I see people hate snap packaging and removing it if their OS support it. Is it because it’s NOT fully open-source or just due to how the technology works?

Update: fixed typos

102 points

Here’s my answer to this same question from an old thread on Reddit:

My Ubuntu system always reserved a whopping 20% of my 32GB ram for no reason and I never bothered to know why. Later I uninstalled snapd because of boot time issues and guess what happened? Only 1.5 GB used after a fresh boot.

I had like 4 different JetBrains IDEs installed via snap with each totalling around 2GB of disk space. While removing snapd I discovered it kept back 2-3 previous versions of every package on your disk.

Uninstalling this bloat was the best thing I did to my ubuntu system. It was suddenly light as a feather and way more responsive like I just did a fresh system install.

Some time later I was installing something from apt and Ubuntu tried to install it from snap, thus sneakily installing snapd in the process. Looking for a solution, I felt like I was looking up how to disable Windows updates or some other shit.

I had a moment of clarity and wondered why the fuck did I have to put up with this kinda bullshit on Linux. I wiped that drive clean and switched to Fedora.

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14 points

I wiped that drive clean and switched to Fedora.

I might need to switch over as well, but I really don’t like rpm (or whatever that’s called on fedora, zypper or something? or was that suse?). I’ve been a Debian user since woody was a new thing and then at some point I gradually moved to ubuntu due to better desktop experience and more up to date packages (back then Debian stable really wasn’t anywhere close of bleeding edge) and PPA support was great for my needs. Now I have ubuntu installations which have gone trough upgrades for years and installations I have doesn’t seem to work like I want them to. Some of the issues will most likely stay (as RMS said, nvidia rapes babies or something like that) but in general I don’t like my browser, signal client and whatnot to notify me that I need to shut them down NOW since they’ll upgrade at some point in next 3-6 months. Simple apt dist-upgrade isn’t enough anymore and the systems require more and more TLC than I’m willing to give to them. Snapd is at least related to the issues I have 8 times out of 10.

Ubuntu just doesn’t have the feel it used to and it’s getting annoying enough that the simpler way would be just to reinstall everything and switch to something else, even if it takes some time and effort to migrate 5+ year old installations to new system.

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12 points

If you don’t want something completely different, PopOS is a great, snap free, distribution based on Ubuntu. It’s what Ubuntu should have been.

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6 points

Mint also packages stuff that Ubuntu has rolled into snaps

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9 points

Maybe LM:DE (Linux Mint: Debian Edition)? Obscure software can be a pain to install for the usual reason, but otherwise I’m finding this to be a great distro. Second choice is Solus, but that’s even worse when it comes to software.

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9 points

Or even just Linux Mint (non-debian edition). I’ve moved to that as it’s a familiar Ubuntu base but without snaps.

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5 points

Fedora uses DNF, with rpms under the hood, not sure how that works, haha. Honestly I have no problems with it. I’m no power user, but it does everything I need. The only downside being kinda slow repo fetches.

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6 points

dnf is to apt as rpm is to dpkg.

The first pair are the nice user friendly front ends that pull things in and install from the repos.

The latter are the guts that directly handle the raw packages and are used by the frontends.

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1 point
Deleted by creator
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1 point

The next release of Fedora will ship DNF5 as the default package manager, which is supposed to be much faster.

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2 points

If you want up-to-date packages then just switch to testing

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0 points

rpms were a pain for me when i transitioned as well but I’ve learned to love them

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8 points

One of my biggest gripes about Windows was updates, virus scans and compatibility scans running autonomously while I am trying to get stuff done, sucking up network, drive access and CPU. I didn’t need Ubuntu doing the same thing to me - I want to kick off updates manually when I am taking a break for lunch or at the end of the day before shutdown.

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3 points

As a power use this drives me nuts, but I know plenty of end users who are better off with those things turned on.

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4 points
*

I actually think jetbrains are the ones keeping old versions. On my windows machine, when I get an ide update, the old one is saved so I can revert back to it.

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62 points

There are philosophical and technical reasons to not like snaps

Technical

  • Slow startup time
  • Makes lsblk look really ugly
  • For awhile users didn’t have a lot of control over when things updated
  • Not designed to work with third party repos by default
  • Requires apparmor so it doesn’t work well on selinux distros.

Philosophical

  • Backend is proprietary and controller by a single company
  • Has made the same amount of effort as flatpak to work on distros that aren’t Ubuntu
  • Some people just don’t like Ubuntu
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38 points
  • Canonical is pushing it too aggressively, removing the freedom of choice.
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13 points
*
Deleted by creator
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11 points

Also:

  • Creates a snap directory on your home. I hate programs that pollute my home.
  • Requires a service (snapd) to function.
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9 points

Not only does it create that directory but it creates new folders for each updated version of various apps… Very weird and confusing

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57 points

This threads got lots of good answers, but I haven’t seen it mentioned that snaps sometimes mean reduced functionality.

Use the docker snap? Sorry, it can only access your home directory so no -v /some/path:/somewhere for you

Use firefox or chromium and keepassxc? Sorry, your browser plugin won’t be able to talk to your password manager

And the updates… dear god. In whose mind was it a good idea to show a “firefox is updating, exit now to avoid issues” TWO WEEKS im advance. Closing the app does precisely fuck all unless you manually snap refresh it

Containerised applications are a fine idea, but snap is a horrible implementation of it

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14 points

Didn’t know that about the docker snap but that is insane. It would be straight up unusable at work for me.

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7 points

To be fair, those are both issues with flatpak too. You can change the file system permissions with a command or flatseal, but I don’t know of a fix for the password extension issue.

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9 points
*

In general the integration of flatpak is quite good (even more if we compare it with snap), but there are still some gaps. In this case there are some solutions like this one.

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5 points

Install Node with snap? Cypress silently closes. (This took some time to get to the bottom of)

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4 points

I tried to get microk8s up and running by installing it from a snap since I figured it would be a nice and easy way to get up and running quickly.

I’ve spent so much time trying to get it working that I haven’t even started to learn k8s yet since I can’t get the damn thing to run.

I think I’m switching to Debian for my servers.

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2 points

Wtf I’ve installed microk8s dozens of times it just works ?!

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43 points

Examining my disk partitions with df is ruined now. Every snap gets its own virtual disk.

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9 points

Ha I was just listening to the Linux Unplugged podcast and the guy was just complaining about this same thing

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8 points

I wonder if that could easily be fixed by just filtering the output of df to not show virtual disks (df already has an -l option to only show local disks, so would expect that changing df could be relatively easy).

Note: I am not saying that I like snaps…

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7 points

It seems incredibly shortsighted to go this way. Sure 1 or 2 is fine, but when the whole os is snaps it’s abusing the system.

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5 points

This is the reason I got rid of snaps

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2 points
*

Just create an alias that filters loop devices. I mean, if this is your only problem with snap, you can fix it in a second. But I’m betting you have other problems with it.

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39 points
*

I don’t know enough to dislike snaps, I’m just spiteful enough to dislike cannonical trying to force me to use them

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7 points

You’re so real for this

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