Debian 13:
$ uname -r
6.12.88+deb13-amd64
$ snap debug sandbox-features|grep confinement
confinement-options: classic devmode
$ snap debug confinement
partial
$ aa-enabled
Yes
Ubuntu (24.04):
$ uname -r
6.8.0-117-generic
$ snap debug sandbox-features|grep confinement
confinement-options: classic devmode strict
$ snap debug confinement
strict
$ aa-enabled
Yes
What does this mean, you ask? Well, basically every Snap package you thought was running isolated in it’s own little sandbox were running unconfined the whole time. The prorpietary app you removed the :home connection from, so it wouldn’t be able to access your home directory? Well, it could have exfiltrated all our private files in the meantime.
How is this not a bigger deal and how are Snaps ever to become mainstream when even today, more than 10 years after the introduction of snaps, you can’t run them sandboxed on a huge portion of Linux distros?
Hardly anyone but Ubuntu users use snap, because snap was created by Ubuntu, and their efforts to get other distros to adopt it never gained traction. Debian users are especially uninterested in using snap, and some people on Debian are ex-Ubuntu users who switched because they didn’t like snap.
Yeah, that tracks - I came back to Debian after a few years on Ubuntu, and even before I returned, I removed snap from my Ubuntu system.
It’s not a big deal because the answer to the problem is “don’t run snaps”.
Thank the gods. Nobody wants that proprietary walled garden in Debian.
It’s just a tool for Ubuntu to control, and maybe even sell itself one day to Goog’s or MS or similar.
Don’t want it in Debian.
It’s not proprietary, though.
I mean I get the concern but I’d be surprised if even 1% of Debian users had any interest in running snaps
Snaps is something you drink.
AFAIK only users who have it shoved down their throat by Ubuntu use snap packages.
Because snaps is a Ubuntu thing, and not particularly widely used on Debian.
#rank name inst vote old recent no-files
2 util-linux 4000213 2110588 1172784 345252 371589
2258 snapd 19307 17314 846 1033 114
I actually don’t understand what use case snapd on Debian covers better than docker on Debian or snapd on ubuntu
Who TF cares? If you want containerized apps, run Flatpak. There is no application packaged for Snap that I’ve not seen packaged for Flatpak, too. And Flatpak is better in basically every way.
Except malware. No one repackaged the snap malware for flatpak 😭
have you actually looked at a snap’s status?
root@cave:~# lsb_release -d Description: Debian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie) root@cave:~# uname -r 6.12.88+deb13-amd64 root@cave:~# snap debug sandbox-features|grep confinement confinement-options: classic devmode root@cave:~# snap debug confinement partial root@cave:~# aa-enabled Yes root@cave:~# snap info --verbose hello-world name: hello-world summary: The 'hello-world' of snaps health: status: unknown message: health has not been set publisher: Canonical✓ contact: snaps@canonical.com links: contact: - mailto:snaps@canonical.com license: unset description: | This is a simple hello world example. commands: - hello-world.env - hello-world.evil - hello-world - hello-world.sh notes: private: false confinement: strict devmode: false jailmode: false trymode: false enabled: true broken: false ignore-validation: false snap-id: buPKUD3TKqCOgLEjjHx5kSiCpIs5cMuQ tracking: latest/stable refresh-date: today at 07:43 CDT installed: 6.4 (29) 20.5kB - root@cave:~# snap run hello-world.evil Hello Evil World! This example demonstrates the app confinement You should see a permission denied error next /snap/hello-world/29/bin/evil: 9: /snap/hello-world/29/bin/evil: cannot create /var/tmp/myevil.txt: Permission denied root@cave:~#I tried running chromium, removing :home and was still able save and open webpages in ~/test.html. However, this happened through the native file picker dialog.
file a debian bug report against snapd.
