Ubuntu Core as an immutable Linux Desktop base - Slashdot

Ubuntu Core as an immutable Linux Desktop base

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• 1 hidden comment

• Re: Fuck snaps

  I support this message. Flatpak or bust.

  • Re:

    Agreed.

    I'm curious why they didn't go for Flatpak.

    That aside, I'd probably go for an immutable Mint system (yes, I know Mint is Ubuntu underneath) but from what I read, "there will be one immutable desktop OS flavor", and I'm guessing switching it to Cinnamon probably isn't easily done, if at all.

    Or would that be possible? I don't know squat about the innards of doing this, maybe someone here who knows more about this than I do* could weigh in?

    ----
    * which is practically anyone with a pulse TBH

  • Re:

    What's the difference. I'm fed up of all those new packaging systems. And does that mean Ubuntu will be 10 times larger on disk since every snap has a duplicate of all necessary libs ?

• A circle of IT professionals, all dressed in robes of black, circle around the server rack in the darkened basement allotted their kind. Deep in the night, they allow the hobbyist faction, with robes of gray, to enter their sacred, unholy chamber. The black robes raise their hands for silence, then, one of them speaks:

  FUCK SNAPS!

  The hobbyists look around, confused for a moment. The other IT professionals nod their heads, then bow, raising their hoods. A low, barely audible chant begins. It slowly increases in volume and intensity. The hobbyists slowly join in.

  fuck snaps.
  fuck snaps.
  FUCK SNAPS.
  FUCK SNAPS!
  FUCK SNAPS!

  At the height of their chant, the magic spell breaks over the server rack, the CPUs in the rack suddenly running smoother, faster, with less waste heat. The spell spills out onto the network, and out to the internet.

  The leader of the black robes looks up. "It has been done. May the great gods of the holy cypher forever honor the pact. Go forth, spread the word, the snaps will be tolerated no longer."

  The hobbyists and IT professionals bow their heads more deeply, and whisper together, "Amen."

  • Re:

    I would have simply switched to FreeBSD.

    • I'll stick with Debian to avoid most of the Shuttleworth-isms.

• Yeah, in 22.04 LTS I regularly have the Firefox and Chromium snaps get messed up and prevent the applications from starting up. The only way to fix it is to remove the snap, reboot, and reinstall the snap. That was already the case in 20.04. It's currently the biggest pain point for me in Ubuntu. Switching the whole O/S to run on snaps is the last thing I would trust/want to do. Even if they've they've fixed that problem in 22.10 or 23.04, I won't trust it until at least one 2-year cycle on 24.04 where I've not snap had problems with either Firefox or Chromium.

  Or I may jump to Mint since they've apparently added support for version upgrades since I last looked into it.

  • Re:

    I have run into a collision between application design practices and snaps. Two applications that I installed with snap at first proved unusable since they both wrote their preference or other operating config information of a path that was immutable within the snap. An app that I cannot change any settings on is an unusable one.

  • I do the same thing, but with an extra step, as I outlined here [slashdot.org].

    Basically, remove the Firefox and Chrome snaps, then remove snapd itself.

    Then install Firefox and Chromium from APT PPA repositories.

    I am still on 20.04 LTS, and I am hoping that the same plan works on 22.04 LTS as well.

    • Re:

      Nope, it doesn't. In Ubuntu 22.04, it automatically removes third party repo versions of Firefox, and installs the Canonical version that tries to install the snap version instead. Even if you've set the third party repo to have a higher priority.

      By removing snapd, you'll prevent them from installing brokenfox (yay), but you won't prevent them from removing the one you have installed.

      • Re:

        That doesn't sound right, are you suggesting there is special code to give the Canonical version higher priority than a user can give? Either way, I use the PPA Firefox on 22.04 and still have snapd running, but it has no snaps besides the admin ones.

        • Re:

          Ok I'm no expert, but beyond using a bit more storage, what is with the wide spread aversion to snap? is this just another case of "you have to auto hate everything coming from canonical" or are there other things at work here?

          • Re:

            The hatred could be overblown, but this is my list and understanding;

            • * Bad desktop integration. I couldn't save files from Firefox to my home area because snap ran as some virtual user. They had to be saved to/tmp and manually moved. This particular problem is probably fixed now, but I've heard claims that the isolation inherently stops it adhering to general desktop standards.
            • * Forced/nagging updates. Probably something that can be turned off but in particular on my media/projector machine it would freque

  • Re:

    FFS, uninstall the snap. Uninstall snap. Install Firefox from a ppa

    https://askubuntu.com/question... [askubuntu.com]

• Re:

  Nerds: "They need to make Linux easier to use so that the masses can adopt it."
  Canonical: "Here's Ubuntu, we've made it easy as possible. You can install safe modular components to meet most all of your needs. Anybody can do it."
  Nerds: "You're breaking Linux by obfuscating all the complicated parts that I like to pretend to know what they do!"
  • 1 hidden comment

  • Re:

    I am a nerd, and still hope that Linux in the desktop will remain where it is: all the applications that I need or want are available to me, and the bad guys will carry on focusing on Windows. Kudos to the Ubuntu and Gnome people (the latter, in particular) whose efforts are contributing significantly to that cause.

  • Re:

    you left out the part where it turns ubuntu into a platform of resource hog snaps because each tries to get as much as it can for itself instead of letting the OS provide the resources intelligently. And where nothing runs predictably because there isn't any cohesion on the platform.

    • Re:

      I was just being snarky. I honestly don't know shit about snaps, beyond the 5 minutes I spent reading about them before I commented. I would agree, that sounds like a pretty crap way to allocate resources.

• Re:

  I'm switching to Debian. Ubuntu 22.04's insistence on using Snaps for Firefox has broken Firefox, and they actually have code in Ubuntu 22.04 that forceably overrides your apt priority and pinning settings to reinstall the Canonical version of Firefox if you try to use the official Mozilla repo to install it instead.

  They're fucking nutcases. The technology doesn't work, even if it did that doesn't mean it's a good idea, and they're forcing Ubuntu users to use it. Absolute garbage. This is the worst thin

• Re:

  Your title is literally what I came here to say.