Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS Delayed Due To An OEM Install Issue Leading To Broken Snaps

[lyamc]

The teams behind apt, yum, dnf, zypp, urpmi, pacman, slat-get, smart, flatpack, snap, etc need to be put in a room

I agree, either pick the best one out of technical merits or make something new that everything else targets. Too much duplicated work because everyone does it their own way

[wertigon]

I agree, either pick the best one out of technical merits or make something new that everything else targets. Too much duplicated work because everyone does it their own way

Or, we as users could converge on a single mainstream distro and use that. Ubuntu was very close to reach critical mass but then blew it, but I have a feeling we will get a new desktop done right distro soon-ish and then that distro will possibly clobber everything else to niche. Two strong contenders are Pop! and SteamOS, others might rise to the challenge though. Time will tell.

If a distro should rise with 60%+ market share, that will be enough mass to pull all development to that distro.

[patrick1946]

Note that LSB itself stopped being worked on, but I did read something about more and more distros being interested at least in API and ABI compatibility, so maybe the spirit of LSB is still alive.

As a developer I can say ABI is snake oil. It does not guaranty behavior compatibility. This is maybe working for libc but Qt for example breaks their behavior between releases. In that case I want my compilation to fail too. Something you get for free from Flatpak!

[ssokolow]

Or, we as users could converge on a single mainstream distro and use that. Ubuntu was very close to reach critical mass but then blew it, but I have a feeling we will get a new desktop done right distro soon-ish and then that distro will possibly clobber everything else to niche. Two strong contenders are Pop! and SteamOS, others might rise to the challenge though. Time will tell.

If a distro should rise with 60%+ market share, that will be enough mass to pull all development to that distro.

The Freedesktop runtime that Flatpak offers and bases things like its GNOME and KDE runtimes on top of is intended to provide some of that by playing a role analogous to the Steam Runtime and, like other Freedesktop projects, it's intended to be a distro-agnostic thing all the DE's can agree to share.

[ssokolow]

I use a few Flatpak apps with browser integration (Firefox) without issue. Is this a problem with Chrome?

My understanding is that, currently, if you're using a Flatpak'd browser and a Flatpak'd app and they integrate using the WebExtensions native messaging API, then one or both of them has hacked around the problem.

(eg. As I remember, Firefox currently grants filesystem=home and that papers over a lot of shortcomings. I don't use native messaging integrations, so I wouldn't know, and I used Flatseal to rework things to apply my "network access XOR access to shared regions of the filesystem" policy.)

[some_canuck]

I'd be fine with snaps if they weren't so slow... it's not just firefox but the gnome shell too.

I hate to shill youtubers, but Titus really hits the nail on the head here...

[ssokolow]

I hate to shill youtubers, but Titus really hits the nail on the head here...

Re: The Snap store being a proprietary thing: I am honestly curious to see whether the new EU laws meant to force-enable competing app stores for iDevices will have any effect on how easy it is to switch snapd over to an alternative package source.

I can't even remember if you can change the source without recompiling it and, last I checked, it was designed as an all-or-nothing thing where the client would only pull from a single upstream repo and, if you wanted to use both Ubuntu's store and your own package source, your source would have to proxy/mirror the packages you wanted.

[peterl]

Gonna call utter BS on this. "Normal" people don't use desktop Linux as a rule (save a bare few who were introduced by a techy friend or family member). They use Windows. They install a program, and unless that program has an auto-update function they never update it again until they buy a new computer or replace a storage device. How do I know? Cuz I have supported more than enough Average Joes that don't even know updates are a thing on desktops, and they really hate it when they have to update anything including their phones. That's the vast majority of computer users by far which makes them the norm.

As such, they'd be perfectly fine with the basic LTS install, if they could actually use it, because they literally wouldn't have to think about dealing with any of it. Their program would only get a security fix, or the rare serious bug fix and that's it. It's UI would never change for the life of the LTS install - and that's what the majority of "normal" people want. As such, flatpak, snap, etc aren't for normal people. They're for people that like to have the latest single applications without potentially sacrificing the stability of the entire Linux system - not normal people. Not even close.

I prefer appimages when I can get them, but all of these systems are a kludge to fix the problem with the breakneck pace of individual FLOSS development without breaking people's basic every day OS functionality on a largely static base. Funny how the BSD, Windows, and MacOS people figured out how to make this work while Linux desktop and server is still flailing around chasing kludge after kludge. (And the BSD folks having to work around Linux kludges.)

I might not be normal person, after using linux for more then 20 years, but I still do not want to be manually fixing packaging mess as in the case when I updated LTS Kubuntu 20.04 to 22.04 two days ago. It took me few hours and persuaded me even more that flatpak/snap is something linux needed years ago and whole linux desktop usage could be much higher, imo. Two reasons why packaging is not good for desktop:

1. Complexity - as pointed out in message you called utter BS, dependency tracking packaging requires lots of effort and it also solves hard problem - mangers introduced meta packages, tasks, versioning schemes, etc. And even specific workarounds for different packages and situations - so if you as a user (normal or experienced) end up trying to fix it, you basically need all knowledge of distribution maintainer. Or to go blind and hope for the best. All this is just waste of time that can be spent better. I completely agree with AmericanLocomotive on this.
2. Makes it hard to provide commercial/closed source/often updated applications - and normal users do have need for that. firefox be just one example.

[Ironmask]

I might not be normal person, after using linux for more then 20 years, but I still do not want to be manually fixing packaging mess as in the case when I updated LTS Kubuntu 20.04 to 22.04 two days ago. It took me few hours and persuaded me even more that flatpak/snap is something linux needed years ago and whole linux desktop usage could be much higher, imo. Two reasons why packaging is not good for desktop:

1. Complexity - as pointed out in message you called utter BS, dependency tracking packaging requires lots of effort and it also solves hard problem - mangers introduced meta packages, tasks, versioning schemes, etc. And even specific workarounds for different packages and situations - so if you as a user (normal or experienced) end up trying to fix it, you basically need all knowledge of distribution maintainer. Or to go blind and hope for the best. All this is just waste of time that can be spent better. I completely agree with AmericanLocomotive on this.
2. Makes it hard to provide commercial/closed source/often updated applications - and normal users do have need for that. firefox be just one example.

To be fair, apt is an absolute mess and what drove me away from Linux (even if I knew other package managers/distros, I was just fed up at that point).
I'm excited for NixOS, it actually sounds like a sane way to handle this issue instead of the insanity of snap/flatpak. I haven't had the free time to try it yet but Nix sounds amazing.

[Danny3]

I wonder when they will finally ditch the Snap crap...