Next time, Gort will install Debian and save himself the trouble
I wish I could have it as easy as Gort. I miss my debian but I want that ZFS built into my kernel.
There is so many distros that are just ubuntu without snaps, is just a matter of picking one of them
can you name a few?
Pop os, linux mint, linux lite, etc.
The first 2 may do a lot pf changes to the base but that’s what make them better them ubuntu in my opinion
You’re looking for Gentoo.
I run Debian with ZFS the package is in the repo’s.
Well, you won’t have that much longer.
The current most popular distribution is MX Linux (based on Debian Stable), which I use. You certainly don’t have to, but I would say least start with a distro that respects you and adheres to FOSS standards…
Edit: context
Installs Ubuntu.
It is Ubuntu.
Gets angry.Gort is not angry. Gort is calm.
Help me understand. Why would you install a distribution, just to gut what’s making it what it is, instead of just getting anything else? Just from Debian derivative perspective, if you hate snaps, why not install something like LMDE Mint, if you need a complete out of the box distro?
I think mainly because a ton of open source software will be tested with Ubuntu, and I don’t want another thing that could possibly be the problem when it fails to build on my machine.
This is why I often choose an Ubuntu derivative like Pop_OS. Most of the same underlying structure with none of the snaps.
Honestly, instead of trying to remove Snap from Ubuntu, I’d just install another distro (PopOS for example is mostly like Ubuntu but with Flatpak instead of Snap)
Oh, is there a point using PopOS even if I replace the WM?
Pop is great, even without the wm. The app store is top notch, if you’re into that sort of thing. Basically it’s Ubuntu minus snaps, so slightly more modern Debian, with good flatpak integration making up for all apt’s drawbacks. Perfect for the computer you want to be able to use without dealing with out of date packages or rolling release tinkering.
Even so, the wm is worth taking the time to get familiar with, because it’s intuitive enough for a non power user, and you’re not going to approach its efficiency in terms of workflow unless you can consistently use several dozen keyboard shortcuts on a more bare bones tiling wm. Anyway, that’s my opinion, having used a wide variety of window managers since the 90s.
Been using pop for months now. The one thing I have a complaint about my part has to do with Steam. I was drawn to Pop because it had good Nvidia support out the box. Steam flatpak is fine but it can’t do some things that the normal deb version can, such as accessing other drives you may have steam games installed on, or that you want to install them on. You have to make some sacrifices with your library setup and your freedom with it when using flatpak.
It took me a while.to figure this out. I like to share it when I can. The deb version of steam is much nicer to use.
Yea, I see. I use xmonad tailored to my needs tho, so that is why I want to use mu owb WM.
You’re absolutely not the target audience for the wm. But… you still might want to be familiar with it, because it could totally be your foot in the door to set someone down that path. The cost of adopting pop’s workflow is substantially smaller than creating your own from scratch, but it’s intuitive enough to get someone to at least understand why it might evolve to something like your setup.
These days I just don’t have enough time, and i’ve seen enough trends come and go that i’m happy with most of the pop defaults, and it’s mostly just dressing for terminal windows anyway. There are totally better options out there, I just don’t have the time to invest in one.
And anyway, most Debian and Ubuntu documentation is spot on for pop, which is a big advantage for anyone who is familiar with them or doesn’t have the time or desire to solve their own problems.
Yeah, switching to Pop! Next time I do any major fucking around.
How many time does Canonical have to do sketchy shit before people catch on? Seriously.
Or just use one of the many Ubuntu derivatives that don’t force Snap?
Just use Linux mint
that only works until you need Lua 5.4 which has conflicting dependencies aaand now im on NixOS
Couldn’t you just install it in a container? Distrobox makes it easy to get something like Fedora which has newer packages.
if i wanted containerized environments, i would pick alpine, but it all makes most trivial things so much more complicated — i just want global install dang nabbit, just keep all your sandboxing on process level controlled by the kernel, give me my userspace freedom
To each there own I guess.
Could someone ELI5 whats wrong with snaps? I see hate for them all over the place but as an end user with little technical knowledge of linux packaging they seem fine? I can install them and use them, they don’t appear to have any anti-FOSS gotchas, so whats the big deal?
I think it’s another fine example of Canonical pushing its own products rather than supporting and enhancing existing standards (flatpak and appimage), which people are getting tired of. Also, as I understand it, the snap store itself is proprietary and is therefore controlled by Canonical.
The server isn’t open source, so Canonical has the sole ability to control snap distribution. It’s also yet another example of Canonical’s “Not Invented Here” syndrome, where they constantly reinvent things so they can control it instead of working with the rest of the open source community. They also trick you into using snaps; for example if you explicitly tell it to use apt to install Firefox, it’ll install it as a snap anyways.
Historically they performed really poorly as well, but my understanding is that they’ve largely fixed that issue.
there was a time when they were slow, but that’s mostly been resolved.
but it’s really just a cult thing now. people hate snaps because they think they’re supposed to hate snaps.
I hate snaps mainly because the server is proprietary. Everything else wrong is negotiable or solvanle, but that’s a nonstarter.
I just started tinkering with Ubuntu a week ago. What’s wrong with snap?
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Canonical is doing the same thing Microsoft is doing with Edge - using its dominant position to push its other products and force out competition, and to lock users (and potentially developers) into its own ecosystem.
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and avoid needing to install all of their dependencies locally
Wait, but doesn’t it result in more copies of the dependencies being installed locally because they’re duplicated for each application?
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It’s actually less about the library being obscure, and more about version conflicts, which is actually more a problem with common libraries.
For example, let’s say you want to install applications A, B, and C, and they each depend on library L. If A depends on Lv1, and B depends on Lv2, and C depends on Lv3, with traditional package management, you’re in a predicament. You can only have one copy of L, and the versions of L may not be compatible.
Solutions like snap, flatpak, appimage, and even things like Docker and other containerization techniques, get around this issue by having applications ship the specific version of the library they need. You end up with more copies of the library, but every application has exactly the version it needs/the developer tested with.
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The age and obscurity of the library is irrelevant - you could always include libraries bundled with the app, if they didn’t exist in system repos. For example, in deb packages, you could include it in the data.tar portion of the package (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deb_(file_format)).
Libraries with version names baked in are one solution to the dependency hell problem, but that requires support from the language/framework/tooling to build the application, and/or the OS (or things get hacky and messy quickly).
If you read that dependency hell page, you’ll see another solution is portable apps, which specifically mentions Appimage, Flatpak, and Snap.
Additionally, if you read the Debian docs on How to Cope with Conflicting Requirements, the first solution they give is to “Install such programs using corresponding sandboxed upstream binary packages,” such as “Flatpak, Snap, or AppImage packages.”
Bin the consumer environment? It is nice and good practice but it is nowhere near as important as it used to be.
This is incorrect. The target audience for Flatpak is desktop users: https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/introduction.html#target-audience. Flatpaks are explicitly for consumer, graphical applications.
It’s a bad, slow and inefficient solution for a problem that is already solved. And because nobody would use their proprietary shit over flatpack, they force the users to use it. Even for things that exist natively in the repositories and would need neither snap nor flatpack.
Best explanation of snaps and their problems i’ve ever read.
It’s slow, forced by Canonical, and starts a pointless format war with Flatpack.
I still don’t even know what problem snap and flatpak were intended to solve. Just apt or dnf installing from the command line, or even using the distro provided store app, has always been sufficient for me.
Modern Linux distros tend to have configuration and dependency issues where certain packages if installed the “Linux Way” doesn’t completely work as desired at times depending on the distro or even a desktop spin (which might have different default libraries installed than the “main” one). Flatpak is a single configuration meant to work one single way across all distributions and has become more of a standard, usable way for Linux applications to just work.
Use Flatpak. Easy to install and easy to tweak from flatseal or similar GUI Flatpak permission tweakers if you want more flexibility at the possible cost of security.
Flatpack isn’t without its own quirks and flaws. There is no One True Way. Being open-source, there shouldn’t be one.
It is definitely slow though, mostly on first run.
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There should be one way for sandboxed shit, since the alternative of package managers already exists
We don’t need snap, app image, flatpak all to compete. We need shit that just works
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Okay, we tried appimage and it didn’t work, so the second iteration as flatpak is mostly functional
you don’t need ENDLESS competition of formats
This computer idiot would also like to know why snap bad.
The main reason is that it is completely controlled by Canonical, with no way to add alternative repos.
It’s worth noting you can bypass the repo, and install snaps that you downloaded from some other source - see https://askubuntu.com/questions/1266894/how-can-i-install-a-snap-package-from-a-local-file.
That doesn’t give you a separate “repo,” but it does allow you to install snaps from anywhere.
You can, but that completely negates the reasons why you’d want to have a repo system in the first place. You gotta do the legwork to get updates, for example.
This isn’t necessarily true - a developer choosing to not include their app in a repo can always opt for a self-updating mechanism.
Don’t get me wrong - repos and tooling to manage all of your apps at once are preferred. But if a developer or user wants to avoid the Canonical controlled repo, I’m just pointing out there are technically ways to do that.
If you’d question why someone would use snap at all at that point… that would be a good question. The point is just that they can, if they want to.
For computer idiots it’s not bad at all. It mostly just works if you don’t mess with it and Canonical relies on it to ship software for Ubuntu. It’s one of those you should know what you’re doing situations if you’re using standard Ubuntu and messing with it. If you remove it, you will have to figure out what’s shipped via snap and how to supplant it if you want it working, among other potential headaches.
No, it does not just work. It removes the option to install updates manually through GUI. If Firefox was running, the only GUI solution is to close it and wait 6 hours or whatever.
My wife was perfectly fine installing updates from the tray with Synaptic. The PC is always connected to the TV with Jellyfin left open in Firefox where she was watching.
So I switched to Manjaro to have a pretty OS that isn’t getting rid of their package manager controlling the most used program.
Ever since the fix for the “Pending update” notification, updating Firefox has been as complicated as closing it and reopening it when you see the notification. The pending update is installed immediately after closing it. It just works for my wife. ☺️
Also I wouldn’t leave her dead without automatic updates.
I’m glad yours enjoying Manjaro. 👌
I didn’t know they fixed it now, good to know.
Yup. Actually I should have said implemented instead of fixed. The implementation was sizeable. I saw some of the PRs. From a user point of view it was a defect fix but in reality it was a non-trivial implementation. I guess that’s why it wasn’t there from the get go.
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I hate it for the refresh nag messages alone.
The default Firefox in Ubuntu is a snap and I only knew that because due to nagging and having to restart constantly while I was using it and had to learn about snaps and how to install Firefox without them on Ubuntu.
If something exists in native form, use that. If it doesn’t or you want some sandboxing (and there is at least some argument for a containerized version that brings all its needed dependencies, for developers not having to test for every linux for example) there’s flatpack or appimage. Snap is just Canonical’s proprietary alternative to flatpack. And also worse in basically any aspect. So they shove it down their users throat instead. Even for stuff that would be available natively and should just be installed via the normal package manager. And to make really sure, nobody is avoiding their crap, they also redirect commands, so for example using apt to install your browser automatically redirects your command to snap install…
If snap had another store, eg Fdroid to play store, all would be fine. So that’s that!
cuz flatpak better
If Canonical gives up on snaps, do we call the current Ubuntu time period “the Blip”?
Too late, I’m on Manjaro for the TV computer now. Super annoying when all I use it for is a browser for Jellyfin when the update popup shows up all the time and doesn’t even update when you follow its instructions.
I know and did the workaround a couple times, but updates through apt is one of the major strengths of Linux for me. Or pacman now, whatever Manjaro has.
I mean a TV console just screams LTS Debian to me. Just the most solid of solid distributions
I should give it a shot. I went with the best sounding option when googling for distros that handle scaling the best. That way I can keep resolution high for movies, but have text at 200% without certain system menus being tiny the way they were on Ubuntu with Gnome.
Just use Debian or Linux Mint Debian Edition and call it a day.
“Ah, come on man, Gort?”
“Come along, Gort.”
“Are you talking to me?”
“No, my capybara’s name is also Gort.”
Klaatu Barada N… Necktie… Nectar… Nickel… Noodle…
Snaps aren’t bad, Canonical might be but then why use Ubuntu?
oh, snap!
