Canonical's Snap Packaging Switching To LZO Compression For Faster Startup Times

[jo-erlend]

Well... from my point of view snap is to slow, regardless of compression, considering apps can't even open local/remote files stored in non-supported places.

Confined snaps can open files from any location that you give them access to open files from. The GUI isn't very user-friendly in that regard, but you can simply use bind mounts.

[CochainComplex]

I suppose I have a duty to educate ...
Look at the decompression speed, which is what you want in this scenario. LZ4 blows everything else out of the water !

wait memcpy is faster :P

[jo-erlend]

Hasn't LZ4 been in the kernel since 2013 or so, and in Squashfs since 2014? https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...tem&px=MTg2MzE

"The kernel"? It's important to remember that Snap was designed to be used on Android kernels as well as Ubuntu kernels and other mainstream distros.

[CochainComplex]

About the used compression wikipedia says about Squashfs, which is used inside snaps:



So, using lz4 or zstd would have needed a newer kernel.

So this seems to be a good answer.

[CochainComplex]

I guess I mainly agree with you in this case, but in the OP's defense (and acknowledging that he was probably too quick on the draw here), maybe like many of us he's just fed up with the ubiquitous bitching about tech decisions just because Someone's Pet Thing didn't get selected. It's all the time why Qt, why not GTK? Why snap, why not flatpak? Why Linux, why not ***BSD? Not to mention the special category of whiners who always obsess about hobby projects, the more obscure the better it seems. Why GNOME, why not dwm? Why systemd, why not s6? Why Rust, why not Jai? Etc. Bottom line, people should either get a life, or get involved in the project they complain about.

I agree if it is just whining. But lzo at least in the initramfs and swap cases can be drop-in replaced by lz4 without any drawback for modern systems (not sure about arm). The purpose here is similar: speeding up / lower startuptime whilst still being compressed. It is a rather obvious choice to use lz4 whenever lzo is mentioned.
Transfering this idea to snaps is not a OT whining or whataboutism...like "i prefer Wayland why nobody uses it etc? Oh my gosh systemd is supressing us".

So having a technical discussion about the purpose is what makes this forum interesting for me. I'm learning a lot even if I disagree occessionally in such discussions.

[carewolf]

So this seems to be a good answer.

As in less than 5 years old.. So not among the supported versions.

[andre30correia]

Snap is so awfully slow!
Chromium takes forever to start on Ubuntu!
I think Ubuntu boots faster than it takes Chromium to start!

6 seconds to start

[ssokolow]

6 seconds to start

And people can configure Ubuntu to boot in less than that. :P </troll>

[geearf]

"The kernel"? It's important to remember that Snap was designed to be used on Android kernels as well as Ubuntu kernels and other mainstream distros.

For Ubuntu and other distros, wouldn't a 3.19 be old enough anyway or do they have to support really old kernels for like CentOS/Debian/etc ?
As for Android that I did not know. How common is it to use Snap there?

[jo-erlend]

For Ubuntu and other distros, wouldn't a 3.19 be old enough anyway or do they have to support really old kernels for like CentOS/Debian/etc ?
As for Android that I did not know. How common is it to use Snap there?

Snap was made in part in order to provide a universal packaging system for systems including Ubuntu touch, which used the Android kernel. If they had known in advance that they wouldn't finish Ubuntu Personal, then it's possible that they would've made it differently.

I think Android has been a greater limitation than Debian or CentOS, but I'm sure they consider them important.