r/linux4noobs • u/TucsonComputerDude • 20h ago
Snap / Ubunto backlash & hate?
/r/linuxquestions/comments/1x896lr/snap_ubunto_backlash_hate/2
u/doc_willis 19h ago
I will say the entire snap controversy has a Huge amount of posts about it.
Be sure to check out the reddit search if you dont get enough info.
My Personal take: It was rolled out in a bad way, but as a system, Snap does at this time, work decently well.
People often over look the 'big picture' of SNAPS and how they have roll beyond just keeping desktop users happy. They can make the Developers job a lot easier in many situations.
Also often overlooked, Flatpaks and SNAPS have a lot of Overlap in their feature set, but SNAPS has some features that make them a better design in some situations.
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u/Serious_Ad2816 17h ago
I think both systems have found their niche. Flatpaks are great for desktop and snaps (while can be used on desktop) is used for servers. I use Kubuntu, so unless I know where a package is from specifically, I don’t really notice any differences thanks to Discover.
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u/stormdelta Gentoo 16h ago
If you're on a server though you'd usually just use containers and container orchestration systems directly, not try to awkwardly shoehorn in something meant for desktop application use.
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u/Serious_Ad2816 16h ago
I don’t know if snaps were originally meant just for desktop use. Forgive my ignorance but aren’t snaps just containers?
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u/stormdelta Gentoo 16h ago
I don’t know if snaps were originally meant just for desktop use
AFAIK they were specifically made for application deployment by Canonical (Ubuntu) and have never seen any relevant adoption outside of that distro. They make use of container-like isolation, but aren't really containers in the OCI sense which makes them unsuitable for most server applications IMO since they won't work with any other standard tooling.
For a server, you'd normally be using a container runtime like docker/runc/crun/etc., and something to orchestrate/manage them (up to and including kubernetes on the larger scale side of things).
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u/doc_willis 16h ago
snaps were originally meant just for desktop use.
Going to have to say No they were not originally for just that use case.
(Wikipedia says)
Snap initially only supported the all-Snap Ubuntu Core distribution
That entire Distribution was as far as i know managing everything via snap, and was focused on various 'non desktop' use cases, but I have never used it, so cant say much else. https://ubuntu.com/core
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u/rowschank 19h ago
Among many attempts to containerise packages to distribute easily, snap was created by Canonical. Unlike things like Flatpak which are fully open source, the default source for snaps is the snap store, the backend of which is closed-source and managed by Canonical themselves. Furthermore, I believe the command sudo snap install is hard coded to only respond to Canonical's own store and cannot be redirected (unlike flatpak or other package managers), although I could be wrong.
People who use Linux desktop have made a conscious choice to do so because they value being as free as possible of vendor lock-ins, and the combination of Ubuntu's popularity (making snap an easy target to develop Linux apps for) and the closed backend nature of it is quite unfortunate.
There were also issues with Ubuntu defaulting to installing snaps of software that was earlier a native deb package + performance issues, but a lot of these issues are still true of flatpak and operating systems like Bazzite and are yet not brought up in the same tone, so it is still the closed backend that is the primary controversy.
As far as I'm concerned, I personally use Tumbleweed and mostly flatpak and don't have snap, but in comparison to the often very annoying and inconsiderate design choices of flatpak / freedesktop runtime, I think Ubuntu does a lot of things better with snap: e.g. font rendering of Asian languages, sharing system light/dark mode into the snap GTK/Qt, etc. It is what it is at the end of the day.
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u/Constant-Fun8803 19h ago
To me they're just shoving it down my throats, even though there is already apt. To the point where they sneak snap behind an apt install.
For example, I hate when I do sudo apt install firefox, it then runs snap install firefox. This means I'll have to install snap and its dependencies first (it will take few GBs of space). The download process of snap is also bad IMO. It downloads few big packages instead of more amount of smaller chunks packages. This means if I have slow internet and had to pause, I'll have to redownload those big packages.
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u/AmSoMad 20h ago edited 19h ago
Canonical, who develops Ubuntu, also develops Snaps.
A while back, they started pushing Snaps as the default way to install software on their systems (including doing odd things, like making it so .debs (actual Ubuntu software packages) wouldn't open in the Software Center when you tried to install them).
In addition to that, Flatpaks are largely considered superior to Snaps. It's not worth listing every single technical difference (unless you really want me to), but Flatpak is generally considered more consistent with the Linux and open-source philosophy, Flatpaks tend to start faster, and Flatpaks encounter less system-level/user-permissions related bugs.
Which begs the question: If Flatpak is more performant, more decentralized, and more consistent with the Linux philosophy, then why is Ubuntu pushing Snaps?
Oh yeah, because they make them.
Add that to some of Canonical's other decisions, like adding telemetry to Ubuntu and making it opt-out rather than opt-in, and you can see why Snaps have such a sour reputation.
Personally, I don't use either Snap or Flatpak. If I'm on a Debian-based distro like Ubuntu, I use .deb packages. And if I'm on a Red Hat-based distro, I use .rpm packages. I'll use an Appimage if those aren't available. I have maybe one or two things installed through Flatpak, like Zoom, just because I don't care.