Snaps: a failed experiment

[Sam Varshavchik]

Oliver Grawert writes:

> Hi,
> Am Sonntag, dem 21.09.2025 um 18:41 -0400 schrieb Sam Varshavchik:
> > O
> >
> > It's been a known issue for SEVERAL YEARS that some kind of a
> > permission 
> > issue prevents the Firefox snap from working in a VNC session.
> >
>
> AFAIK the only thing that does not actually work (if you have a proper
> setup for your VNC server session that initalizes all dbus bits
> properly so systemd-logind finds the session and assigns a seat at
> least) is the portal integration which is a part of your desktop, not a
> snap thing at all. 
>
> did you ever file a bug against the xdg-desktop-portal debian package
> so it can be looked at by the deaktop team ?

No, I was already way too confused by that point, with all the moving  
pieces. I don't think I'd be able to produce a coherent bug report. I  
figured that I am not the only one having this problem. You'd think that  
just running a snap in a VNC session isn't such an exotic situation to be  
in, and many others would be in the same boat. I figured that someone else  
with more domain knowledge will be able to chase it down, at least  
sufficiently enough to come up with a useful bug report.

> (it is kind of ironic that the one thing where the snap developers
> picked to fully collaborate with the flatpak maintainers (the portal
> integration) actually makes snaps look bad here, yet it has not
> anything to do with snaps at all ...)

Well, yes. I can see that much. snaps are doing their job, and delivering a  
tight little bundle, with its own event horizon, that contains all the gears  
and the knobs to make things work.

But the end result is that nothing can cross the event horizon. And I have  
to face this reality, and the path of least resistance is to go back to  
traditional packages, especially if mozillateam is making traditional debs  
of Firefox available, for a minimal amount of setup. That's the practical  
way forward, for now. At least until there's major celebration on the  
streets, with everyone cheering how great is that snaps are now working in  
vnc sessions.
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