Their insistence on Snap over Flatpak is just confusing the ecosystem, not helping it. I get it's a lock-in thing for them (Snap is locked to Canonical's proprietary store and only allows Ubuntu runtimes) but that's a harmful thing to do.
I don't per se mind using snaps instead of flatpaks (though I do prefer the latter). What bothers me is that Canonical replaced Firefox in their apt repos with a fake package that installs the snap version of the app. If I choose to install via apt, it's because I want the standard version of the app, and I don't appreciate bait and switch nonsense trying to push snap usage. That was when I lost interest in using Ubuntu, I don't want my OS trying to override my decisions.
I know a lot of people who refuse to use Ubuntu outright specifically and solely because of snaps and how awful they are. Our developer laptops at work are meant to be running Ubuntu and I have some coworkers who only begrudgingly switched over after discovering how to prevent the 'fake snap firefox' package from being installed[0].
I get what they're going for - a way to ship self-contained (usually end-user-facing) applications with any dependencies they need without any risk of breaking other applications in the system. Unfortunately, it just results in breaking those applications specifically instead, in weird and stupid ways that are difficult to debug.
I think if snaps did the Flatpak thing - extract to a local directory instead of living on squashfs forever, or even storing them as an uncompressed disk image instead of squashfs - it might be more reasonable, but at that point you may as well just use Flatpaks like everyone else wants.
[0] - Add the following to `/etc/apt/preferences.d/no-ubuntu-firefox`:
Package: firefox
Pin: release l=Ubuntu
Pin-Priority: -1
This will make any `firefox` package from any repository with the `Ubuntu` label (i.e. an official Ubuntu repository) have a -1 priority, or 'never install ever'.
I switched away from (K)ubuntu over this. I have no major beef with Snaps, I see the benefit of a containerised app distribution system, but hijacking apt by squatting on popular packages to promote your store is completely unacceptable.
Trust is so hard won and so easily lost. If I can't trust `apt install firefox` to do what it says on the tin, how can I trust anything else in the repository? Maybe next year Canonical decides to replace systemd with one that includes includes freemium access to helpful AI services from Canonical?
That's true for Thunderbird too, isn't it?
The business model of these distro vendors is to use their free versions of their distros to get the public to beta test their broken software so that when the bugs are worked out, they can release it for their paid-support customers in a good state.
That, and in case of snap, is to create artifical market share for their proprietary and paid solutions by preinstalling it on the free version.
Yeah I think it's just a way to try and extract some money from the ecosystem.
But many people will never pay for Linux and it's even causing people to move away (eg to Mint which removes snap)
Perhaps it makes sense in the enterprise market though. They're always trying to push launchpad to us at work and I'm sure this will integrate with snap. But launchpad doesn't work for us because it only works with Ubuntu. So it's just a non starter for us, we have more distros to support. Sure Ubuntu is the biggest in our environment but we want a single pane of glass for everything. More similarities between distros would make that a lot easier.
Apps are so messy on Linux. I get some software from apt, flatpak, snap, appimage files, and pip. I wish that at least about 3 of these delivery systems would get merged and depreciated. It was honestly easier to figure this stuff out when it was just .deb files and nothing else.
It's very confusing for new users, especially windows-converts.
Pip is not Linux specific, it's the same on Win/Mac. I prefer AppImages because they are just statically compiled binaries. I prefer Apt&friends because it is good old packaging. But flatpak and snap? Hell no. I see so little advantage there.
> it's a lock-in thing for them
Similarly to rust coreutils, fake sudo and the likes that they push.
I don't understand why people are not more upset at that attempt.
I am forced to use Ubuntu 24.04 on my work laptop because that's the only Linux my company supports (and I refused to use a MacBook). Desktop experience is quite horrible and buggy compared to Fedora with up-to-date KDE Plasma on my own laptop. Quite unfortunate that both of the big players - Red Hat and Ubuntu default to GNOME. What is giving hope though that Valve made the correct choice for the Steam deck desktop mode.
What prevents you from doing apt imstall kubuntu-desktop ? No root access ?
There's nothing in there that interests me. I love it.
I want my OS updates to be boring. Granted I'm using Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE) so the Gnome stuff has nothing to do with my use, but the fact that there is nothing there that I have to fix or anticipate or work around or develop a new workflow for is terrific. That's what I love about the Ubuntu family - the last time I had a major upheaval with my desktop system was the year after KDE 4.0 was released... I think over a decade and a half ago. I really have not had to think about my desktop since.
A key difference is support lifespan, though: 5 years of standard security maintenance for regular Ubuntu[1], and 3 years for Kubuntu[2].
[1] https://ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle
[2] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NobleNumbat/ReleaseNotes/Kubuntu
Yes though you can easily install kde on normal Ubuntu.
Out of curiosity if you want stability over all else, what's the benefit of Kubuntu over the KDE blend of Debian?
I go for the latter but hypothetically:
- Easy access to (newer versions of) some particular package like a device driver in distro repos[0]
- You prefer the Kubuntu default experience more and don't want to customize
- Company policy
[0]: For most packages, ~half the time Debian stable is ahead of Ubuntu LTS as the former is the base of the latter. Currently latest Ubuntu LTS 24.04 is still based on Debian oldstable. It will catch up with 26.04, until next Debian stable release. Sometimes, though, Ubuntu do their own backports or releases where Debian stable does not.
snaps and rust coreutils gave me a lot of headache in the beginning.
I was luckily able to avoid snaps during their early years. By the time I was forced to use them, e.g. with Thunderbird, they were actually great at integrating with the desktop files when I wanted, but isolating the program otherwise. I suppose that I dodged that problem.
How so you mean forced? Thunderbird can still be installed by apt just like before and for Debian, though?
> In 26.04, we are taking initial steps to centralise software management and make App Center the single place to handle all applications, independently of the packaging format…
> This work includes fully managing deb packages directly in App Center, beginning the deprecation of older system tools
Are the CLI apps dpkg, apt and, well, snap all of them "older system tools"? Are we going to be cattle-prodded into the GUI?
The CLI tools are the backends and they're talking about the desktop frontend aka GUI. These frontends depends on the CLI. It's essentially an API of the system in this world.
I personally welcome this change as the current GUI is indeed a bit confusing.
There's an Ubuntu box here to run things under cuda because two days trying to get cuda to run properly on Debian turned out to be the limit of my patience. For something that should be familiar it's intensely irritating as a dev system.
As an especial what the fuck are you doing, for the LTS 24.04 release that nvidia tested against, canonical decided to upgrade their kernel, without bumping their minor revision number, to one that cuda doesn't run on. Downgrading that to the kernel 24.04 originally shipped with broke zfs, which Ubuntu made a huge fuss about shipping out of the box.
Damned thing is running now (without zfs, and gnome won't start), and I think I've killed the automated updates system, but it definitely doesn't have robust wont-fall-over vibes.
So for Canonical, if you see this, don't change the kernel you've released with if you aren't also changing the version number.
>> Ubuntu on WSL
I used this for a long time and still do sometimes. However, Arch works well enough now that I don't need to bother with Windows anymore. It is much more efficient for working with containers as there is no VM involved.
> constant focus for us is making applications packaged as snap feel fully native.
> laying the groundwork
So with constant focus, how many more years before the feeling is reached on top of that groundwork . The map is rather fuzzy
I have a lot of nostalgia for Canonical. I still remember the excitement of receiving those free "ShipIt" CDs in the mail; Ubuntu 8.04 was my gateway drug into the Linux ecosystem, and I'll always be thankful to them for making Linux feel accessible back then.
That said, I find myself increasingly at odds with the direction they're taking. The whole Snap vs. Flatpak debacle is exhausting, and personally, I'm not a fan of either. I'd take a standard apt repo over containerized desktop apps any day. Seeing core applications migrate to Snaps and the recent decision to move coreutils to alternate implementations feels like a bridge too far for my taste.
There's also the creeping Proprietary integrations to consider. To be honest, this is more of a philosophical stance than a practical one. Ubuntu is still a fantastic "get work done" distro, and I still use it on my office laptop because it just works and it's the only destro that got my employer's stamp of approval.
But for my personal setup? I've moved on. It's Arch for the desktop and Debian for servers. Nothing else really hits that sweet spot of control and simplicity for me anymore.
> Seeing core applications migrate to Snaps and the recent decision to move coreutils to alternate implementations
It's a classical embrace and extinguish strategy.
Alright PopOS team... time to get cosmic out the door.
I've officially missed a whole cycle!
jkjk, thanks for the hard work, I'll wait as long as it takes.
Cosmic desktop shipped in PopOS 24.04 a few weeks ago btw
Nice, I missed that!