Another win for snaps

[gene heskett]

On 9/15/24 08:16, Robert Heller wrote:
> 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:
>>>>
>>>>    Owen Thomas writes:
>>>>
>>>>    > I swear I'm only trying to be happy with my life.
>>>>
>>>>    You said it, partner.
>>>>
>>>>    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.

Thank you for the comments, Robert. As for the snaps & flatpacks, if its 
only the make windows coding work on linux, I agree. I have 20 FF 
crashes for every AppImage crash.
>>
>> Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
> 
> 

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
-- 
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