this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
224 points (92.7% liked)
Memes
45719 readers
803 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Linux beginner here. Whats snaps?
It's a package format that bundles all required libraries, that way you don't run into the issue with program A requiring library version <1.1 and program B requiring library >1.3.
It leads to larger binaries because these dependencies are bundled, but it solves the issue with old/minimally maintained software not working on new OS versions because they depend on an ancient version of libssl or something.
Snaps is Ubuntu/Canonicals proprietary package format which is mostly considered a worse alternative to flatpak (another package format) with no real advantages on desktops that Canonical is trying to force on users
Snaps are not a proprietary package format.
The backend is proprietary
The webserver that canonical uses to distribute other people's snaps is, and that's it. APKs aren't proprietary just because Google runs the Play store.
If you don't want to interact with canonical's servers you can download the snap files from literally anywhere else and install them manually so you don't have to touch a single line of non open source code.
Even if you do download the snaps from elsewhere you are still locked in with the Canonical repository for updates, with it being basically hard coded and with no alternatives. Even more, snaps are straight up a worst experience then flatpak with all their quirks like the loopback devices and the automatic updates.
Disable automatic updates then.
snap --helpIMO snaps were prematurely pushed but that's about it - they were a worse experience like two years ago when canonical started pushing them and almost every app had some quirk due to the sandboxing, but they have improved to the point that I literally can't remember the last time I encountered an issue with the snap version of a program (granted I only really use snaps when something isn't available as a .deb or there is a conflict)