ok, what is snap and why should I care?
One of my friends spent like a month distrohopping just to find a debian-based distro that fits these two criteria:
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First-class support for KDE
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Isn’t broken all the time
Ubuntu fails both. KDE Neon excels on the first one, but fails harder than ubuntu on the second one. Kubuntu as well. Debian has horridly outdated packages, and he refuses to use nix/flatpak. Tuxedo OS is obscure and broken. Mint is great, but installing KDE takes some effort.
He finally settled on Ubuntu Server with the native KDE package. Still has to do some weird incantations to banish snap tho.
How did things get this bad?
This is why I use Windows.
I don’t have a problem with snaps as a technology. If you want to use them, then who am I to judge?
But what I do have a problem with is when I don’t have a choice and I am being forced to use what the distro maintainers think is good for me. That is what finally made me quit Ubuntu and switch to Fedora.
Also, Snap is proprietary. That alone is reason enough for me to steer clear.
Well snap itself isn’t proprietary, the backend server distributing the snaps is.
Explain how this distinction matters in the real world?
Snap distribution is as much a part of snaps as Snapd.
Who cares that part of it is open source if other parts aren’t?
I do have a problem with them, the same problem was solved, better, with other technologies like appImage (which doesn’t litter your mount list with 100 meaningless entries).
Even flatpak is better, snap is an also ran they’re trying to force on us without being as good as any of the competitors.
Couldn’t the same argument be made for any distro? They give you what they put in their repos. If you want a deb package, use the mozillateam PPA (which is built on Canonical’s hardware, same as Mozilla’s snap of it).
the difference is that the folder/package structure for other package manager is open and well known
everyone can host their own i.e. apt, pacman or Flatpak repository with little effort
the required folder/package structure for snaps is no longer open and you cannot change the default snap repository either easily
The package structure for snaps is very much open, as is the API for a snap store. There was for a long time an open source snap store implementation, but it died out due to lack of interest by others in actually hosting their own stores, which to me says a lot about whether people actually want to host their own repo or just want to use it as a way to complain.
IIRC, the issue was that - unless you take steps to explicitly prevent it - Ubuntu would occasionally reinstall the snap version. I don’t remember the details, been a while since I had to dance that dance, but I recall it being one of the things that put me off snap in particular, Ubuntu in general and sparked my search for a different distro.
I’m now on Nobara, a Fedora-based gaming-oriented distro maintained by GloriousEgroll (who also maintains the popular Proton-GE)
Like with any time you’re trying to select a specific source for a package, you need to set apt configuration to prefer that source. It’s standard apt behaviour with a standard way to configure it.
when I don’t have a choice and I am being forced to use what the distro maintainers think is good for me.
That’s the case on literally any distro.
And just like on literally any distro, you can also install Firefox from FlatPak, the Mozilla repo or from source.
Except on Ubuntu it just installs the snap regardless. If you don’t pay attention you may not even realize that it is a snap. Also the snap store is controlled exclusively by one company with a questionable history.
This is why I switched from Ubuntu to Debian.
For me it was when I was trying to use some Android tools and it tried to install the snap version. The snap version was broken of course.
When I first returned to Linux several years ago I started with Ubuntu, since it was the only distro I had used. I got confused when I installed Firefox and other apps via apt but instead got snap versions. This (very miniscule) gripe is enough of a reason for me to not recommend Ubuntu to new users anymore.
It’s not a miniscule gripe tho. Snap is still broken for many users, and relying on it for something as critical as a web browser is asking for trouble. Experimental technologies like snap should be opt-in for users who are willing to deal with the issues they create. Do they really expect a novice to see firefox’s filepicker not behaving correctly, and think “Aha, an XDG desktop portal issue! Let me drop everything I’m doing and go troubleshoot that” ? Ubuntu is meant to be linux for normies, they don’t have the time or the knowledge to deal with snap.
