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Ubuntu Snap Hate (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago by Tekkip20@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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I've gathered that a lot of people in the nix space seem to dislike snaps but otherwise like Flatpaks, what seems to be the difference here?

Are Snaps just a lot slower than flatpaks or something? They're both a bit bloaty as far as I know but makes Canonicals attempt worse?

Personally I think for home users or niche there should be a snap less variant of this distribution with all the bells and whistles.

Sure it might be pointless, but you could argue that for dozens of other distros that take Debian, Fedora or Arch stuff and make it as their own variant, I.e MX Linux or Manjaro.

What are your thoughts?

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[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 73 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (5 children)

proprietary server (snap store), unlike flatpak
snapd only allows one server (but it is foss so you could just patch it), unlike flatpak
nonexistent security on snap store, multiple times malware, unlike flatpak
no sandboxing without apparmor and specific profiles, so not cross platform, unlike flatpak
the system apps are also requiring apparmor, so not cross platform
they lack granular permission systems afaik
they concur with flatpak, which is horrible as we need a universal packaging format, not 3
seemingly no reproducible builds?
no separation between all, opensource, verified repo, unlike flatpak
they pollute the mount list with all the loop devices

And people complain abour resource usage etc, but that is just separating apps from the system. Flatpak does the same.

[–] hperrin@lemmy.world 21 points 6 months ago

You forgot also snaps pollute both the mount list and the path. Whether you like or dislike the second is up to opinion, but nobody likes the first.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 7 points 6 months ago (2 children)

also how slow they are to launch

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 4 points 6 months ago

There is a ton of overhead

[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 4 points 6 months ago

Yeah but this is just because they are sandboxed and use their own libs.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 3 points 6 months ago

Not to mention the extremely complicated back end. Flatpak doesn't need extra permissions because it is based on bubblewrap. Snap is doing its own thing which is incredibly complicated.

[–] flux@lemmy.ml 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I think the second point is the biggest for me: it's almost like Canonical wanted to have a single dominant store for apps, as the ecosystem they are building supports only one. And, apparently, that one server is also closed?

So if you try to make an alternative source and give instructions to people how to configure their snap installation to use it (I found this information very hard to find for some reason..), your "store" probably won't have the same packages Canonical's has, so users won't be able to find the packages and I imagine updates are also now broken?

Contrasting this with flatpak: you just install apps from wherever. Or from flathub. Or your own site. Doesn't matter. No business incentive behind—built into the tools—to make everyone use flathub.org.

[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 2 points 6 months ago

Yes, Flathub is important but there are many other repos. Nothing for non development though.

I maintain a hopefully complete list here

[–] Unyieldingly@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

So they have GPL Violation's?

[–] Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Believe it or not, if you build something you can license it however you want. Canonical has long required outside contributors to sign agreements too, to allow just this sort of thing.

[–] Unyieldingly@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

They're pulling packages from Debian and i don't know if they're doing Nvidia like stuff or not.