no intention to fix with their own time"

which I honestly couldn't care less. It's been making my life easier, and that's all that matters to me right now.

You are using a solution specifically applicable to ubuntu like distros, because they use a software update/distribution model that is crap in the first place. Pick a distro like arch, and snaps become an inconvenience

[mppix]

Snaps are really great, as was Upstart. Mir is still a great product that is doing well.

Snaps, mir, and upstart have been all great... just worse than what the rest of the Linux community collectively worked on and predominantly adopted.

It is kind of sad.

[jo-erlend]

You are using a solution specifically applicable to ubuntu like distros, because they use a software update/distribution model that is crap in the first place. Pick a distro like arch, and snaps become an inconvenience

There is still the security aspect. Manually securing Arch Linux is a serious pain, which is why almost nobody actually does it. With the severe security bugs we've seen in modern times, people should start caring about system security. Having an uninvited root user running around your system is not a small thing.