Another win for snaps

[Robert Heller]

At Sun, 15 Sep 2024 04:32:22 -0400 "Ubuntu user technical support,? not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:

> 
> On 9/14/24 17:19, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> > Owen Thomas writes:
> > 
> >> »On Sat, 14 Sept 2024 at 10:11, Sam Varshavchik 
> >> <<URL:mailto:mrsam at courier-mta.com>mrsam at courier-mta.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Â Â  Owen Thomas writes:
> >>
> >> Â Â  > I swear I'm only trying to be happy with my life.
> >>
> >> Â Â  You said it, partner.
> >>
> >> Â Â  I just want to have !@#%! that works. Is that too much to ask?
> >>
> >>
> >> Your story underscored the point that I have come to: Ubuntu is free, 
> >> and that's a good thing, but unless you like to get yourself buried in 
> >> techo minutiae, it is usually best to tread lightly in Ubuntu software.
> > 
> > I think this goes beyond Ubuntu, ant to all of free software, in general.
> > 
> > It used to be that individual free software projects had a visible 
> > individual, or individuals, as stakeholders and public faces for those 
> > projects. Noone wants to have a reputation for producing crap code. For 
> > those individuals their projects were their pride and joy. They had 
> > vested interest in their software working well, they were generally 
> > responsive to community feedback.
> > 
> > These days many projects are just semi-anonymous Github pages. And with 
> > Ubuntu it goes a step further. After I updated from 22 to 24 I 
> > discovered that the emacs snap (another win for snaps, btw) crashed when 
> > it's started by root. A Launchpad bug was closed with a polite note 
> > referring to the snap's Github page. I clearly see a future where 
> > Canonical is on a crusade to replace everything with snaps, so they 
> > don't need to bother with any of them.
> > 
> > FWIW I created a bug on the Github page, two weeks ago. So far, no 
> > reply. No big deal, I replaced the snap with the deb packages, which 
> > were still available as ordinary debs, for 24.
> > 
> Sam, as a user still struggling to understand AppImage's, snap's etc, 
> where can I find the definitive description of exactly what each of 
> these represents?  Something that explains and possibly compares the 
> advantages of each?
> 
> ATM i have a bunch of python vpn's, and snap's all over my arm64 stuff 
> cuz I'm into 3d printing. Then on this intel machine, its AppImages that 
> seem to have proliferated. The only snap I think is firefox.

AppImages are just virtual file systems that generally contain the specific
versions of shared libraries, etc. needed for an app, generally used with C or
C++ coded applications. In the Tcl/Tk world there are StarKits, which are
similar, but specific to Tcl/Tk. Python Virtual Environments are kind of
similar, but use the real file system in a confined way.

Snaps and flatpacks are something different. Not really sure how they work.
And they seem to have various issues. Snaps seem to have weird security
issues, in that they impose "odd" security restrictions and confinements,
which (to me) don't make a whole lot of sense, other than trying pretend Linux
is like MS-Windows or MacOSX, which is anoying for a seasoned Linux user like
me. 

> 
> Thanks for any clarifying links.
> 
> Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.

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