• friend_of_satan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    1 year ago

    Snap made me switch back to Debian. Ubuntu was awesome for a long time, but having snap glommed onto everything so much that it kept showing up on my headless boxes was too much.

    • the_third@feddit.de
      6·
      1 year ago

      Package format by Canonical that sandboxes applications and packs them up including all their dependencies. Server side is closed source, thus you can’t implement a local mirror or your own snap store. Many applications are currently sandboxed in a way that makes using them cumbersome, e.g. when your home is on an NFS share.

  • BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world
    15·
    1 year ago

    Just a few days ago I wrestled with the overzealous sandboxing and security of the Chromium snap. Had to get a Flatpak and even then had to use some flags to get the proper permissions enabled. Next time I do a refresh I’m going with Debian.

      • bruhduh@lemmy.world
        8·
        1 year ago

        With all respect I’d like to ask, why most people in comments avoiding Debian like plague? It’s good OG distro, stable as fuck, i know about old packages and all, but after daily driving arch BTW™ for 5 years straight all i can say is, I’m tired boss, I’m tired of nonstop updating, I’m tired of dependency hell that coming if you didn’t updated your system for half a month, I’m tired of resolving repeating dependency hell when you’ll have to reinstall half of your system to get it work another week, I’m tired of modern filesystems that locking themselves up completely when something goes wrong, so I’m just decided to give Debian a chance, and you wouldn’t believe it, it’s heaven, when you can just power up your system and it just works, without any trouble, yes, i have dated software, but it’s worth it, and yes, 8 years ago, my first distro was Linux mint, and it broke when i used OFFICIAL GUI updater tool to update version of my mint, also I’ve upvoted your comment and don’t mean any bad

        • RogueAozame@programming.dev
          5·
          1 year ago

          Probably different experiences for some people. I don’t currently use my computer for anything time sensitive. I’m studying web development and some minor programming on it and play video games by myself generally. I like to tinker and mess with stuff as well, so Arch and KDE for me is fine. I like getting new features quickly and I don’t need or have a huge desire for the most stable system. If it breaks i just research how i can fix it and I’ve learned a lot doing that. When I do start actually working in development I’ll probably use a more stable release with Gnome. So really just comes down to different strokes for different folks.

          • bruhduh@lemmy.world
            2·
            1 year ago

            Are you me from 8 years ago?) Keep it up) it’ll help you to gain knowledge and as you’ve said someday you’ll want your pc to just work) 8 years ago I’ve started to use Linux and did alot of distro hopping, and 5 years ago i installed arch, and now i trying Debian)

        • Amends1782@lemmy.ca
          4·
          1 year ago

          Agreed to infinity and beyond. I’m already burnt out after a couple years too. Debian all the way

        • Kethal@lemmy.world
          3·
          1 year ago

          I used Debian for a bit many years ago. It was great for all the reasons you are tired of Arch (I had tried Gentoo before Debian). When Ubuntu came out, I was quite happy with it. It had the stability of Debian, but was a bit more polished and had better support for new stuff without sacrificing stability.

          I’m moving on from Ubuntu at this point, and have tried Mint, but not Mint Debian. It’s nice enough. I’m curious what Debian is like these days though. I haven’t used it in a decade at least.

          • bruhduh@lemmy.world
            3·
            1 year ago

            Debian became more polished and user friendly, you can check YouTube reviews of Debian 12, and yes) i think you should try mint Debian first because of mint flavours i only tried standard mint and don’t know how mint Debian edition do

  • stergro@feddit.de
    12·
    1 year ago

    I am a Linux user for over a decade but I have no idea what this discussion is about. Can someone give me a tldr? I install some software using apt and some using the store and never have any issues.

    • Kethal@lemmy.world
      181·
      1 year ago

      Snaps are ways to ship software where everything is bundled together and the developer doesn’t need to sort out dependencies on the distribution. This often makes the package bloated. It has no direct benefits for users, but it makes life easier for developers. Thus, indirectly, users might get access to some software they would otherwise need to compile if no one’s got it readily available for the user’s distribution. Ubuntu appears mostly to be using it because they don’t want to bother sorting out dependcies. On Ubuntu, and only on Ubuntu as fast as I know, some packages in apt will install the snap version silently, which, I think rightfully, annoys a lot of users.

      There are similar alternatives, like flatpak, which also bundle dependencies. Some aspects of snap are proprietary to Canonical, the makers of Ubuntu, so you’ll find people who are ok with the somewhat bloated software if it makes software more widely available, but aren’t happy with a proprietary format in what is largely an open community.

      • joystick@lemmy.world
        5·
        1 year ago

        Also sometimes run into weird permission problems with snaps, like with keypassxc browser integration.

      • Kethal@lemmy.world
        4·
        1 year ago

        I believe snaps are only installed by default on Ubuntu at this point. Debian has apt and I don’t think it installs a snap version unless you asked for that.

  • AphoticDev@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    9·
    1 year ago

    I get all the reasons why people hate snaps, and I think they’re all valid. And I appreciate people looking out for others and warning them about problematic software.

    But man am I lazy, and I was really happy I didn’t need to set up Docker just to run Sonarr on Bazzite. I’m pretty new to Linux, and that looked like a whole intimidating process.

  • cadekat@pawb.social
    13·
    1 year ago

    Has the meaning of this template changed? Like isn’t the pink guy supposed to be a thing supporting the white dude so they can accomplish a goal they couldn’t have done alone?

    For example, the pink guy could be “Debian”, the white person “Ubuntu”, and the yellow goal “Being an awesome distribution”.

      • BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 year ago

        What’s your alternative? I’ve used OpenRC before and it was nice, but it didn’t take long to find a use-case that systemd handled easily but OpenRC made difficult. Also a few packages expect systemd to be present and either fail to install or partially install so I had to figure out how to implement the missing functions in OpenRC.

    • Jumuta@sh.itjust.works
      10·
      1 year ago

      why? Do you mean “like” as in you’d rather have them than not, or that you think they’re a good way to package apps?

      • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
        61·
        1 year ago

        I think they’re a good way to package apps. Superior to Flatpak for sure. I like Flatpak too and if Canonical abandoned Snap tomorrow, I’d switch my snap-packaged apps to Flatpak. The only non-bullshit downside of Snap is the proprietary server-side and the lack of multi-repo support. I don’t care much about either because I know implementing either is fairly uncomplicated and it will happen should the reason arise. If Debian wanted to start using Snap, it’d take them a month to get the basics working with their own server side. If the client side was proprietary too, I’d have had a completely opposite opinion on Snap. Finally Canonical supplies all the software on my OS. I use third party repos only when absolutely necessary. If Canonical ran a proprietary apt server side, I wouldn’t even know, apt doesn’t care. Some of the myriad HTTP mirrors could easily be running on IIS, or S3, or Nexus. The trust equation for snap is equivalent.

        • NateNate60@lemmy.world
          91·
          1 year ago

          Oh boy, what a brave opinion to post. I respect that. I’m curious though, on your reasons for why you believe Snap to be superior to Flatpak.

          • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
            53·
            1 year ago

            Because you can package and deploy OS components with it. As a result you can build an OS with it, do foolproof updates of it and …gulp, happy tear… rollback components without involving any other system like a special filesystem.

            My bravery comes from being a software guy that’s been doing OS software development for over a decade so I believe my opinion is somewhat informed. 😂 I’m currently working on a software updates implementation for an automotive OS.

            • NateNate60@lemmy.world
              6·
              1 year ago

              I think this is just a difference in the use case. Flatpaks are designed for desktop applications while Snap was initially designed for exactly the purpose you describe.

              • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
                7·
                1 year ago

                The initial use case for Snap, when it used to be called Click (circa 2012-13), was mobile apps for Ubuntu Touch. Those were the same as desktop Qt apps, just using the a mobile theme and layout. Canonical developers just had the foresight to create a design that isn’t limited to that use case. As a result Snap is a superset of Flatpak in terms of use cases. Flatpak can probably be rearchitected to match that if anyone cared. If that were the case I’d also be drumming it up.

                The funny thing is, we wouldn’t be having any of these discussions over the merits of Snap if RedHat came up with it instead of Canonical and the server side was OSS from the get go. When RedHat was cool that is. In fact likely Canonical would have been using thet too. Just like they use PulseAudio, Systemd, and Wayland.

        • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          1 year ago

          The only non-bullshit downside of Snap is the proprietary server-side and the lack of multi-repo support.

          I think most people agree on that point, but believe that it’s a big enough one to be a deal-breaker.

          In what way is Snap superior enough to Flatpak to outweigh that downside?

        • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
          1·
          1 year ago

          I think they’re a good way to package apps.

          Tell us you don’t know why you need Single Source of Truth on package installation and content without using the phrase “dependency hell is self-inflicted”.

          • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
            1·
            1 year ago

            A single source of truth for software is one way to solve that. There are others with different pros and cons in active use that have shown pretty good results.