- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.ml
Until it’s wings “Snaps”.
Ubuntu does so much good, this is one thing I wish they would abandon.
Or at minimum, not have it as the default option.
Ubuntu was once an okay-ish distribution, many many years ago. Then Canonical got rogue, made some very sketchy and irritating decisions (walled garden, snap, advertisements with Amazon, now advertisements in their package manager, … so much more)
Ubuntu is the bane of Linux. Use upstream Debian if you like apt; Linux Mint for an easy entry; Arch, if you’re quick of wits and want to widen your knowledge and skillset.
Fedora if you want a pretty stable RPM distro with pretty new packages, openSUSE if you want a traditional distro (Leap) or a bleeding edge distro (Tumbleweed), and Void if you want something spicy.
Insert witty comment on how Snap is apparently the worst thing on Earth
(I don’t use Linux. Why’s it so hated?)
I used Ubuntu at work a couple of years ago. When they announced the switch to snaps I didn’t really care, but when they switched Firefox to the snap version it had quite a few issues like really slow startup, inconsistent theming, and problems with some extensions. So I uninstalled the snap, installed the standard DEB and went on with my work.
But then the issues came back, and it took me some time to figure out they had replaced the actual DEB package with an unholy shim which just installed the snap. THAT really pissed me off, so when I got a new laptop I just installed Arch and my only regret was not doing it sooner.
I don’t use Linux either, but a quick bit of research tells me it’s like an App Store and software that is specific to Linux. It allows for ease of installing/uninstalling programs but it can can run slow, seems redundant to what flatpaks already does, and isn’t fully fleshed out which leads to weird errors.
I’m guessing it’s because Linux is more hands on and this takes some agency away from users who feel like it might hurt privacy?
That’s what I’m reading anyway. Someone who is more familiar can correct me if I am off base.
One of the things missing from other comments is the architecture of it, why it use to be slow, and how the binaries were handled. Canonical started Snap as a server oriented application deployment system, that has been adapted to desktop use with some technological debt. The differences between it and Flatpak as far as configurability, dependencies, bundled binaries, etc are somewhat nuanced. They dealt with the application speed opening issue by allowing decompressed executables and different hooks to be used.
The other main point of contention aside from technological debt inherited by a server-first development principle is how they closed sourced their Snap server backend. It’s proprietary, while the Snap client is open source, how the actual Snap server runs is a mystery.
Flatpak (and by extension Flathub) are all open sourced, which aligns more with the philosophy that users tend to prefer. It was covered in other comments that everyone else uses Flatpak, and this really isn’t so much as a debate between package managers vs Flatpak, but moreso of application deployment overall. The community prefers Flatpak, and Snap is pushed as a means of lock-in and sunk cost fallacy on the side of Canonical.
Wait…Ubuntu is only 20? What’s the first linux? I thought ubuntu was older.
The fact that Ubuntu is derived from Debian logically means it wasn’t the first Linux-based OS.
But how would I know that?
This is gonna blow your mind. There this thing called the internet, and people put loads of information on it. You can access this using “websites” called “search engines” that index all the content.
Wow, can you tell me more about this thing called the internet? Where does the information get stored?
/s
Tried both Ubuntu 24.10 and Kubuntu 24.10 and original flavour ubuntu lost to both kubuntu’s performance and customizability.
Better to use Kubuntu edition, much better desktop and less crap that is nowdays in Ubuntu.