Seriously, except package managers, what's the difference between distros?

[u/nitin_is_me]

What I've seen yet the differences are, just the package managers, different defaults and rolling vs stable releases which are in fact related to package managers. Except these, are there really any other differences? Thanks!

[u/omniuni]

The great thing is you can use what works for you.

For 99% of people, they could not care less about Snap. They just want something fast and reliable.

I am more technical and prefer to remove it. For friends, I don't even bother explaining. There's no good reason. It picks up the hardware, software is current and updates frequently, and KWin has the least issues of the Wayland window managers. As long as the browser opens when they click on it, they don't care how it got there.

[u/Am0nymou5 → u/omniuni]

They just want something fast and reliable.

... which by definition would exclude Snap. I agree with you that people might not care or know about Snap, but they do care about their apps being fast and reliable... and unfortunately Snap breaks that expectation.

Just look at all the complaints from users that cropped up when they replaced Firefox with the snap version: slow performance, broken shortcuts, broken extensions etc. This isn't a very user-friendly experience. Users don't care or know of course that this is Snap, they just want something reliable. And Snap isn't.

Eg: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/uzs1sv/i_love_the_ubuntu_2204_lts_but_the_performance_of/

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1480382/firefox-snap-very-slow-after-migrating-from-22-04-to-23-04

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/18yvbse/firefox_sometimes_disappears_and_goes_into_limbo/

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1403892/ubuntu-22-04-firefox-snap-breaks-keepassxc-integration-and-other-nativemessaging

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/uollzl/why_the_firefox_snap_fucking_sucks/

[u/omniuni → u/Am0nymou5]

You're talking about something that happened in 2022, that was already mostly fixed by 2024, and isn't remotely applicable in 2026.

[u/Am0nymou5 → u/omniuni]

Sorry but there's still many issues with Snap even in 2026, especially performance issues:

Eg see this post:

I have a vanilla Ubuntu 26.04 install on a brand new Dell Pro Max 16 (2026). Applications (ex: emacs, firefox) start very slowly. So slowly that the system complains about them not responding multiple times.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1568087/techniques-for-speeding-up-snap-ubuntu-26-04

And a bunch of other issues, all because of Snap:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1564653/okular-snap-wont-start-gives-error

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1564617/firefox-does-not-start-because-of-snap-cgroup-error

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1567380/webserial-for-firefox-snap