I vote to kill snap
I can’t believe they used this as a pro for their distro…
I am currently only on Linux on my Steam Deck and I do have two RPi’s (though I don’t actively use them) so I don’t have personal current knowledge of differences between Snap, Flatpak, and App Image beyond that A: Snap always brings up lots and lots of hate in comments and B: is from Canonical.
But is it possible that they might choose to use Snap for having more program options due to Ubuntu being such a “mainstream” distro? I know lots and lots of programs do release Flatpaks, but are there more of them or does Snap have more? Real question since I am aware of how heated some threads get with folks being really “fuck Snap” or “it is fine.” Mostly just curious since I am more and more likely to move my main PC to Linux as my main OS after Windows 10 is dead.
Think of it as the Mac appstore VS the Windows App store. Mac apps (flatpak) are the same as desktop apps, but sandboxed, the store isn’t intrusive, and people found it convenient, so it was fine. Then the windows app store (snaps) launched and it did basically the same thing but slightly worse, except Microsoft (canonical) forced it down its users throats, so people hated it.
Both camps are right, from a technical perspective, snaps are fine, but philosophically, it sucks, and the Linux community cares way more about the latter than the former, otherwise they’d all be running windows.
I think that your example of the App Store and the Microsoft Store is helpful! I work on both systems at my job fixing computers for consumers. The only thing I dislike about the App Store is that it doesn’t let you install things without first signing in with an Apple ID (the spam levels of pop-up messages trying so freaking hard to make you sign in is infuriating). But the MS Store feels like all the worst parts of the Play Store and really fucks things up if it breaks. I will likely remember your reply the next time I think about Flatpaks and Snaps though. lol
Snap doesn’t just bring lots of hate in comments it also brings a lot of bloat in your system which is a big no in Linux community. Another thing is canonical is going out of their way to force snap. In Ubuntu even if you do apt install it is installing snap packages.
I’m not sure if there are more snap packages than flatpaks or .deb/.rpm but most Linux users are competent enough to either add custom repos or follow simple build instructions to build from source.
But flatpak also brings a lot of bloat. That’s the point of these 2 formats. You are trading bloat for portability.
The question here is not which one but why not both[*]? Also the target audience for this distro doesn’t know how to add repos, that’s the point of it.
[*] the answer is that Snap Store has had malware in it multiple times but that could imo be solved by a disclaimer
I wasn’t aware of Snaps being used in-place of regular installs with apt. Are they shown to be Snaps in the name of the program when using apt search? And if there is a Snap and a regular deb, do they both show up (again if using apt search)?
What is so hated about snaps? I’ll admit I haven’t used Ubuntu since they started using snaps, but I don’t understand the hate about them in the Linux community.
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Why? What’s the issue with Snap? Is Flatpak any better?
Yeah, Flatpak is far better. The most glaring issue: Canonical hosts the only Snap backend, you can’t host it yourself. Flatpak on the other hand is fully open.
Don’t introduce proprietary crap just so companies can profit off of it.
Don’t introduce proprietary crap just so companies can profit off of it.
I agree but I think it’s the user who should be able to make the informed choice (ie. during installation)
Honestly, why enable this kind of behavior in any way? Any user is free to make an informed choice by installing it themselves.
We all know how this goes. Once a critical mass is reached, enshittification begins to milk everything dry. By making it an installer option, you’re legitimizing it and supporting a worse future for the Linux desktop.
Ok but KDE has official Snap packages so they already are “legitimizing it”. Also snap won’t be able to entshittify anything. Snapd is still open source, so you can just repackage the software for different package system.
My guy. There is no open backend for Snap. If Ubuntu enshittifies Snap, nobody can host an alternate backend for them. How does the client being open source help you?
You simply use a different packaging format as I said in the previous comment.
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This is a stupid argument. In FSF’s eyes even having nonfree repository (ie. for drivers) is bad so this is completely irrelevant for anyone considering flatpak or snap. Both have nonfree stuff in there.
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I’m not arguing whether snap or flatpak is better. Flatpak is better.
But your arguments are going against each other. You disagree that FSF should tell you what software you can use but then you want to tell other users what software they can use. If you use flatpak despite of FSF’s opinions, you should let people use snap despite of your opinion.
Burn Snap out of there and I’m in.
Edit: looks like they’re not putting much towards snaps, it’s mostly Flatpak and systemd-sysext. I’m good with that.
The distro is designed to be a bulletproof, highly user-friendly operating system that showcases the best of KDE technology—a system that KDE can confidently recommend to casual users and hardware manufacturers.
So it looks like there will finally be a distribution that Windows, Mac, and ChromeOS users can jump to and just start using without having to learn much and with a much better and more familiar GUI than GNOME.
Makes sense that it includes snap given that KDE officially supports their apps packaged as snaps, unlike Gnome.
If I recall correctly, aren’t they going for an Arch base? I assume they’re going to be enabling AppArmor so that the snap sandboxing is mostly working, except for the patches Canonical have failed to upstream so far.
Ingl, this sounds like exactly the thing I want. Immutability aside, this is how I use EndeavourOS right now, but more sophisticated.
I’m sold on it.
I guess they are going the steamos route seeing as arch based.
Everybody’s bashing snaps but you can literally package drivers as snaps. If you don’t think that’s cool af I don’t know what is.
99% of people don’t understand anything about Snaps except from thinking they’re worse than Flatpak
Alright I am installing this
I found out about this yesterday when searching for the KDE sources to make some alterations to the lock screen. I guess this distro is not for me.
Hopefully the stable version will become a competitor to Linux Mint
Maybe they’ll fix the sddm custom theming? It’s currently broken on all immutables and doesn’t allow custom themes.
I use Fedora KDE but this one sounds like exactly what I need. I primarily use Linux for software dev and web browsing and Windows for gaming and Office.
Fedora Kinoite exists already. It’s my daily driver for dev and gaming and works great for me.
I use normal KDE because I don’t know how much of a hassle it would be to put everything in containers and use flatpaks for everything.
Just curious because Distrowatch can be easily gamed; does anyone know how this might affect the linux consumer market? I’m using Mint and see no reason to switch to this. I used to nerd out about different distros but aside from the enterprise distros or Debian or Arch preferences I don’t see why people are using smaller distros anymore. Hobbyist i guess?
Thanks for de-influencing me out of switching to KDE plasma, mint and ubuntu are the only distros I’ve tried and I’ve been thinking about trying something new
New users (like me) that aren’t necessarily passionate about linux and just looking for a windows alternative can be easily persuaded early on
Looks like there’s still something you can try, brother.
After bashing my face against the wall getting lutris to run StarCraft 2, I’m avoiding looking at my OS too hard
I feel like I should try arch just once so I understand the memes
There are better ways than using Lutris
- Try with Bottles
- add Battle.Net as a non-steam game
Can I run an installer off a mounted iso in a bottle?
Yes
Arch is a make it yourself distro. It comes barebones and you install what you need (which in my opinion gives better knowledge about your system). And the packages are up-to-date which is good if you are gaming.
If you don’t like to tinker then Arch may not be for you. Something arch-based could be a better fit. Like Garuda or EndeavourOS.
When you say you can install what you need, what does that mean exactly? Does that mean things like lib C or vulkan or drivers so my USB ports work? Seems to me like I don’t actually understand how a computer works at a fundamental level when I’ve never had to configure a sound card or manually install a driver and the explanations I get are too technical to practically apply
I’d like to understand my PC well enough to use Arch but I’m finding a hard time figuring out what I’m missing exactly. Practically speaking, what does direct X or vulkan do?
When it comes to Arch the wiki is your friend. It will tell you if additional configuration is required to get your packages working and what other dependencies can be installed. If something isn’t working properly then the wiki probably knows why.
Arch comes with no drivers and additional packages by default. You need to install them manually. But you don’t need to install every package for your system manually. If you need glibc it will most certainly get pulled down as a dependency.
You don’t need to know every part of the system to use arch but you need to be interested enough to learn how your system works if something is not working or you want to configure your system in a certain way.
For starters I would recommend going with something Arch-based like Garuda or EndeavorOS if you want to learn Arch. I started off with my Steam Deck and later Garuda on my desktop. Once I was comfortable enough around Arch I decided to install vanilla Arch (manually, the wiki way) in a VM. When installing my system I wrote down every command I used and from that it snowballed in to my own install script for arch. That taught me a lot.
Alright I’ll give it a try, can you recommend a VM other than virtual box? I was having issues with dependencies when installing it
I too bashed my head with lutris on some games to the point that i gave up on Linux. Then i tried it again but this time using Bottles and it’s working really fine for me, almost flawless.
Yeah I think it’s time to stop being lazy and actually learn how wine works, I can’t get Warcraft 3 to work
mainly hobbyists or some very specific feature. For example antiX for old hardware or Spiral Linux for the better installer, gaming specific distros for gaming etc. Also there are protest distros which advertise not having something - usually SystemD.
Ooo damn that sounds exactly what I’d like to try.
On the other hand I feel like I’m too old for this shit. My system works fine, I understand everything, and things rarely break and never in an unrecoverable way.
The beauty/advantage of Linux Eco-system is one can pick and choose based on his/her preferences.
