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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

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Ubuntu Snap Hate (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I've found the opposite as an end user with Flatpaks. It makes it easy to install an app on multiple devices with different Linux flavours and it'll just work.

Even if you're on a single device, if the app isn't in your repo or the latest version is not available in the repo, then flatpak can be very convenient. Certainly easier than compiling from source.

It is secure in the sense that it runs in a sandboxed environment with its own libraries. The downside of that though is bloat as you will have duplicates of libraries you already have on your system downloaded for flatpak. That bloat diminishes to an extent the more apps you use as the apps will share and reuse the Flatpak downloaded libraries, but your first app could be 2gb just because of the libraries and dependencies.

That bloat also extends to memory - you might be running two copies of multiple libraries at a time - one for the native system and another for the Flatpak app.

So on the one side it's convenient and allows distributions across all flavours of Linux, and it sandboxes apps which is potentially more secure but the downside is bloat, and resource use.

Ubuntu have gone too far with Snap, forcing it instead of providing native apps, and it's proprietary. Flatpak is more open and an option for users rather than forced on them.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Thanks for the really good breakdown. I was familiar with the idea that flatpaks are more open and snaps are more proprietary, but I had less understanding of the details of how they're sandboxed. Thanks again, I'm sure it will help others understand it better, too.