[HN Gopher] Disabling automatic refresh for Snap from store
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Disabling automatic refresh for Snap from store
        
       Author : ccmcarey
       Score  : 118 points
       Date   : 2022-03-26 13:12 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (forum.snapcraft.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (forum.snapcraft.io)
        
       | throwawaymanbot wrote:
        
       | kzrdude wrote:
       | The snap thing makes me want to switch distro (for work) from
       | ubuntu. Unfortunately we have some benefits from using ubuntu as
       | the common platform for less divergence from each other
        
         | selfhifive wrote:
         | If you're a programmer I'd say Arch or Debian then configure as
         | per your needs. As long as you don't do things blindly it will
         | be very stable and blazing fast.
        
           | mbrudd wrote:
           | In my experience, Manjaro is a great, user-friendly version
           | of Arch. YMMV, but I highly recommend it!
        
             | smoldesu wrote:
             | I used to be a pretty hardcore Manjaro evangelist (and I
             | still recommend it to people who want to quit distro-
             | hopping), but I've been burned a handful of times by it.
             | Arch is obviously a notoriously unstable distro, but
             | Manjaro in particular can lead to some nasty issues.
             | Especially if you're mix-and-matching AUR packages with the
             | Manjaro repository ones; I've had at least 3 or 4 systems
             | get entirely borked because of an untracked dependency or
             | something being too far behind in the Manjaro repo.
        
             | peachy_no_pie wrote:
             | Second this!
        
             | stjohnswarts wrote:
             | I think manjaro suffers breakage too much. These days I
             | tell people to look into endeavour since they still use
             | (mostly) arch repos and thus cause much less breaking with
             | the using AUR packages if you're into those.
        
         | jjgreen wrote:
         | Maybe look at Mint?
        
         | canadaduane wrote:
         | Pop!_OS is a solid Ubuntu-based distro that uses Flatpak in
         | place of Snap (among many other great decisions).
        
           | duped wrote:
           | This is why I don't use it anymore:
           | https://support.system76.com/articles/enable-hibernation/
        
             | stjohnswarts wrote:
             | That's fine, but my system boots so fast that hibernate is
             | slower. Pop_OS is a very nice distro, particularly the LTS.
        
             | cmeacham98 wrote:
             | Because they support hibernation? I assume the answer here
             | has to be "because it's a PITA to enable", but as far as I
             | know no distro does this correctly by default on an
             | encrypted drive.
        
               | duped wrote:
               | Because it's a pain in the ass for what should be the
               | default, especially if you want to use it on a laptop and
               | not have the battery die overnight.
        
               | striking wrote:
               | Some argue full disk encryption should be the default.
               | Others argue hibernation should be the default. Here they
               | appear to be in conflict, and that the former was
               | prioritized.
        
               | vladvasiliu wrote:
               | But they're not. You can very well have the swap on top
               | of LVM on top of LUKS. And the root and other partitions
               | share that same LVM and LUKS. So now you have FDE and the
               | kernel will know how to assemble it all. The only
               | difference with the default pop OS install is that the
               | swap key isn't changed on every boot. But since the other
               | partitions holding the actual data use persistent keys,
               | that doesn't look like much of an issue to me.
               | 
               | Plus, if you're OK with using a TPM, you can also get
               | waking up from hibernation without having to enter type
               | in your password.
               | 
               | Source: been doing exactly that (without the TPM part) on
               | a laptop for a few years, and it just worked like a
               | charm. No hoop-jumping involved or anything.
        
               | Brian_K_White wrote:
               | If I wanted full disk encryption, my memory state in swap
               | would sure as hell be one of the things I wanted
               | encrypted.
        
               | vladvasiliu wrote:
               | Of course, you would. And it is. All the partitions,
               | _including swap_ , are on top of a LUKS volume.
        
               | Brian_K_White wrote:
               | ah, ok. Apologies.
        
               | vladvasiliu wrote:
               | > because it's a PITA to enable
               | 
               | I went over the blog post, and it looks like it's a PITA
               | to enable because they went out of their way to make it
               | so by using a weird partition scheme. I've never
               | installed pop OS, but according to that blog they're
               | using LVM on LUKS, which should work fairly well.
               | 
               | > but as far as I know no distro does this correctly by
               | default on an encrypted drive.
               | 
               | What does "correctly" mean here? On my previous laptop I
               | had arch installed on ext4 on LVM on LUKS. Therefore, the
               | swap was on the same LVM. Aside from having to manually
               | set the "resume" kernel parameter, I never had to do
               | anything, and it just worked.
        
             | kafkaIncarnate wrote:
             | I really liked my System76 laptop until the AC adapter
             | died. I looked around on their site to buy accessories and
             | it wasn't there. Eventually I found you have to open a
             | support ticket to get a replacement.
             | 
             | Not only did it take multiple days for them to respond (me
             | without laptop), their resolution was to attach an invoice
             | for one despite me asking for two. I didn't want to open a
             | new ticket so I just looked online for an AC that had the
             | same voltage/amp/etc and head, then ordered three. I have
             | multiple desks...
             | 
             | The three arrived approximately a week before the one they
             | sent out.
             | 
             | Also, you can't actually open these the way they've glued
             | them shut inside by attaching the heatsink to the outer
             | case. Might be a manufacturing defect but definitely can't
             | open mine after unscrewing the bottom.
             | 
             | Never buying a System76 laptop again after this thing dies.
        
         | stjohnswarts wrote:
         | Try one of the variants like Pop_OS! they use flatpaks as a
         | replacement for snaps and it works well. I've moved all my
         | ubuntu systems over to it without any issues. The KDE version
         | is nearly as nice as the stock version (looks-wise) if you're a
         | KDE person, which I am.
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | I would love to switch to something else (e.g. NixOS) but
         | Ubuntu is the required OS for NVidia's Jetson family of
         | hardware.
        
           | raffraffraff wrote:
           | You can use the Jetson with Docker! It's a total pain in the
           | ass though. Their drivers and software are horrible.
        
             | amelius wrote:
             | Ok, thanks. Does it give access to the GPU?
        
               | raffraffraff wrote:
               | Yes, if you run the container with the right options.
               | This is a little out of date and may not even be required
               | any more, but it gives you the full SDK manager gui in
               | Docker.
               | 
               | https://github.com/raffraffraff/nvidia-sdkmanager
        
         | bamboozled wrote:
         | We switched over to Fedora, way better
        
           | emerongi wrote:
           | I switched many years ago. I make heavy use of Flatpaks,
           | which are great, although they have a lot of unlocked
           | potential still. dnf installs regular-old packages, as
           | opposed to Ubuntu, where apt packages now install snap
           | packages.
           | 
           | Debian or Fedora should become the new default
           | recommendation. Debian probably fits better for novices,
           | since Fedora doesn't have non-free packages out of the box.
        
             | kafkaIncarnate wrote:
             | Debian and Fedora have always been my two recommended
             | distros for people. They are the upstream providers of the
             | packages for most distros, and in the case of Ubuntu it has
             | always been a bad choice.
             | 
             | Even from day one, forking Debian and breaking a bunch of
             | packages as they went off on their own, then years later
             | going oops how do we fix this Daddy Debian? Adding Amazon
             | to their search by default in Unity initially. Creating a
             | new desktop protocol to replace X11 rather than work with
             | the Wayland teams so they could rush to ship their phone
             | that nobody wanted.
             | 
             | Canonical is just a good marketing company. They want to do
             | things their way and screw over as many Linux developers as
             | they can to get their way.
        
           | zamalek wrote:
           | Both Fedora and Mint are touted as the "new Ubuntu." Mint
           | even has a Debian fork experiment going on.
           | 
           | For work, keep in mind that Fedora defaults to SELinux and a
           | firewall. That's is a _huge_ bonus when approaching IT about
           | a switch.
        
           | polski-g wrote:
           | I'm switching to debian my next install. It's similar enough
           | internally
        
             | mananaysiempre wrote:
             | For a personal desktop, I wouldn't recommend it unless
             | you're willing to run sid, because while the outdated
             | software collection is no big deal most of the time, it's a
             | tremendous pain when you really do need a new version of
             | something, and you ultimately just give up and instal the
             | whole thing from source into /usr/local, which in a half-
             | dozen years predictably evolves into a mess.
             | 
             | Running sid _is_ an option, but the amount of fiddly Debian
             | magic you end up needing to learn when it breaks is IME not
             | smaller than the effort of setting up a mostly-unpatched
             | rolling-release like Arch (and I'm sure there are other
             | options). Given that _e.g._ Arch's packaging is simple
             | enough it's no big deal to package even your personal
             | collection of handy scripts (and so the system does not
             | develop funny-looking mold and bits of mystery food all
             | over the place), I don't really see the point. Just don't
             | update it when you're on a deadline.
             | 
             | You can see that my arguments here are to a great extent a
             | matter of preference and personal circumstances, though: do
             | you have a reliable Internet connection for
             | troubleshooting? do you prefer a more solid system that you
             | have to fight and that fails badly but rarely or a less
             | solid one that fails more often but in small ways? does
             | getting locked out of the graphical environment every
             | couple of years count as small?
             | 
             | (Offer not applicable on machines with cursed hardware like
             | nVidia or Broadcom.)
        
               | khimaros wrote:
               | personally I recommend debian "rolling testing" (rather
               | than pinning to a specific release name) with security
               | updates from sid. this prevents all but the most subtle
               | bugs from reaching you and you still get the new hotness
               | within a few weeks of sid. there is a release freeze for
               | a few months prior to the each stable release, but I've
               | had no major issues from that.
               | 
               | the other subtlety is that security updates come later to
               | testing than they do to either stable or sid, but this
               | can be mitigated: https://gist.github.com/khimaros/21db93
               | 6fa7885360f7bfe7f116b...
        
               | raegis wrote:
               | I've been using Debian stable on the desktop exclusively
               | since Etch (around 2007). I strongly recommend it for
               | someone who is always busy and doesn't have time to
               | fiddle around. I run Sid in a schroot for the one package
               | I need which is not in backports (a recent R for RStudio.
               | Reference:
               | http://charles.plessy.org/Debian/debi%C3%A2neries/r-4.1/
               | ). Debian stable relieves all the pain of the frequent
               | breakage (CUPS) from constant unnecessary upgrades.
        
             | stjohnswarts wrote:
             | I suggest pop_os if you like ubuntu but are tired of stuff
             | like snaps and such, but still like the idea of an LTS
        
         | brianshaler wrote:
         | I personally use ubuntu and have used snap enough to get
         | thoroughly burned and annoyed by it. Slow starts, no auto-
         | update controls with bad defaults corrupting running programs,
         | spammed mount points... (edit: see comment below for some
         | limited controls to reduce the frequency of auto-updates)
         | 
         | But, unless I'm missing something about latest or future
         | releases, isn't it still optional? Can't you use apt instead
         | and uninstall snapd altogether?
         | 
         | I'd agree that needing to uninstall instead of opt-in is an
         | annoyance, and that user-hostile actions tend to be a slippery
         | slope..
        
           | spaniard89277 wrote:
           | Firefox is only available as snap now. I gues it's bthe same
           | for other apps.
           | 
           | For VSCode I managed to download a deb from their site IIRC,
           | but from apt it only suggests to download from snap.
        
             | stjohnswarts wrote:
             | flatpak is a great alternative and it works well on ubuntu.
             | Although I've just moved wholesale over to pop_os with
             | flatpaks and LTS version.
        
             | kzrdude wrote:
             | What, where is firefox only available as snap? I'm on
             | Ubuntu 20.04 so haven't run into that yet.
        
             | brianshaler wrote:
             | Interesting. Firefox on snap was an absolute nightmare. Not
             | only would New Tab break after an update, fonts would break
             | as they may be (re-)loaded from disk which becomes missing
             | when the app gets remounted at a new mount point after an
             | update. I forget which hoops I had to jump through, but I
             | did finally find a non-snap method that allows me to
             | manually update (or dismiss prompt) to get around these
             | issues while staying up to date (~1 day)
             | 
             | VScode wasn't as bad, as it usually seemed to work (but
             | maybe flaky plugins were actually caused by snap?) but it
             | was certainly annoying to lose the ability to switch
             | between windows of the same app (alt+~, I think this was a
             | custom setting to resemble mac) if the latest
             | window/project was opened as a new version of the app
             | (alt+tab)
        
               | Brian_K_White wrote:
               | FF has been driving me crazy lately.
               | 
               | Every other day it blows away all my open tabs and
               | whatever I had going on in them.
               | 
               | I have a bunch of random tabs open, some with essentially
               | "unsaved work", like shopping carts which may be the
               | result of an hour of research, editing files in web
               | interfaces like github or fluidd (web interface to a 3d
               | printer) ... and randomly once every day or 3, I'll go to
               | touch anything, any button in any of those tabs, like
               | edit that config file some more, or try to save it... and
               | kablooey, "firefox needs to restart" and I lose
               | _everything_ I had going.
               | 
               | This is a new thing that didn't used to happen.
               | 
               | Apparently the snap teams response to this story would be
               | "Don't use FF like that."
        
               | lelouch11 wrote:
               | I have a similar situation.
               | 
               | The issue here is that the apt update changes firefox
               | program files underneath it which needs a restart. Afaik,
               | using the mozilla release directly is the only solution
               | for this where the program files are changed only after
               | exit.
               | 
               | Edit: This has become more common nowadays due to
               | multiple point releases close to each other, to fix some
               | important bug.
        
           | rlpb wrote:
           | > no auto-update controls
           | 
           | Maybe not what you want exactly but there are controls and
           | claiming otherwise is misleading.
           | 
           | https://snapcraft.io/docs/keeping-snaps-up-to-
           | date#heading--...
        
             | brianshaler wrote:
             | Thank you for this. Severely limited controls are certainly
             | better than no controls. Looks like timer can reduce
             | breakages to no more than monthly, hold can prevent
             | breakages for up to 3 months, and metered seems like it may
             | be able to disable updates and subsequent breakages if I
             | can figure how to trick the OS into thinking I'm always on
             | a metered connection (which is actually true, but I'm on
             | LTE via wifi)
        
           | vladvasiliu wrote:
           | > But, unless I'm missing something about latest or future
           | releases, isn't it still optional? Can't you use apt instead
           | and uninstall snapd altogether?
           | 
           | There seem to be more and more things that are only delivered
           | as snaps.
           | 
           | I haven't used Ubuntu on the desktop in a while (and even
           | then, it was just trying it out), but I remember that trying
           | to apt install <something> would say "use the snap". I think
           | LXD is in that case, for example.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | chousuke wrote:
             | I recommend Fedora to everyone wanting a desktop
             | alternative to Ubuntu. It's a well-balanced distribution
             | that is opinionated enough to work fine as-is but doesn't
             | try to _force_ things on you the way Ubuntu does with
             | snaps.
        
               | stjohnswarts wrote:
               | I can't do that because I don't want to update every 6
               | months. If I wanted to do that I'd just move to
               | arch/endeavour.
        
               | pbhjpbhj wrote:
               | What DEs are common/supported on Fedora, I use KDE
               | (Kubuntu), I'm not keen on snaps and so it seems
               | expedient to switch distros when I next install (as it
               | seems Ubuntu are all in for snaps).
        
               | chousuke wrote:
               | Gnome is the default and there's a KDE "spin", but I use
               | Sway myself so I can't really comment on how well KDE
               | works.
        
             | pizza234 wrote:
             | > There seem to be more and more things that are only
             | delivered as snaps.
             | 
             | I'm on Ubuntu, and of all the software I use (I count
             | around 20 programs installed not through the Ubuntu apt
             | repositories), fortunately only two are available only on
             | snaps - Chromium and Subsync. The first actually
             | accelerated my move to Firefox.
             | 
             | Regarding Subsync, I had to write a ridicolous script to
             | start/stop all the snap services - ridicolous because Snap
             | has an integrity service that overwrites any change to the
             | Snap system (!!), so one can't even hack the Snap system
             | files without disabling such service. It actually gets
             | worse - Ubuntu has a relatively tight intergration with
             | snap: one can't have the `snapd` serviced disabled (without
             | hacks), because the Ubuntu software upgrade invokes it if
             | present, and if it's disabled, the upgrade will hang.
             | 
             | If Ubuntu will force more software to go through Snap, I'll
             | abandon it (after many, many years).
        
             | brianshaler wrote:
             | Yikes! I fortunately haven't run into this yet. There are
             | very few cases where I would take the easy road and install
             | a snap (maybe a one-time use CLI where performance doesn't
             | matter and I'd uninstall after?). If not in apt I'd
             | probably ignore the suggestion and look for a ppa, binary,
             | or, in rare cases, compile from source.
        
       | jabiko wrote:
       | We use microk8s on our dev clusters and its really great when an
       | automatic upgrade goes sideways. Also using channels didn't help
       | since even a minor upgrade managed to break our setup once.
       | 
       | The last half year or so went ok, but not being able to stop
       | automatic upgrades is ridiculous. In general I like opinionated
       | software, but sometimes it goes to far.
        
         | gjsman-1000 wrote:
         | Canonical currently has their head in the sand for how Linux
         | users at large see it.
         | 
         | If you try to talk about how Linux distributions don't like it,
         | they'll just say, "but Snap is available on all the
         | distributions" or some crap cop-out.
         | 
         | I had a long forum thread about all the issues people are
         | complaining about half a decade ago. They wouldn't budge, and
         | still won't budge.
        
           | kd913 wrote:
           | Linux users are some of the most opinionated people. At the
           | end of the day, money/convenience matters. Why exactly would
           | they pay attention to you when they have their own
           | priorities?
           | 
           | Snaps reduce reduce their maintenance burdens, and they have
           | the stats themselves for how popular they are. They are by
           | and far more used than flatpaks from what I remember from the
           | video by Martin Wimpress.
           | 
           | Oh and they have third party buy-in from software vendors
           | like Mozilla, Microsoft, VLC, JetBrains, Spotify, slack
           | etc...
           | 
           | Why would they budge?
        
             | gjsman-1000 wrote:
             | So according to a Snap developer, Snap is more popular on
             | Ubuntu, the only distribution that comes with it preloaded.
             | That does not say anything about Snap's popularity.
             | 
             | Vendor interest they have, community interest they lack.
             | And if it continues, lack of community interest will result
             | in a lack of vendor interest.
        
               | kd913 wrote:
               | They literally have stats for each snap download and
               | install.
               | 
               | https://snapcraft.io/slack
               | 
               | You see the map at the bottom with a list of OSes?
               | 
               | They have the interest, commercial and from the populace.
               | Vendors have already integrated it into their pipelines.
               | 
               | What they don't have is the vocal minority. Frankly I
               | don't get why people care so much, if you don't like it
               | switch. No need to whine about it. They aren't preventing
               | you from using flatpak.
        
       | Brian_K_White wrote:
       | I really don't understand all these "flatpak is better" comments.
       | It's not.
       | 
       | https://ludocode.com/blog/flatpak-is-not-the-future
       | 
       | Maybe it is better than snap, but it's not good and its not
       | better than a traditional package, on either philosophical or
       | technical grounds.
        
         | stjohnswarts wrote:
         | It is better on a "keep it updated by the developer" grounds
         | and that's all I need. I liek to have the latest with things
         | like spotify, libreoffice, qbittorrent, etc. I like the
         | sandboxing. Sure it ain't everybody's cup of tea, but you can't
         | discount other people's opinion as "wrong". They're just
         | opinions. I know other people value the aspects of .deb/.rpm
         | only based system, and I have weighed the pros and cons
         | personally. Don't expect that we haven't looked into it for
         | ourselves by default.
        
       | stjohnswarts wrote:
       | Check out how long this flatpak bug was on adding a pin function
       | :)
       | 
       | https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/issues/3078
        
       | PaulHoule wrote:
       | Never used a snap. Never will.
        
         | arunkant wrote:
         | I tried microk8s snap once. Never again
        
           | loloquwowndueo wrote:
           | Care to explain why?
        
         | reidrac wrote:
         | That's what I thought, until the other day I realised something
         | I had installed was via snap. I'm afraid the only solution
         | requires stop using Ubuntu :(
        
           | mikro2nd wrote:
           | sudo apt purge snapd
        
             | pbhjpbhj wrote:
             | I think you have to use snap (I can't recall the
             | incantation, snapctl??) to remove the snap mount points
             | (which I think are made when snap packages get installed)
             | first otherwise they don't get removed by simply removing
             | snapd. Only did it once, so far.
        
             | reidrac wrote:
             | Does it mean that apt will then install a non-snap version?
             | 
             | I haven't verified that, but considering that nothing
             | suggested that I was installing a snap app (other than me
             | not paying attention to apt's output, I guess), I'm not
             | sure if that's even possible. I was planning to stay with
             | 18.04 LTS and then move to something else, but seems like
             | either snap was there already or it has been added after I
             | upgraded.
        
               | stjohnswarts wrote:
               | I don't think so because some apps are only available as
               | snaps. that is less true for 18.04, but 20.04 and 22.04
               | use snaps fairly heavily and some like firefox only
               | available through snaps, although there is also PPA and
               | flatpaks available.
        
         | ugjka wrote:
         | I use it only for Spotify
        
           | jmholla wrote:
           | I install Spotify through `apt`. What benefits do you get
           | from installing their snap?
        
             | ugjka wrote:
             | They sometimes forget to update the .Deb version
             | 
             | >@Romario74 That is not the case; while on Snap they
             | packaged v77, if you look here you will find that the
             | Spotify devs have not been updating the .deb releases. Re-
             | packaging Snaps is less convenient than using a .deb
             | tarball, and is being done through scripts by this Github
             | project, which is in turn repackaged by @Edu4rdSHL.
             | 
             | https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/spotify
             | 
             | So i run snapd on system
        
           | PaulHoule wrote:
           | Can't you just use the web site?
        
             | Avamander wrote:
             | Both major browsers are Snaps as well. The web site also
             | has a significant additional control latency when playing
             | on a device on your local network.
        
             | Kelteseth wrote:
             | I tried this but for me closing the browser sometimes
             | means, being done with work or a task and this would always
             | also shut down my music. It's the small things that still
             | drive me to install their client, even though I know it is
             | just another electron app.
        
             | ugjka wrote:
             | The web player only does 128kbit AAC stream
        
       | NGRhodes wrote:
       | One of a number of reasons Ubuntu does not even meet the minimum
       | requirements to tender for a cut of the millions the University I
       | work for invests in Linux systems (research workstations (often
       | packed with NVIDIA GPUs), clients to control specialist
       | equipment, HPC, regular desktops/laptops/servers,
       | network/lustre/backup storage etc).
        
       | FpUser wrote:
       | Snap was the reason I said goodbye to Ubuntu
        
         | henriquez wrote:
         | Same here. If I want forced updates I can use Windows.
        
           | FpUser wrote:
           | I would have left even without forced updates. I just do not
           | want to waste my computer power on this virtualization
           | crusade. When / if I need it I want it to be explicit and
           | under my control.
        
       | user3939382 wrote:
       | > The issue that makes us resist the idea of simply disabling
       | updates altogether is that very often that will mean never update
       | rather than update at someone's discretion, and then we're
       | getting back to some of the problems that got us here in the
       | first place.
       | 
       | I'm sorry, who owns the machine here?
        
         | ctxc wrote:
         | Counter point for general software: some people don't upgrade
         | software for _years_, due to which vendors have two problems -
         | 1. Open security vulnerabilities 2. Necessity to maintain
         | backward compatible infra
         | 
         | To offset this, two channels of releases can be maintained -
         | one for security fixes, another for general features etc. But
         | again here, we run into problems where maintenance of two
         | channels isn't economical, and you end up testing security
         | fixes on various versions.
         | 
         | How can these be addressed if upgrades are not forced, are
         | there standard processes followed that provide the best
         | compromise for both vendors and end users?
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | MiddleEndian wrote:
           | Make updates that are appealing enough that users want them.
        
           | chockchocschoir wrote:
           | > How can these be addressed if upgrades are not forced, are
           | there standard processes followed that provide the best
           | compromise for both vendors and end users?
           | 
           | There is an easy way to solve this problem. Default to auto
           | updates, allow people to turn it off, by acknowledging what
           | that means. Most users use whatever is the default anyways.
           | Vendors gets to push their updates, users who don't want
           | those, can reject them. If someone gets hacked because they
           | turned off auto update, the vendor won't be on the hook for
           | it, because the user said they were aware of it when they
           | turned it off.
           | 
           | I think the core problem here is not that people are asking
           | for auto updates to be off by default, they simply want to
           | have the option. And frankly, for professional use cases, you
           | _have to_ be able to turn off auto updates, as otherwise it
           | 'll harm the workflow as you can't control when the update
           | happens.
        
             | ctxc wrote:
             | Yup, makes perfect sense. Thanks!
        
           | cmeacham98 wrote:
           | I'll give you the same answer I gave people when Microsoft
           | started doing the same nonsense with Win10:
           | 
           | I totally agree your average end user is poor at managing
           | updates themselves and thus it is justified to enable auto-
           | updates by default. What that does not justify is totally
           | removing the ability to turn them off. Feel free to make it a
           | little harder to disable: the user has to run a CLI command
           | or something, but the option should be there.
           | 
           | > How can these be addressed if upgrades are not forced, are
           | there standard processes followed that provide the best
           | compromise for both vendors and end users?
           | 
           | If you go through the extra effort to disable updates and
           | don't grab a security fix, that's on you. How is "you have to
           | do exactly what I tell you - wait why is nobody using my
           | software?????" a best compromise for users? What are users
           | expected to do when an upgrade breaks something and they
           | can't downgrade?
        
             | ctxc wrote:
             | Sensible defaults, but built for the power user. Makes
             | sense.
        
               | anonymousab wrote:
               | The old argument is that anything a power user can do, a
               | malicious script can do too. So such options must be
               | removed entirely if there is any chance of a less
               | technically inclined user being tricked into doing it.
        
           | cerved wrote:
           | 1. Open security vulnerabilities
           | 
           | sounds like a user problem
        
             | ctxc wrote:
             | A user problem that can have a very real impact on your
             | product.
             | 
             | "x ProductX users impacted by Ransomware" will make
             | headlines, your "well yes, we fixed it in v2.7.8 months
             | back" won't.
        
         | philliphaydon wrote:
         | Isn't this also the of the main reasons the linux community
         | hates windows. Because windows has a habit of forcing updates
         | and reboots.
        
           | selfhifive wrote:
           | The linux community isn't a big fan of Canonical. Everyone
           | starts with Ubuntu, distro hops, installs Debian or Arch
           | configured according to them and tries to bring Ubuntu back
           | from the dark side.
        
             | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
             | Canonical used to be The Chosen One, the prophesied savior
             | that would decend from the heavens and bring us a
             | reasonable chance at actually having a Year of the Linux
             | Desktop. Then something happened, and they turned to the
             | darkside, started adopting the worst behaviors of
             | Microsoft, and here we are. Sadly they are still promoted
             | as the recommended "generic" distro for the masses.
        
         | danamit wrote:
         | You will get the updates, and you will be happy.
        
           | hn_version_0023 wrote:
           | "The beatings will continue until morale improves."
        
         | ComodoHacker wrote:
         | I see they're honestly trying to ease life for technically
         | illiterate users (or, put it another way, to chase Apple's
         | "just works" experience). But ignoring the needs of
         | professional users (who are influencers) is a sure way to
         | divert all users.
        
           | daniel-thompson wrote:
           | OK but even Apple lets you toggle automatic updates on or
           | off.
        
             | cuteboy19 wrote:
             | And so does Google Play Store. Even windows has the
             | settings buried somewhere
        
           | MiddleEndian wrote:
           | Many technically illiterate users don't like forced automatic
           | updates either. Having your software behave one way one day
           | and another the next day is user-hostile. The only people it
           | helps are organizations that wish to lower support costs.
        
             | rsolva wrote:
             | I have heard disturbing stories from tech-illiterate
             | windows users complaining about forced upgrades, reboots--
             | even fullscreen Office365 ads. It's a pain to be "the
             | computer guy" for windows users. They need help constantly
             | and for silly things that has changed place or behaviour. I
             | also do support for tech-illiterate linux users on Fedora
             | and they never call or have trouble. It just works, even
             | with auto-updated flatpaks enabled.
        
               | stjohnswarts wrote:
               | Yeah ton's of memes out there by windows users who were
               | forced to upgrade 5 minutes before a meeting or
               | something. It's a real issue. It's why I leave my office
               | laptop on all night, so they can do their stupid forced
               | upgrades in the middle of the night like they schedule
               | them. I have too many meeting to wait for a 30minute - 1
               | hour update popping up unexpectedly.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | rsolva wrote:
       | Having observed (well deserved) criticism of both Snap and
       | Flatpak during the years, Flatpak seems to emerge as the most
       | sensible solution, continuously addressing and improving on the
       | pain points and security challenges.
       | 
       | I have been using Fedora 34/35 the last year or so, and Flatpaks
       | are well integrated and mostly just works without any performance
       | hit. Being able to adjust permissions per app (with Flatseal) has
       | also been a great experience.
       | 
       | I have little experience with Snap, but the few times I have had
       | to deal with it on Ubuntu-based distros, it has left a bad
       | impression from a user perspective.
        
         | throwaway984393 wrote:
         | As an Alpine user, Flatpak is invaluable. Snap isn't supported
         | because it requires systemd.
        
           | rsolva wrote:
           | Had not thought about that! I want to set up my old Lenovo
           | X220 with a minimal distro and was thinking of using Alpine +
           | Sway. Using Flatpak for all the "regular" apps more than
           | makes up for the apps not present in Alpines repos.
        
         | gaius_baltar wrote:
         | Perhaps there's still a way to save snaps. Does somebody knows
         | of a snapd fork that allows control over updates and alternate
         | snap stores?
        
         | gjsman-1000 wrote:
         | It's not even remotely close. Snaps take longer to load, still
         | sometimes have theme issues, you have to manually install Snap
         | on almost all non-Snap distributions, you'll be littered with
         | garbage mountpoints, you'll have a useless snap folder in your
         | home directory, you can't add external repositories of any
         | kind, and you get no ability to stop updates easy without going
         | into duct tape solutions.
         | 
         | Snap wants to be a desktop, and server, system. Not with a 10
         | foot pole - Docker is literally 100x better. Not on my Desktop
         | - Flatpak is superior there.
        
           | azalemeth wrote:
           | Don't forget odd permissions problems. From memory, ipfs is
           | distributed as a snap. Try saving a file to another location
           | outside of the snap jail. Almost impossible.
        
           | zamalek wrote:
           | > Snaps take longer to load
           | 
           | Without fail, on multiple machines, shutdown/restart is
           | stalled for the maximum 2:30 timeout for snapd. It's a useful
           | reminder to uninstall Snap whenever I find myself in the
           | unfortunate situation of using Ubuntu.
        
         | kkfx wrote:
         | Solution to what? Personally I think ALL of such package
         | managers exists only for a reason: satisfy commercial software
         | needs, in disguise to being developed for free by a community
         | instead of being neglected and pushed to the place they
         | deserve, witch is /dev/null.
         | 
         | The future of package management is NixOS/Guix System, the
         | future of isolation are cgroups (see FireJail, BubbleWrap). The
         | rest is absurd like full-stack virtualization on x86 to make
         | VMWare profit, HW OEMs profit, consulting profits etc and
         | people who should not, because of ignorance, running infra
         | built by someone else a brick at a time, or the way to create
         | disaster waiting to happen...
         | 
         | I see exactly ZERO good cases for snap, flatpak, appimage
         | etc... ZERO, really.
        
       | tjoff wrote:
       | Somehow when googling software snap will often come up and try to
       | push users to install snap and the software.
       | 
       | Almost feels like malware on every level. Can't comprehend why
       | they are pushing it so hard.
       | 
       | Ubuntu is on borrowed time.
        
         | oofbey wrote:
         | I have been a huge fan of Ubuntu for a long time. But the way
         | they push snap is really making me question this choice. The
         | more I learn about snap the less I like it.
        
           | okasaki wrote:
           | It seems that sometimes the push is external. A few days ago
           | Canonical announced that they would switch Firefox to snap
           | because that's the only way Mozilla will allow them to
           | redistribute it.
        
             | codethief wrote:
             | > because that's the only way Mozilla will allow them to
             | redistribute it.
             | 
             | I doubt this is the whole truth, compare
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30800957
        
             | oofbey wrote:
             | Having a user app like Firefox force autoupdate is not that
             | bad IMHO. Having server infrastructure components update
             | themselves automatically can be disastrous. This caught me
             | by surprise, painfully.
             | 
             | Snap for GUI apps, okay, fine. Snap for system
             | infrastructure, no thank you.
        
               | broknbottle wrote:
               | It's bad when the user is actively using the application
               | and snapd decides to update the Firefox snap and cause
               | issues.
        
           | unmole wrote:
           | I switched to Fedora after ~14 year of using Ubuntu as my
           | daily driver. Three months in, it's been absolutely rock
           | solid.
        
       | bitcharmer wrote:
       | I love Ubuntu, it's been my daily driver for over a decade now
       | but if they continue with going against the community on this
       | nonsense this will be a strong indication for people like me that
       | an era has come to an end and it's time to move on.
       | 
       | It used to be a community focused distro. This bs feels outright
       | user-hostile.
        
         | rubyist5eva wrote:
         | Just switched to Fedora about a week ago because I was getting
         | fed up with user hostile Ubuntu bs, I like it a lot.
        
           | stjohnswarts wrote:
           | I don't like that you have to update it so often. I like the
           | idea of an LTS. On systems I want to update often I just put
           | arch on them so there is never major breakage that I can't
           | roll back easily with snapper.
        
           | bitcharmer wrote:
           | I'm a linux power user (kernel hacking level) and wanted
           | Fedora so much to work for me. Every single time there were
           | severe issues with getting it even installed. First two
           | failed attempts took place on my dell laptop, the last two on
           | my dual socket workstation with Nvidia GPU.
           | 
           | All four times was an exercise in a lot of googling, hacking
           | configurations,etc. Sadly it was always too much work and I
           | eventually gave up.
           | 
           | Hopefully one day the experience is seamless and I never have
           | to go back to Ubuntu.
        
           | philliphaydon wrote:
           | I feel like people who use fedora swear by it. What DE do you
           | use? I prefer KDE but donno if it's time to retry gnome or
           | something else.
        
             | secondcoming wrote:
             | You can use both? I use Mint but also use QTCreator (KDE)
             | for development.
             | 
             | Things like hiDPI support go funny, but that's just Linux
             | for you.
        
             | rubyist5eva wrote:
             | I'm coming from Ubuntu so I stuck with Gnome as that is the
             | default recomendation for Fedora as well. I've tried KDE in
             | the past and while I understand why lots of people like it
             | it never really clicked with me.
             | 
             | But while we're on the topic of user hostility, I'm not
             | really a fan of some of the changes the Gnome devs are
             | doing either, so I may switch again in the future but at
             | least for now I'm comfortable using it and they aren't
             | outright antagonizing my system like Ubuntu does with
             | snaps.
        
             | tux1968 wrote:
             | If you're moving to Fedora then Gnome really is the path of
             | least resistance, and highest level of integration and
             | support. But you can make KDE work, or even use a tiling WM
             | like Sway and customize it to your taste. In any case, you
             | get to enjoy the benefits of a really well done distro.
        
               | philliphaydon wrote:
               | Alright. Will give it another go. Hopefully it's easier
               | to setup a side bar and top bar than last time I used it.
        
               | anuragsoni wrote:
               | FWIW, I've used Fedora's KDE spin [1] and its very
               | polished. That said, if I was still using linux on the
               | desktop these days I'd go with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed[2].
               | With KDE my experience was that they made big
               | improvements with every release, and tumbleweed was a
               | nice way to get a stable-ish rolling release distribution
               | that gets all the nice KDE updates without me having to
               | wait another 6-8 months.
               | 
               | [1] https://spins.fedoraproject.org/en/kde/
               | 
               | [2] https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Tumbleweed
        
               | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
               | > If you're moving to Fedora then Gnome really is the
               | path of least resistance
               | 
               | Which is really the largest drawback by far that I've
               | found. GNOME 4 is user-hostile garbage made by people who
               | really really wish they were designing for tablets. It's
               | practically useless without third-party extensions, which
               | are of course unsupported. It doesn't even have a system
               | tray FFS.
               | 
               | If Fedora Kinoite worked as well as Fedora Silverblue, I
               | think I could be reasonably content. Immutable base
               | system with Flatpak and Toolboxes is pretty close to how
               | I actually want a system to work.
        
       | indymike wrote:
       | Users are telling the snap team exactly what they want: give us a
       | way to disable automatic updates. Snappy's vision is to take this
       | control away.
       | 
       | This is why people hate snaps. They don't fit user workflows,
       | make extra work and even cause show stopping problems.
       | 
       | Snaps could be great but the team really needs to listen. For me
       | I'm removing snaps from my configs before I get surprised.
       | 
       | (edit: mobile autocomplete typos)
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | ethbr0 wrote:
         | It's the nature of creating a currated experience: saying "No"
         | to a lot of things.
         | 
         | Chrome/Google did the same thing.
         | 
         | Snap clearly has a philosophy. And a lot of people clearly
         | disagree with that philosophy.
         | 
         | Thankfully, instead of "advertised from google.com", Snap has
         | less ability to push itself on users, and users have more
         | ability to choose it... or not.
        
       | gjsman-1000 wrote:
       | I warned them _half a decade_ ago on a super-long thread (on that
       | forum, it's called "External repositories") that having Canonical
       | in charge of everything, having no support for external
       | repositories, and no ability to disable updates was going to be
       | the death of Snap. They would not listen _at all_ to me or anyone
       | on that discussion. It was nothing but double-down.
       | 
       | Well... what, five years later, here we are. They are still
       | trucking on although the Linux community at large has turned
       | against them, yet they remain in their echo chamber of a forum
       | and don't see it, convinced it will all work out or some crap.
        
       | gpspake wrote:
       | Wow. This thread isn't controversial at all. I haven't found a
       | single comment making a case for Snap. It seems to be universally
       | disliked - at least by this crowd.
        
         | apexalpha wrote:
        
           | Brian_K_White wrote:
           | My reasons for hating for example the FF snap are quite valid
           | thank you very much.
           | 
           | Shall I ponder out loud my own unflattering assumptions as to
           | why you are ok with something like snaps?
        
             | apexalpha wrote:
             | Sure, I'd be interested to hear why you _prefer_ (why
             | hate?) traditional packages over containarized ones like
             | Snap or Flatpak.
             | 
             | I'm just a bit weirded out by the vocal hate and anti-
             | Canonical sentiment in this thread. Some people even
             | proudly complaining they've "never used Snaps and never
             | will!"
             | 
             | I mean in the end it's a packaging format with pros and
             | cons, I suppose. But the threads on this subject feels
             | almost an American political debate where everyone is dug
             | in and flinging shit to the other side.
        
               | Brian_K_White wrote:
               | That's not what I asked, and apparently you missed the
               | point of why I asked it.
        
         | kd913 wrote:
         | It's disliked by the same Linux purists who complain constantly
         | about systemd. Bit odd how the same community hates Canonical
         | considering how it's now the only FOSS commercial entity
         | considering Red Hat was bought by IBM. The community treats
         | them worse than Microsoft for no good reasons. If you don't
         | like snap, fine, use flatpak, apt, AppImages. Nobody is forcing
         | you on ubuntu systems, but they spend their effort and time
         | whining here.
         | 
         | I like snaps, I use them for everything I can.
         | 
         | - They are better confined than flatpaks, and come with a
         | permission based model. Hence why there are some rougher edges.
         | I appreciate the increased security.
         | 
         | - I appreciate the ability that when I remove a snap, the
         | entire thing is removed with no littering.
         | 
         | - They are significantly easier to distribute on ubuntu than
         | dealing with ppas or launchpad.
         | 
         | - They are a one-stop shop for finding the software I care
         | about. I don't need to hit the command line, or add another
         | repo.
         | 
         | - They save time and money because devs only need to support 1
         | base.
         | 
         | - I can install software on ubuntu without giving root
         | privileges in a self-contained fashion.
         | 
         | Some common complains:
         | 
         | - The store isn't open sourced. Well yes, that is because they
         | wasted time from the same whiny people over launchpad. Nobody
         | else runs and supports launchpad. Hence nobody else would
         | frankly bother running the snap store.
         | 
         | - People can't run their own store. Well yes, that is because
         | Canonical learned from a decade ago with the security nightmare
         | that is PPAs. Yea, it is a bad idea giving devs root access to
         | 100k worth of machines to run arbitrary scripts. Also really
         | bad UX.
         | 
         | -It's slow to startup with theming issues. Well the situation
         | has improved 100x since a few years ago, and also I run an ssd,
         | 32gb of RAM and a 3600, I don't really care for a few seconds
         | in launch time.
        
       | dsr_ wrote:
       | If you give people tools to enforce their own policies, you have
       | an adaptable system.
       | 
       | If you create a set of policies that users can choose from, you
       | have limited your usefulness to just those cases that fit in
       | those policies that you have implemented.
       | 
       | If you choose a single policy for everyone, only people who are
       | willing to use that policy will use your system.
       | 
       | These patterns repeat across operating systems, services and
       | applications.
        
       | Avamander wrote:
       | Snap developers have refused to rename $HOME/snap to be less
       | visible for nearly as long, they have and are shipping very
       | broken software, all while using update methods that corrupted
       | people's data unannounced until very recently (the update
       | mechanism made data directories non-writable unless you enable
       | some experimental option).
       | 
       | They very much do not care about the end-user with Snap, only how
       | to appear attractive to potential customers.
        
         | nemetroid wrote:
         | It's not even $HOME/snap, it's /home/$USER/snap.
         | 
         | https://snapcraft.io/docs/home-outside-home
         | 
         | > The snap daemon (snapd) requires a user's home directory
         | ($HOME) to be located under /home on the local filesystem. This
         | requirement cannot currently be changed.
        
         | kzrdude wrote:
         | It's a pretty wild switch of power from the usual distro
         | packaging where the packager is a neutral middle ground between
         | the application's and the user's interests, often swinging to
         | the side of being the user advocate.
         | 
         | Of course, compared with other platforms and auto updates, it
         | is clear why app developers prefer and expect to be in charge
         | of updates.
        
         | acabal wrote:
         | This is its most egregious sin, IMHO. Imagine low level system
         | software with such a high opinion of itself that it thinks it
         | deserves a front and center place in your home directory for
         | you to look at every single day.
         | 
         | We don't have ~/ssh or ~/dconf do we? We've had the XDG spec
         | for decades now - this selfish decision makes me so
         | irrationally angry that it's the one reason I'd switch to
         | Fedora to avoid snaps.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | Thaxll wrote:
       | I think auto updates are ok but not for everything, client side
       | app are ok to auto update the rest not so much.
        
         | mikro2nd wrote:
         | No. No they're not OK. Sometimes I am forced to live on eye-
         | wateringly expensive bandwidth (because dodgy rural DSL and
         | trees falling) and I'd go broke letting things autoupdate
         | during those times.
        
           | stjohnswarts wrote:
           | I don't understand this remark. They charge you more when
           | trees/systems are down? Are you talking about using some
           | backup service (like your cellphone) or something? Your
           | comment is hard to reason out without information like that.
        
             | RobotCaleb wrote:
             | They're saying that sometimes their internet goes out
             | either because of their rural situation or because trees
             | fall and knock out copper lines. When that happens, they
             | have to switch to an expensive internet solution.
        
       | izoow wrote:
       | The only thing still keeping me on Ubuntu is the font rendering
       | that somehow looks so much better than any other distro,
       | otherwise I would've already switched to another distro because
       | of snap.
       | 
       | I feel like I've never seen anybody actually like snap.
        
         | xeromal wrote:
         | Snap is probably that thing that the people who do use it or
         | don't mind it, don't notice it.
        
       | nik736 wrote:
       | Please correct me if I am wrong, but you can simply snap install
       | with a --channel, which could be a specific version. This way it
       | is not auto updating, since it's on that specific
       | channel/version.
        
         | vladvasiliu wrote:
         | Aren't channels things like "stable" or "bleeding edge" or
         | something like that? Which means that this would only work if
         | the snap vendor cooperates.
        
           | bboozzoo wrote:
           | But then you can't really blame Canonical and that makes the
           | wole agument moot.
        
             | vladvasiliu wrote:
             | The argument is that "channels" are not "versions". So
             | inside a channel, you cannot disable updates. And that's
             | the way Canonical operates, they regularly push updates to
             | their "stable" channel. There is no "v1.2.3" channel that
             | will forever stay at that particular version until you
             | switch channels.
             | 
             | The point is that you are the mercy of the snap publisher,
             | and as the sysadmin, you cannot prevent the software from
             | updating. Whether you should or not do that is a different
             | debate.
        
               | bboozzoo wrote:
               | Canonical directly maintains only a handful of snaps, and
               | even so it's up to the individual teams to do the
               | relevant QA before publishing a version to the stable.
               | 
               | You'd expect that publishers follow the same process,
               | that a stable channel means it's really stable, whereas
               | version breaking changes really end up in per version
               | channel. Ideally you have the
               | latest/{stable,beta,candidate,edge} which follows the
               | latest version of the software, and eg.
               | v1/{stable,beta,candidate,edge},
               | v2/{stable,beta,candidate,edge},
               | v3/{stable,beta,candidate,edge} for individual version. A
               | simple concept but surprisingly hard to follow.
               | 
               | Maybe the publishers are really lazy and don't care about
               | the users or the maintenance cost of keeping n versions
               | around is just too high, in which case it's up to the
               | users to make their effort worth it.
        
               | vladvasiliu wrote:
               | I agree with your point, but the issue discussed here is
               | being forced into updating. Sure, that's an issue because
               | some people aren't fully confident that a "minor update"
               | won't break things. They may or may not be right, but
               | that's a separate debate.
               | 
               | The point is that people want to be able to disable
               | automatic updates, even minor ones, and that's not
               | possible.
               | 
               | edit: I can see how my previous comment could have been
               | confusing. To clear it up, I was trying to say that a
               | workaround for the forced updates would be for vendors to
               | publish a "single version channel". So version 1.2.3
               | would be a dedicated channel, with no updates ever.
               | Version 1.2.4 would be a separate channel, with only that
               | single version. This would of course be impractical, for
               | both the vendor and the user.
        
         | teraflop wrote:
         | AFAIK, selecting a channel doesn't prevent automatic updates,
         | it just limits them to a subset of versions. It doesn't in any
         | way prevent a new version from being published to that channel
         | and automatically installed.
        
         | loloquwowndueo wrote:
         | You are wrong :) updates are published to channels and anyone
         | following that channel will get the update.
         | 
         | More about how snap channels work here.
         | https://ubuntu.com/blog/controlling-snap-releases-with-chann...
        
       | account-5 wrote:
       | Can someone explain why I'd use snap or flatpak over the distros
       | repo or manual install for something not in the repo or
       | unavailable via adding a repo? Apart from auto-managed updates.
       | 
       | Snap and flatpak are massive compared to "traditional" packages.
        
         | 542458 wrote:
         | Over manual install - snap/flatpak is typically way faster and
         | easier to install and configure. Installing Nextcloud manually
         | if you're not familiar with the process is an hour or more of
         | setting up all the essential and optional dependencies. It's a
         | few seconds of snap install nextcloud.
         | 
         | Over distro repos - no dependency version hell.
         | 
         | I don't really love snap/flatpak (too much "magic", hard to
         | tweak installs) but I see why they get used.
        
         | raffraffraff wrote:
         | Basically because a lot of open source software isn't packaged
         | for each distro. Take Joplin for example: not in the repos and
         | not packaged into a nice .deb file. Distributed as an AppImage.
        
         | hotpotamus wrote:
         | I'd be curious to hear a good explanation as well from someone
         | who knows more about this than me. My feeling (and
         | feelings/suspicions are all I've really got) is that there are
         | 2 factors driving it - maintaining repos is mundane work, and
         | containers are fashionable again.
        
         | stjohnswarts wrote:
         | - disk space (in most cases) is cheap
         | 
         | - they are always up to date and therefore statistically more
         | likely to have security holes fixed
         | 
         | - that are (to an extent) sandboxed by default and give you a
         | lot of control over that.
         | 
         | - for developers it's much easier than maintaining hundreds of
         | fixes for different distro peculiarities. Therefore (for the
         | user) they are able to spend more time on the app itself rather
         | than compatibility
        
         | emerongi wrote:
         | Flatpak's benefits:
         | 
         | - Cross-distro packaging (no need to provide N package formats
         | - this one runs on all distros)
         | 
         | - Faster update cycle for each app, if the package is
         | maintained by the original developers
         | 
         | - Sandboxing
         | 
         | - Better compatibility all around, as the package runs the same
         | on all distros (as opposed to some too-old or too-new module
         | breaking something on X distro)
         | 
         | - Some other goodies, like checking new releases of the source
         | on Github etc
         | 
         | Flatpak's drawbacks:
         | 
         | - Modules are not shared, which can result in somewhat larger
         | packages and potential vulnerabilities
         | 
         | - Many packages are community-maintained by people who are not
         | necessarily experts in the Linux ecosystem. Distro-provided
         | packages usually have tighter requirements
         | 
         | Personally, I use Flatpaks for the sandbox. I restrict all apps
         | very heavily.
        
           | ryukafalz wrote:
           | > Better compatibility all around, as the package runs the
           | same on all distros (as opposed to some too-old or too-new
           | module breaking something on X distro)
           | 
           | I wish this were the case, but as a Flatpak user on Guix
           | System I don't think it's entirely true. Flatpak apps still
           | do seem to rely on some bits of the system, and they break in
           | interesting ways when they aren't where the app is expecting
           | them to be.
        
         | bubblethink wrote:
         | Snaps are an attempt to move away from the distro managed
         | software concept to the windows/android like vendor managed
         | software paradigm. It removes the intermediate distro layer
         | between third party vendors and users. It can also improve
         | security in theory, but there are a lot of caveats to that
         | currently.
        
         | nvrspyx wrote:
         | Snap is terrible in every sense, so you should never use it in
         | my opinion.
         | 
         | As for Flatpak, I'd say use it if you need a more up-to-date
         | version of a piece of desktop software than is in your distro's
         | repository or desktop software that isn't in your distro's
         | repository at all.
         | 
         | For example, I use the Firefox flatpak on Fedora to have the
         | most up-to-date version (98.0.2) since the current version of
         | Firefox on Fedora (98.0.0) was giving me some issues like
         | crashing when downloading something and choppy gifs.
         | 
         | I also use it for some proprietary software like Spotify and a
         | game called Vintage Story. Adjusting their sandbox permissions
         | with Flatseal is useful in this case.
        
           | throwawaymanbot wrote:
        
         | fpoling wrote:
         | In theory one gets better security. Distribution or manual apps
         | can access and modify everything the user can do. Flatpack and
         | Snap tries to address that with a security model similar to
         | mobile apps.
         | 
         | In practice for many apps the security protection is non-
         | existent or very limited for compatibility reasons. So for now
         | the benefits is indeed mostly a store model and auto updates.
         | 
         | If one really needs to run an untrusted app a VM is probably
         | the only practical way. It is also possible to run apps in
         | various containers, but truly secure setup is rather nontrivial
         | with those.
        
           | emerongi wrote:
           | Flatpak apps usually come with quite open privileges, however
           | the user can completely configure this themselves and
           | restrict the access of an application to quite a reasonable
           | degree. Unless you distrust the sandbox of Flatpak, I don't
           | see a need for containers.
        
             | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
             | Worth noting that Flatpak's sandboxing is using the same
             | container functionality of the Linux kernel as all the
             | various other container tools. If containers are secure
             | enough than so is Flatpak, assuming you've tweaked the
             | applications sandbox settings to your liking.
        
         | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
         | In my experience "manual install for something not in the repo"
         | applies to a whole lot of software, especially if "latest
         | version isn't in the repo" counts, and also usually means
         | "compile it from source yourself". Frankly I think that's a
         | pretty ridiculous ask, and the fact that Linux Desktop hasn't
         | had a good story for installing software outside of the repo
         | has been one of the main factors keeping me from liking it over
         | the past 2 decades.
         | 
         | There have been a lot of 'universal package' standards over the
         | years, and honestly Flatpak isn't the best one, but it is the
         | one that the community finally seems willing to adopt to a
         | degree that actually makes it worthwhile. Snap, however, is the
         | worst of these formats, and by a wide margin, that I can recall
         | ever existing. It's amazingly bad and extremely user-hostile.
        
         | cbmuser wrote:
         | Flatpak is incredibly useful for installing proprietary
         | software.
         | 
         | I use it for Spotify, Zoom, Slack among others.
         | 
         | Installing and updating Flatpak apps for proprietary software
         | works very well.
        
         | saidinesh5 wrote:
         | The big one being - when you install just an application, you
         | don't want it to accidentally pull in the wrong dependency and
         | destroy the rest of your system. This is a big problem when you
         | use ppas or .debs directly from the app developer and
         | accidentally update say libc or gtk. Another example: an
         | application you use brings in a python-xyz package that
         | conflicts with the same package you installed with pip install.
         | 
         | Also updating the system shouldn't accidentally break the
         | application you use either. On rolling release distros this can
         | be a pain. You'd typically want the application that the
         | application developer tested properly (as opposed to relying on
         | your package manager's "testing"). The packagers can introduce
         | bugs while repackaging an application for X distro. My Cura was
         | broken for so long on Arch linux that i gave up and started
         | using their AppImages instead.
         | 
         | Depending on your distro, you also have to deal with headaches
         | like XYZ software is only available on Ubuntu 20.04. Tough luck
         | that you are running 18.04 on your laptops. (last week i had to
         | deal with this problem with clang)
         | 
         | In addition to being self contained with all the dependencies,
         | these solutions offer some level of sandboxing too.
         | 
         | On Arch, AUR usually does a nice job of packaging binary only
         | applications, so i rarely need to use flatpack/snap/appimages
         | but on other distros that can be a pain.
        
       | anotherevan wrote:
       | So... I have been using Ubuntu 18.04LTS for my half-dozen servers
       | and was planning to replace them with 22.04LTS later this year.
       | Bad idea?
       | 
       | I've tended to use every second LTS release, replacing with new
       | (cloud) servers during the overlap in support periods. I use
       | Ansible to configure.
       | 
       | Should I be considering Rocky or straight Debian instead?
       | Something else?
        
       | lvs wrote:
        
       | elmerfud wrote:
       | Where Microsoft leads with its bad ideas Linux distros will
       | follow blindly. The sad thing is those who decried a Microsoft
       | for their evilness of doing things like this are the same ones
       | that have turned right around and started defending it in the
       | name of "users are stupid so give them less freedom".
        
         | stjohnswarts wrote:
         | more like "ubuntu will follow blindly" other big guys like
         | redhat, suse, etc have more sane defaults.
        
         | [deleted]
        
           | [deleted]
        
       | [deleted]
        
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