[kwlug-disc] Ubuntu LTS future

[Ron Singh]

I am tempted to seek permission from folks like Doug Moen to use a
sanitized(no names and products(Curv) and bulleted version of these
comments and post them on various popular YT Linux channels. I would cite
the postings as being, "comments from KWLUG".

There needs to be coherent feedback from the Linux community wrt their
concerns over Snaps. Sadly, most comments are quite negative towards Mint
with very little understanding of their rationale behind blocking snapd.

What do you folks think? Am I overstepping here? Think it might be helpful?

As much as I understand the reason behind the Chromium thing, I don't much
> care for the way it was implemented. I detest a walled-off store, Chris
> Titus Tech is right, if the Snap Store becomes firmly entrenched, Ubuntu
> would have succeeded where MS failed(meaning the MS Store).
>

Most questions re: the Snap Store towards Alan Pope(Ubuntu Community Mgr)
can be characterized as softballs lobbed feebly with a look of
embarrassment.

My feeling is that Ubuntu will be snap-ing more and more deb packages with
each subsequent iteration of Ubuntu and in time, likely within the next 2-3
years, the hope that MS will buy them for mucho dinero will be realized.
A one-stop store such as the Snap Store will certainly add compelling value
to Ubuntu as being of value to MS.

Then again, I have enough brain cells to make it down the stairs in one
piece, so not sure how valid my perspective is, or how shared it actually
is.

Mint 20(based on Ubuntu 20.04LTS) just dropped today/last night.

Thanks,

Ron S.



On Sat, Jun 27, 2020 at 10:07 AM Jason Eckert <jason.eckert at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I'll echo everything in this thread - the first thing I do after
> installing Ubuntu now is remove snap.
> On a related note, Flatpak doesn't suck IMO.
>
> On Sat, Jun 27, 2020 at 9:42 AM Doug Moen <doug at moens.org> wrote:
>
>> Just to expand on one point about Snap, the only 3D modelling tool that
>> worked flawlessly on my system (using Snap) was Blender, and that's because
>> Blender has sandboxing turned off. Canonical will normally not allow snaps
>> with sandboxing disabled in their store, but Blender was able to negotiate
>> special permission. I doubt I have the political clout to negotiate the
>> same deal with Canonical, to get a non-sandboxed version of Curv into the
>> Snap store. I do have the same technical requirements as Blender, however.
>>
>> Flatpak is basically like Snap, but it is open source, and software
>> vendors can run their own flatpak server and have a direct relationship
>> with their users, without Canonical or Red Hat forcibly interposing
>> themselves as intermediaries.
>>
>> Doug Moen.
>>
>> On Sat, Jun 27, 2020, at 1:08 AM, Paul Nijjar via kwlug-disc wrote:
>> >
>> > Wow. I did not realize that the Snap ecosystem was not FLOSS. This has
>> > opened my eyes.
>> >
>> > So it seems that you can make your own snaps using free software?
>> > https://github.com/snapcore/snapcraft
>> >
>> > so the locked down part is the server. I wonder if there is a
>> > competing project to make FLOSS snap repos?
>> >
>> > Also, it looks like snaps come with a luscious dollop of surveillance:
>> >
>> > > Make data-driven decisions with active install metrics. Watch as
>> > > automatic updates migrate users to your latest release. Understand
>> > > your audience with geographic and version breakdowns.
>> >
>> > (from https://snapcraft.io/)
>> >
>> > The other approach that comes to mind here is NixOS. Maybe that is the
>> > answer to the bleeding-edge vs LTS issue?
>> >
>> > - Paul
>> >
>> >
>> > On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 08:31:47PM +0000, Doug Moen wrote:
>> > >
>> > > Partly it's because the snap system is not open source. It is
>> proprietary and locked down. There is only one snap store, controlled by
>> Canonical. You can't distribute snaps to other users without Canonical's
>> permission, since nobody else can create a snap server. You can copy snap
>> files around but then there is no update mechanism. Same problem as Apple's
>> iOS app store (which is one reason I refuse to own an iOS device). Snap is
>> part of a long term vision to gradually evolve Ubuntu into a more
>> locked-down, proprietary system like iOS. I'm getting out now, rather than
>> living with a degraded experience and watching it slowly get worse with
>> successive future releases. Same reason I'm switching my laptop from Mac to
>> Linux.
>> > >
>> > > Others have noted that you have no control over when snaps upgrade,
>> and you can't roll back an upgrade that breaks your system.
>> > >
>> >
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>> >
>>
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