I’m not sure how this myth came up that snaps were a reaction to flatpak, they clearly were not, they were the evolution of technology we started with the ubuntu phone.
This is a strawman fallacy. I did not claim that snaps were a reaction to flatpak. Either way, be it myth or not, the opportunities were there to cooperate with them, to build up a support team. Whether they were called xdg-apps or flatpak since their first release in 2016. (And flatpak surely enjoys a wide popularity that it definitely warranted such) Having alternatives and connections is always a good thing (and I thought this is what “Ubuntu” is about, a community of communities). In fact, I’m pretty sure there are more than enough devs that would gladly volunteer.
But, again, this would go au contraire to Canonical’s obvious business interests. Alternatives always stand in the way of a monopolistic structure. This is not supposed to be antagonizing (but ethically questionable, at least when it comes to the commonly shared philosophy of Linux in relation to the community), this is an objectively, empirically verified indisputable fact observable in most companies. And from a purely profit maximized perspective that surely makes sense, but it goes at the expense of the community. And the latter is what others and I care about.
do you think canonical should have thrown away several years of work, should have told commercial and enterprise users to stop using snaps and should have instead invested into a project that had already been ruled out for its technical limitations at the start?
Your (obviously) loaded question does not reflect the presuppositions that I agreed to or claimed, therefore yet again, fallacious and misrepresenting what I said. No, I don’t think Canonical should have thrown away years of work. However, they should give the average Linux user the opportunity to use alternatives that aren’t just [Your “universal” standard here]. My other points I brought up are questions, hypotheses, such like what necessitates that Canonical should have “total” control over what the user installs and what not and I referred to the example of stubborn behavior of not implementing relevant and demanded features which makes this question even more so relevant.
But look, my main point is not to discredit Snappy as a whole. My main problem is the obvious authoritarian stance of whoever is responsible that want to diminish the ability of the community using any alternative for the sake of forcing a standard upon all users regardless if commercial or private. Just take removing snap from Ubuntu for instance. While technically not difficult, it’s obvious that this hassle that is put upon the user serves the purpose (or at least, it’s teleologically and ethically what comes from it) of not even having them try to delete or mess with snap at all in order to avoid breaking their system:
You need to remove all snaps in a particular order, then delete the snap daemon via apt. At this point, you’re still not done. Next you will have to figure out how to get the apt update command to stop re-installing snap automatically. You do that with nosnap.pref and add the necessary lines and put it into the appropriate directory. And despite all that, you will still have to fiddle around with sudo apt install and add the PPA repositories (for Firefox, Chromium and who knows what else we have to in the future, which I find more concerning) and being careful to not forget the --install-suggests parameter when installing gnome-software, because if you don’t use it, it will – surprise – , install snap again. This is the kind of obtrusive behavior that I expect from a modern Windows OS, but not from a Linux distribution.
Give the community an easy, direct and simple way to uninstall snap (completely), like we asked to give the user a simple way to disable automatic updates for snap-app updates (which you all did give us, after long unnecessary debates). And let the community have alternatives. That’s all what people really have been asking for. And not having to engage in endless discussions and beg for a feature that should be self-explanatory.
@capecrusader-121
they are never going to respect facts, they are still arguing on predefined perception like one cant stop Auto Update of snaps but the fact is that newer versions do have such option, same is of firefox etc.
This is incorrect. I precisely did acknowledge and very clearly said that newer versions now have that capacity in my first reply to this thread. The point was under what circumstances this update finally came to be and why it was implemented this late, which is what I criticized. So, please avoid lecturing others about facts if you strawman my arguments. It’s really just hypocritical.
They dont want to update the perception regarding snaps, they stiil use the example of Snap’s early stages and lackings but ignores New Improvements and Additions.
No, I don’t ignore new improvements and additions. In fact, I’m not against snap in general. But I question the idea of attempting to monopolize a package manager and thus have the user slowly, but surely give up control over their system (and given the odd hassle that one has with uninstalling snap, my concerns are, to a certain degree, even factually and experientially justified). You clearly did not understand what I was talking about. I advise re-reading what I wrote above.
In response to the dialectical attempt of @arraybolt3 using a modification of my quote against me: Yes, I absolutely would have the same issue with Fedora trying to force everyone to use flatpak and rejecting corporation with Canonical. So swapping terms (and expecting me to somehow(?) reject the same predicate) is not really helping your point. I’m categorical in my reasoning. But, I should mention here that there is a slight semantic difference though (but might be not quite relevant) and that is that according to the maintainers of nextcloud-snap there are major security issues with snap on different distros than Ubuntu, as they do seem to be running unconfined and as root. And looking at their wording, it seems like it’s going to stay that way (their reasoning is definite, as if it is a closed-case).
So, even if there had been (behind closed doors somewhere) attempts by Fedora to cooperate with Canonical and snap maintainers, it would probably have been futile and a risk not to take and on the other hand this “problem” seems to be oddly beneficial to Canonical from an economical perspective, because, well, it forces you to use Ubuntu if you want to use snap without dangerous security risks. Thanks for reminding me about this again. It only further solidifies my concerns.
Linux is all about choice, one must do what they like, Snap is a integrated part of Ubuntu Ecosystem, use it or remove it depends on one’s use case but imposing your decision or ideology on others isnt good…
Yes, Linux is all about choice, but that doesn’t suddenly prohibit me or anyone else from criticizing a state that many are displeased with. This is like telling someone to leave their country because they aren’t satisfied with X (which is absurd, especially if they like their country and would like to see it succeed). Sure, I have no problem switching to a different distro or becoming a distro nomad again. That’s what’s great about the Linux world.
But the thing is, I like Ubuntu (I used it since 2007 when my cousin first installed it on my Desktop). And because I like Ubuntu, I point out why I think this hyperfocus on snap and monopolizing attempt is not the right way to go (It’s also somewhat of a warning and reminder if we consider the past failed projects by Canonical that had similar goals), at least from a community perspective and especially not if snap behaves in an annoying, obtrusive way as soon as you try to get rid of it. Especially this is a really good way to just piss off the community. So, in that sense, the snap developers themselves (either consciously or unknowingly, I don’t know) are heavily contributing to the antagonization of snap.
So, again, I’m not saying to abandon it as a project. I’m saying to not just drop support for popular flatpak if technically it’s very well in their power to build up a support team for flatpaks by actually engaging and communicating with flatpak maintainers (which they could’ve done, but didn’t). I’m saying that snap can still be improved in the regard of making it less difficult and less annoying to get rid off if one doesn’t want to use it, to not force it as a standard to everyone regardless if commercial or private. Etc. If they don’t want to engage with these demands, then fine. I don’t own Canonical, I ultimately can’t force them. I’m okay with that. But that means that I, and many others, will have to look for a different distro that respects the demands of communities.
Regarding “ideologies”, I think it needs to be noted here that Ubuntu, and any other distro pretty much enjoys the popularity they have precisely because of these ideologies you and others seem to dislike so much. But it is incorrect to say that I (or others) want to “impose” an ideology. It is always used only as a regulative in the face of an imminent violation of these generally accepted principles (because, at the end of the day, nobody stops Canonical continuing their path, so it isn’t a prohibition and we can’t really impose anything).
On a different, more off-topic manner, I would like to clarify that these principles are neither solely ideological nor philosophical. They’re both. Linux (or, if you want to go further back, GNU) began as a philosophy and each of the prepositions were carefully discussed, weighted out, modified and agreed on. Now Linux (or GNU) is a closed philosophy, therefore, yes, likewise ideological. But that doesn’t mean that any of the principles it follows are solely normative, as in the sense of “I believe in X, so it’s true”. They have proper, justified (yes, even a priori) reasoning behind them, so that these justifications are without a doubt proven by practical reason. (For a starter, I recommend reading Immanuel Kant’s both critiques, especially practical reason)
So, if it weren’t for critics who act as a regulative to monopolistic attempts, we wouldn’t be enjoying the diversity of distros we have right now. The fact that you can say: “Linux is all about choice” is only possible because of the ideologies and the categorical rejection of having an universal, monopolistic Linux distro everyone is forced to use (even though, technically, no one would stop anyone from pursuing that goal, which is why the ideology is regulative, not imposing or forcing). Qed.
