Ubuntu 20.04 LTS' snap obsession has snapped me off of it - <AUTHOR> https://personal.jatan.space/2020/09/05/ubuntu-snap-obsession-has-snapped-me-off-of-it/ <comment><USER2> Snap was neat when I first discovered it. I could get some bleeding-edge dependencies automatically delivered to my machine, without building it from source or having to manually update it. Wonderful! But the problem is: it's the slowest thing in the world. I've complained about this on HN before, but it can be hundreds of milliseconds from when you type a command to when the actual application starts running -- the intermediate time is being consumed by Snap doing god knows what. The slowness is a dealbreaker for me. My disk can read 500,000 4k blocks per second. My RAM can do 3400M transactions per second. I have 32 CPU cores. How is loading some bytes into RAM and telling the CPU to start executing instructions something that can take more than a few microseconds!? Easy: run that app with Snap!

I blew up my Ubuntu install and switched back to Debian. I haven't missed Ubuntu at all. I am resigned to the fact that if I care about a particular piece of software because it's the reason I use a computer (go, Emacs, Node, etc.) then I just have to maintain it myself. There simply isn't a good way right now. And you know what? It's fine. Everything is configured exactly the way I like, and it will never change unless I change it.

<comment> WD-42 > I care about a particular piece of software because it's the reason I use a > computer (go, Emacs, Node, etc.) then I just have to maintain it myself. > There simply isn't a good way right now.

Don't do this to yourself! Debian is not going to give you bleeding edge. But there are plenty of distros that can. Despite being a meme, Arch Linux is one of the best distros available, and has been for years. Node, golang, are usually updated within hours of upstream, while the core system remains stable. If you're looking for something more modern, Solus has been gaining popularity and also has relatively up to date packages. Debian is great for servers.

<comment><USER3> Manjaro is a really great option too, if you want something Arch flavored that's a bit more user friendly.

<comment><USER4> Definitely this. Manjaro is out-of-the-box ready, but based on Arch. Manjaro stable is also two more testing steps away from Arch, so the packages are less likely to cause issues. And there are four sources for software: Manjaro repos, the AUR, flatpacks, and snaps. I have never been in a situation where I could not install the latest software via one of those routes. I ran Debian for years and often ran into situations where new software was just not installable due to library incompatibility, etc. Manjaro feels like a Swiss Army knife in comparison.

<comment><USER5> And with all the options you'll almost never have to rely on snaps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Snap sucks. The way open source is straying further and further from its principles is highly annoying. The whole idea that you'd need a container like environment to install an application on a Unix system is very far from where we should be. What's the point of dynamic linking if we then end up shipping half an OS with an application just to get around dependency hell? Might as well ship a pre-linked binary that just does system calls.

And it's yet another way to do an end run around repositories, instead you will sooner or later get an app-store like environment that can be controlled by some entity. These large companies should stop fucking around with Linux, it was fine the way it was. Just fix the bugs and leave the rest to the application developers.

<comment><USER7> Isn't the sandboxing a good idea though? It feels that Linux got caught in the past and is actually one of the least secure OSes out there, and what keeps it safe is just its small desktop market share.

Disclaimer: I never used snap and don't use Ubuntu.

<comment><USER8> Flatpak gives you a sandbox, and has basically skirted around any shortcoming of Snap (faster, open, extensible, adopted by every other distro, doesn't pollute /proc/mounts)

<comment><USER9> Flatpak's sandboxing is an absolute joke and entirely voluntary.

<comment><USER8> > is an absolute joke

Please elaborate.

> entirely voluntary

Fedora Silverblue would like to disagree. And in any case all parties know it's still in flux, but the stable parts are stable in my experience. I would not want something like Snap or otherwise immature forced down my throat.

<comment><USER10> Entirely voluntary in the sense that flatpak enforces sandboxes which the application tells it to enforce. If the app asks for full system access flatpak doesn't deny that. It kind of destroys the purpose of a system built to run third-party code. If I download a malicious app from flathub or some other repo which asks for full system access flatpak doesn't do anything in the name of security.

Note: I'm not making a value judgement about flatpak's sandboxing, merely describing it to the best of my knowledge.

<comment><USER11> Enforcing permissions and auditing third party code are two different things. The point of app permissions is that when you know an app should never do something, you constrain it from ever doing that. Then if it has a security vulnerability, it's limited in the damage from the resulting compromise.

The people configuring the sandbox should be packagers that you trust. The upstream developers might provide some recommendations to the packagers, but if it's obvious that an application shouldn't need a permission, it shouldn't have it.

But permissions can't save you from an actually malicious app. Constrain it from accessing the camera and it will still be using your device to host pornography. Constrain it from accessing the filesystem and it will still run up your electric bill mining bitcoin. You either need to trust the developer or you need to get the app through someone you trust to have audited it for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I switched to Pop_OS precisely because it doesn't support snaps. Snap is arguably half-free : the server isn't free at all, no working free implementation exists. Therefore I don't want any snaps. Flatpak is OK.

This is all part of a sneaky attempt to get free software in control: Microsoft grabbing more and more power in the Linux Foundation, RMS ousted from the FSF, GitHub becoming more and more central as a default go-to-hosting (beware of Github!)...

All of these are part of a dangerous trend of appropriation and control by well-known monopolists. Don't fall for it. The GAFAM aren't nice guys.

<comment><USER13> >beware of Github!

I've been slowly moving off GitHub to SourceHut, and it's been a breath of fresh air knowing that not only is all the software free (so you can self host) but the maintainer (Drew DeVault) is also quite committed to keeping it that way. I feel like I'm in safe hands.

Thankfully it's not yet another GitHub clone, but built around git+email -- so it's far more decentralized by nature.

[https://sourcehut.org/](https://sourcehut.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Mint steers away from snap by default. I like the approach, and Mint 20 Xfce has been an absolute DREAM to install from scratch. Sane basic install, auto- upgrades that lets you choose, possibility to restore OS to previous snapshots and good polish overall. Intuitive and lean interface that lets you mute all notifications.

Currently playing Elders Scrolls Online with Lutris (sorry for the internet downtime, was my first character creation ;). Also playing with minikube and docker to sharpen up some knowledge. All the modern toys easily within reach, making this another year of linux desktop use, only happier with a new nice clean install of a modern solution that mostly works very well. 1 search resolved audio issue for good, everything else was provided from OS.

Something like snap breaks too much of all these community-efforts, that I can only reject it vehemently.

<comment><USER15> > _Sane basic install_

I think Mint's installation is too dumbed down tbqh. But, that said, I use Mint on all of the computers that I don't want to spend time to personalize.

<comment><USER16> I use Linux Mint on all of my home computers. I personalize all of them to my needs and I do not find it hard or difficult or time-consuming. I find the installation process straight forward.

Perhaps however you have more intense personal customization needs than I.

<comment><USER14> Just a hunch, but he probably means disk partitioning, allocating a partition for swap and other such stuff you can customize most easily during installation. It's nice to have excellent options for that, but I seriously don't have that as a deep need right now personally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Well, I'll be that guy: I don't get all the complaining about snaps.

First, I use the command line for package installation and couldn't care less if the store experience is suboptimal.

Second, I use Firefox and anything that discourages people from feeding the Chrome monopoly, frankly, that sounds like a good thing to me.

Third, for some desktop apps I _want_ auto updates. Having an option for some software to be on the latest is pretty slick and previously could only be solved with PPAs, which had their own problems (maintainer headaches, dependency issues, etc).

Would I want them on a server? No.

As a desktop (well, laptop) user, do I want all my software deployed with snaps and auto updating willy-nilly? Also no.

But as a desktop user, I appreciate that I have the choice.

And by lowering the barrier for maintainers who no longer have to worry about multiple distro versions, dependencies, etc, it means I get _more_ software options. Sounds good to me!

<comment><USER18> You have a good point about making the desktop experience more painless and idiot-proof.

The real problem for me though is that snaps are _slow_ as hell. I mean like taking 4-5+ seconds to open on a box with an SSD, i7, and 64GB of RAM. That's unacceptable.

The icing on the cake for me is that even through the command line as you mention apt now seems to be giving me snaps instead of debs for a great deal of programs, which affects much more than the store experience. And, also, regarding said store experience: if stuff like Spotify takes 5+ seconds to open I doubt a user coming from Windows giving Linux a try is going to want to stick around long...it would be great if there was just a better solution.

<comment><USER17> > The real problem for me though is that snaps are slow as hell. I mean like > taking 4-5+ seconds to open on a box with an SSD, i7, and 64GB of RAM. > That's unacceptable.

Spotify is specifically one of the snaps I use and frankly, I noticed it seemed to start a little slow but just assumed that was because of Electron or something. I literally don't care and never thought anything of it. I run it, it starts, and then I don't close it.

Besides, if Spotify users reject it, they can always switch to PPA or something else. It's their choice.

> apt now seems to be giving me snaps instead of debs for a great deal of > programs,

"a great deal"? I've seen two mentioned, chromium and lxd. Where else have you encountered this where Debian has a package available from a maintainer but a snap shim is used instead?

Apt will also tell you a snap is available if there's no deb but that's just useful information.

<comment><USER19> > if Spotify users reject it, they can always switch to PPA or something else

Some apps, like Chromium have no alternative ppas available.

I installed KDE Neon 20.04 and when I discovered that Chromium was being switchted to snap, I searched for any current *.deb out there. NO proper ppas, just found some outdated Chromium 1-3 versions behind the current version.

If it wasn't for the KDE from Neon, I would have switched of distro in the hour. I switched to Chrome instead.

Got some old compiled Chromium just to have the thing available (I can just run it when I need it, it takes maybe 1/4 of sec to start).

Just hope Canonical doesn't try its snap thing in more critical packages or (FAR) worst, in the LTS server versions.

I would be getting popcorn to see the show when half the Internet start to ditch the LTS overnight over some half-propietary half-baked software being put in charge of its otherwise perfectly GPLed infrastructures.

<comment><USER20> Right, this is why Canonical moved Chromium to snaps - It's a ton of effort building Chromium for 20.04, 18.04, and all the intermediate releases every few weeks for a package that's in universe.

It's cheaper/easier for them to publish one version across all of Ubuntu.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Just remove snap [1] and move on with your life. That's the very first thing I do in every single Ubuntu installation for years (including 20.04), and never had any problem.

At least in my case I don't need / don't want any kind of app store in my system (but I understand this is not for everyone; less technical users may not be inclined to installing .deb packages using command line).

And I still follow this thread [2], hoping one day they will clean up the $HOME/snap directory and fix the performance so gnome-calculator doesn't take several seconds to load, but I'm keeping my hopes low.

[1] [https://www.kevin-custer.com/blog/disabling-snaps-in- ubuntu-...](https://www.kevin-custer.com/blog/disabling-snaps-in- ubuntu-20-04/)

[2] [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snapd/+bug/1575053](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snapd/+bug/1575053)

<comment><USER22> So how do you install Chromium without their snap? Is installing non-snap Chromium as easy as installing non-snap packages in their repo? If not, I'd rather use Linux Mint.

<comment><USER21> The bad decision here is not " _Ubuntu 's snap obsession_" as OP claims, but the decision by the Chromium team to piggyback on a half-baked packaging mechanism, instead of simply distributing .deb packages (like the official Chrome).

Thankfully there are plenty of fixes available. Here's one of them [1]:

      sudo add-apt-repository ppa:saiarcot895/chromium-beta
      sudo apt update
      sudo apt install chromium-browser

[1] [https://launchpad.net/~saiarcot895/+archive/ubuntu/chromium-...](https://launchpad.net/~saiarcot895/+archive/ubuntu/chromium- beta)

<comment><USER23> > Thankfully there are plenty of fixes available. Here's one of them

Sounds wonderful, along with the accrued online karma points. As great as one person is, they will never be the upstream source.

Here's my ppa also, I have a proven track record of updating browsers with security hotfixes hours before anyone else, but on the downside I really don't secure my system at all and leave my laptop unattended in Starbucks, please subscribe:

        sudo add-apt-repository ppa:TOTALLYNOTMALWARE/chromium-beta
        sudo apt update
        sudo apt install chromium-browser

<comment><USER21> Of course you should pick the poison that matches your risk level. I agree that installing random ppas brings all sorts of risks, just like any other 3P code you install - pip/gem/npm-installed libraries, chrome extensions, etc. All these are real attack vectors.

My original point was that replacing your OS because you can't install Chromium seems ludicrous to me, when you can easily find alternatives.

Here's a few better options:

1) Use official packages from debian: [https://askubuntu.com/a/1206153/161744](https://askubuntu.com/a/1206153/161744)

2) Use Pop!OS repositories (assuming you trust System76 folks):

      sudo add-apt-repository ppa:system76/pop

3) Compile Chromium from source [https://www.chromium.org/developers/how- tos/get-the-code](https://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/get-the-code)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If I may dare stereotype, I think that maybe OP is approaching this from the perspective that operating systems such as macOS or Windows have instilled in us.

I use Ubuntu 20.04 just as I have used 18.04 and 16.04, and the presence or absence of snap doesn't alter the experience for me. GNU/Linux based operating systems will always have a sort of idiosyncrasy inherent to it that stems from the fact that it's really isn't built on fads, and fads are always what would detract from it. Hence, Snap should be used by those who like it, and history will tell us whether it were a fad or not.

I think Ubuntu in general tries to appeal to more of the masses and would try to use things to draw people to it. Nothing wrong with that; you could always use Arch.

But please don't regard a feature that really isn't forced on you by GNU/Linux in general as a reason to, eh, be _snapped off it_. I use Xubuntu 20.04 and have used Snap here and there and for the most part I couldn't be bothered by whether it works well or not. I do think the topic of whether Snap makes sense, whether it's too slow, etc., is a valid topic to discuss, but I don't see how it should be an argument for or against Ubuntu.

In any case, being for or against something, when really it's only your own business whether you use it or not, does always have a sort of political tinge reminiscent of the aforementioned proprietary operating systems.

<comment><USER25> I don't know why but Ubuntu (and Canonical) have always been the black-sheep of the FOSS "community"...

I am 100% agree with you.

Also, people complain on other OS that they can't remove or replace an existing software... Here, they can. But they prefer to move to another distro just because of this. I don't understand this world anymore... :(

<comment><USER26> The problem is their engineering is not very good. Not horrible, but just not great either. And they almost never respond to criticism, so canonical projects are unable to improve significantly, post debut.

This is ultimately why their projects are doomed to a 95% failure rate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wonder if snaps will actually survive. The history of Ubuntu specific innovations seems to be that they invariably fail. But it's never not for the lack of trying, so it only makes sense that Ubuntu is trying to push this on the users hard.

I do run 20.04, and one of the first things I did was disable the snap store and enable flatpaks.

<comment><USER28> Do you have a link to a tutorial on doing that? If not, no worries, I'm sure I can find one. I was going to install Ubuntu for my Dad as he's tired of Windows and seriously don't want to have to do tech support every other week because a third party decided it was upgrade time and he doesn't know why something changed. That's the sort of WTF he's sick of Windows for :( Ubuntu seem to be getting more and more user hostile as they go.

<comment><USER27> Sure:

[https://www.kevin-custer.com/blog/disabling-snaps-in- ubuntu-...](https://www.kevin-custer.com/blog/disabling-snaps-in- ubuntu-20-04/)

<comment><USER29> thanks . that's helpful

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Peak Ubuntu was 18.04 LTS :(

But, maybe it's not a bad thing - consider that this maps closely to the app store experiences on both Windows and OS X today. Perhaps it's a great decision for the _future_ users of Ubuntu but not for the _current_ users of Ubuntu. It could turn out beneficial for both Ubuntu and Debian, as I imagine many will switch over. And as much as I'm married to my current X11, it's pretty cool to see them push Wayland through.

Ubuntu is not for me anymore, but I still appreciate what they have done and are still doing for Linux, regardless of what I think of their product and market decisions.

Looks like Mint/MATE is the new Ubuntu for desktop and Debian has always been for server?

<comment><USER31> MX Linux is good

<comment><USER30> Yeah, but given the difference in ideology and stance on most notably systemd, I don't think it can be called "a new Ubuntu" :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Snaps aren't supported inside Linux containers. Chromium headless is now snap- only, therefore Ubuntu can't be used to run our frontend tests. Switched to Fedora 32 almost immediately. Didn't even bother to search for a workaround.

</comment><comment><USER33> I LOATHE this direction that Canonical is taking as SNAP is such a steaming pile of shit and it's being shoved down everyone's throats. It's going to be the thing that makes me abandon Ubuntu. It was a neat idea in concept, it's been horribly executed. If I wanted what you're trying to push Canonical I'd just rub Qubes OS. Please give SNAP the quick death it needs and deserves!

<comment><USER34> Same thing they did with Unity they keep shoving at everyone. I still hate that stuff. I don't need my Linux system to be Mac-like. I'd be using a Mac if I liked Macs.

<comment><USER35> Unity was actually rather good though. Snap... has a ton of problems that makes it very much not so.

<comment><USER26> There were several misdesigns in it that they would not allow the option to change. That and other missteps always doom their projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I run ubuntu 20.04 and don't have one single snap installed.

If you can switch distro, surely you have the skill to just ignore snaps and use ubuntu like a regular debian system. It required zero effort on my part at least.

<comment><USER37> This comment seems very condescending and doesn't bring anything to the conversation. There's many people in this thread stating that:

1\. Ubuntu is replacing "standard" apt packages with packages apt packages that just install the snap version.

2\. Many snap packages have bugs that are caused by the snap setup itself.

Thus, it is _impossible_ for these users to "just ignore snaps and use ubuntu like a regular debian system".

<comment><USER36> Just use ubuntu like you did before snaps. No change to make. It works as before. All the debs are still here. The ppa. The apt.

Let others figure out the snap debacle.

<comment><USER38> The chromium apt package isn't there, which is one often pointed to example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Linux Mint 20, which is based on Ubuntu 20.04, ships without any snaps or snapd, and has some kind of mechanism to prevent snapd from being installed by apt. Might be a good option for folks that like Ubuntu but want to avoid the snap fiasco.

<comment><USER40> Pop!_OS also avoids snap, opting for flatpak support instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm still waiting to experience the issues snaps are even trying to solve. It's like having a worse experience for reasons I myself don't even see.

My issues with snaps are part the ugly and clearly "non-native" startup time, and part that many lack in system integration. For example sometimes their font rendering is uglier or the open file dialogs look bad or present me with the confusing "snap worldview". Bah.

Auto updating? Who cares. Package managers makes it super easy to keep systems fresh. I heard many distros even do it themselves or come with one click interfaces for it...

</comment><comment><USER42> The only reason I have been using Ubuntu is because it was the distro with the most installable software available.

I'm ok with default GNOME, I'm beyond cool desktop, I just want something that works. On the other hand I need to be able to install a large selection of software easily, and recent-ish versions of them (hence why not Debian). I also can't have things that upgrade themselves on their own schedule (kids in school with capped bandwidth).

Having done it myself in the past, I understand how taxing creating official .deb and .rpm is for the developers, and how difficult dependencies issues are. Given how Ubuntu is digging itself into the snap hole, what's the best solution here?

Why pick Flatpack vs Appimage? Reading about it they both seem to have pros and cons.

I see a lots of PopOS proponents here, but found that they don't produce that many .deb packages, and the choice will dwindle as Ubuntu's moving more and more stuff to snap. It also was a lot of work to un-customize (going back to a vanilla GNOME).

I'd honestly be happy with even Fedora, if I could easily install most OSS.

<comment><USER43> Out of general interest, which kinds of OSS have you come across that aren't packaged for Fedora?

I'm sure there are obviously some; anything proprietary or with patent encumbrance requires using rpmfusion or something, and that may be a step further than enabling multiverse. Some stuff just might not be packaged. Ubuntu and Debian repositories are also exceptionally broad.

But I can't, right off the top of my head, think of that much of OSS that I couldn't install either from the official repos or rpmfusion.

Maybe I've just forgotten about any loops I had to jump through, but I've been using Fedora for about six years now (after moving from Ubuntu), and I've found that the repos are much richer than I thought they were. But maybe I just haven't run into the holes that you have found.

There are some things I preferred about Ubuntu, but generally things have been working surprisingly well for me.

<comment><USER42> Last time I had checked, the issue were with software with non-free codec and smaller more niche software, but checking rpm repositories there isn't a software I'm missing yet.

I'm definitely going to have another look at Fedora and OpenSuse for that matter (specifically their rolling version for small single service servers).

Thanks for your comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> When Ubuntu killed Mir and Upstart and adopted Wayland/Gnome and systemd, they really invested into a whole competing desktop ecosystem (freedesktop) and it was shortsighted of them to not see that they would not be able to just take bits and pieces. They were never going to compete with flatpak (aka xdg- portals, from freedesktop).

My point is that this has been in the making for _years_ now. They didn't fail to deliver a good product, snaps just should have died when the rest of the Ubuntu differentiation on the desktop did.

It's frustrating because for most people, trying linux on the desktop means trying Ubuntu. Freedesktop has succeeded in making a cohesive desktop environment atop linux that is as polished as commercial offerings, but Ubuntu doesn't make that accessible.

My advice to anyone who hasn't tried linux on the desktop lately: try Fedora or Debian on a live CD. I think you'll be impressed, _especially_ if you're coming from Ubuntu. Unadulterated gnome3 is a breath of fresh air.

</comment><comment><USER45> Remember that snaps solve the problem of third parties wanting to ship software directly to users.

If you don't want to consume such software, then you don't need to use snaps, and don't need to care that Ubuntu 20.04 supports snaps. The system works perfectly well without them. Snaps aren't being "forced". If you insist on using curl piped to sh to install third party software, you can still do that, or use any other third party mechanism in between.

Too often snap critics conflate the installation of the third party software use case with the distribution itself. Ubuntu 20.04 itself is based on debs, not snaps, and the distribution itself continues to work using apt as always. Claiming that installing another distribution to "solve" this nonexistent problem is disingenuous.

<comment><USER46> Except they're pushing _first party, sometimes core software_ to snaps. TFA lists Ubuntu Software Center as a victim first and foremost, makes me wonder (guideline-breakingly) if you read TFA.

Now, I don't use Ubuntu Desktop, but even in server space, lxd (again, first party) has been pushed to snap, with the deb package being a mere shim.

<comment><USER45> The Snap Store is a Snap, yes. That's surely entirely unsurprising?

<comment><USER46> It is if you have zero interest in snaps and just want to install good old debs with it.

<comment><USER45> Don't use it then? The apt CLI, GNOME Software and Synaptic are all available as debs.

<comment><USER47> What do you do if you've been using Chromium as your default browser, though? (…and are concerned about privacy, so you don't want to install Chrome.) Yes, as you say elsewhere, Chromium is not the default browser on Ubuntu. But what do defaults mean, anyway? Ubuntu switches the default music player every other year, too, and at some point people will just stick to the app they like better.

I had always been under the impression that distribution defaults are suggestions for novice users. We've never had a situation before where a distribution like Ubuntu didn't properly support common alternatives to the default app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Here is the same article written 4 months ago:

[https://nsonews.com/ubuntu-20-04-lts-snap-obsession-has- snap...](https://nsonews.com/ubuntu-20-04-lts-snap-obsession-has-snapped-me- off-of-it/)

Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24383276](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24383276)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/gc7p1t/ubuntu_2004_l...](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/gc7p1t/ubuntu_2004_lts_snap_obsession_has_snapped_me_off/)

</comment><comment><USER49> That's why I'll stick with Fedora.

It's "pure", modern, and I really like the KDE spin.

The non-pure stuff - when needed - is available through rpmfusion (the non free repo).

Sure, I'm kind of a "beta tester" for RedHat Linux, but on the flip side there's nothing commercial in it.

</comment><comment><USER50> I've been running Ubuntu 20.04 on WSL2 and haven't had any issues with snap being pushed on me—mainly because I don't use the Ubuntu store and have everything installed through apt on the command-line.

<comment><USER51> If you've installed Chromium, lxd, (or in prior releases the gnome calculator), even with apt, you've installed snaps. Even without using the snap store. That's the sneaky part that bothers a lot of people and makes it seem like snaps are forced on users.

<comment><USER52> In previous releases I wondered why such a small basic program like the Gnome Calculator would take several seconds to start from the time I clicked the icon in the "Activities" screen. Then when the whole 20.04 and forced Snap thing came to my attention I simply uninstalled the snap version and installed the proper version through apt. Now the program pops up instantly when I start it.

This single interaction basically turned me off snaps from then on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I'm not a fan of Snap, in fact I've complained about it on HN before, but it really isn't that big of a deal. It's a minor annoyance in the grand scheme of things.

At least for me, it would be a spiteful decision to go to macOS of all operating systems, where system package managers don't exist, and the only viable option is a 3rd party Homebrew or Macports repository.

<comment><USER54> It's true that builtin package manager doesn't exist for mac, but homebrew has managed to become one of the best package manager in any os.

<comment><USER53> I have to disagree. Homebrew doesn't even come close to what's been available in Linux for decades. Whenever I have to use macOS I'm perpetually frustrated by the state of package management on the OS.

<comment><USER55> Homebrew maintainer here. Care to elaborate? We have lots of happy users but it's equally important for me to learn how Homebrew hurts people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Don't know why Ubuntu keeps pushing it, especially on serverside this is very undesirable. Also the extra options of flatpak and appimage on desktop are more than adequate

<comment><USER57> They keep pushing it because it makes it much easier for Canonical employees to package stuff like Chromium.

<comment><USER22> So users are less important than their employees? Doesn't sound like sound business plan.

<comment><USER57> Admittedly my source is the Ubuntu podcast, and it would probably take me awhile to find the exact quote, but according to the employees, they previously had one or two employees whose full time job was simply maintaining the Chromium deb package. Switching to snaps made it much easier and freed them up to do other things.

I think we should consider snaps like any other framework, be it deb, flatpak, or even something like Electron: some of them have serious downsides, but people choose them because it allows them to more easily push a single binary out to multiple platforms rather than being bogged down in maintaining a distinct build procedure for Windows/Mac/Deb-based/RPM-based/Arch/Solus/every other percent-of-a-percent Linux distro.

I don't like snaps either--I much prefer flatpaks. But I don't think it's constructive to insult Canonical employees for wanting to make their own jobs easier while they work to provide you a free product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> What's the best Ubuntu alternative out there?

I dislike Snap, but I like the stable / out-of-the-box nature of Ubuntu.

I don't like distros where I take a week to setup it the way I like.

<comment><USER59> So I asked that question a couple months ago and the response that sounded most like a drop in replacement (and better in a lot of ways) was Pop!_OS.

I haven't had the time to try it out yet ... maybe a good weekend project. I've been using Ubuntu for over a decade now so it might take some time to switch over.

<comment><USER60> I've been slowly switching over all of my desktops and servers from Ubuntu to Debian.

The only annoying situation I've encountered is having to manually install a non-free network driver, but once that's done I haven't found a single thing I miss from Ubuntu.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Kinda hijacking the conversation, but I discovered a great FUSE filesystem to distribute software over the network.

It allows to have HUGE amount of software available with the trade-off that the files you are asking for are not in cache, it is slow to retrieve them (need to retrieve each one of HTTP.)

Would people be interested in such filesystem distributed in the wild?

The /bin directory would be put at the end of your $PATH, as a fallback, you got the local version, great use the fast one from your SSD, you don't have that particular software, good, wait a tiny bit and get it over the network if you didn't store it in cache before.

I would find it useful for development tools like compilers or interpreters, that it is always quite a mess to install locally.

<comment><USER62> Better to make your question an Ask HN, or a blog post describing whatever it is you're talking about and post that on here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> I have a similar outlook. I kept complaining and basically the answer comes down to "if you don't like it, leave" \- so I did. I understand it's not appropriate for all use cases but Manjaro has been an absolute dream for me so far.

</comment><comment><USER64> All these containerization "solutions" are just the fever symptoms of the future shock from the extremely rapid rate of features and improvement in the underlying libraries (glibc, c++?, etc) used by programmers, and the programmer's tendency to use those fancy new features asap. It makes compiling, or even running, something written today on the dev environment of a 5 year old linux distro pretty darn difficult and worse with time.

</comment><comment><USER65> Users and groups are not enough to secure Linux, especially on a desktop environment.

Snaps have a permissions system backed by AppArmor and Seccomp that confines the snap to a sandbox with limited privileges based on a security profile.

You can read about it here:

\- [https://core.docs.ubuntu.com/en/guides/intro/security#headin...](https://core.docs.ubuntu.com/en/guides/intro/security#heading --permissions)

\- [https://snapcraft.io/docs/interface- management](https://snapcraft.io/docs/interface-management)

Flatpak does have a sandbox but in practice, many flatpaks do not use it securely. You can read about it here: [https://flatkill.org/](https://flatkill.org/)

AppImage does not seem that security is one of its goals.

So, for the time being I'll keep using snaps. They're a great idea :)

So, tl;dr: Snaps are not only about packaging. They confine software to a sandbox with limited privileges.

</comment><comment><USER66> I rarely find myself fixing things in Ubuntu, there is a level of acceptance though on certain things not always panning out the way I'd want. I've gotten very good a reading reviews on peripherals I buy to make sure they are compatible. There is the occasional UI glitch as well. I will probably use a different O.S. once I move laptops in three years (I buy a new laptop once every 5 years).

Regarding MacOS. I am using this for the first time at work and I don't know how you could go from a rich APT ecosystem to a so-so brew ecosystem. And really fuck the Command Key and all the other weird Mac-isms. I don't see the value in that over priced hipster operating system, but if thats where your at home than enjoy your home. Oh and I'm still trying to figure out if Docker is a comedy or tragedy on Mac.

</comment><comment><USER67> I will say that half of these complaints are not valid. For example: Snap store navigation sucks? apt has no navigation at all. Chromium is a snap app? Compile from scratch or add an alternative apt repo.

The only real complaint I see here is that automatic updates don't allow you to control them. That is a real shame but also isn't inherent in the design of snaps so could be fixed.

Part of the problem is that making .deb packages is an arcane art. I wish it wasn't. And dependency hell of "well this version of the distro comes with libxxx 1.1 and the other one has 1.0.7 and now I need to build multiple versions of the package just to make it work for 20.04 and 18.04" does suck.

I do love Debian as a platform and I don't use snap, but I also use macOS as my desktop OS and guess how Chrome is packaged and installed there?

<comment><USER19> Snaps are SLOW, chromium, and several other apps I tried, they start sloooowly.

It is clearly a NO GO Canonical, you can't ship slower apps (that start in 3-5 seconds), that out of snap (or in Windows), start in less than a seconds.

snapped Chromium takes 3-5 seconds in its first start in a 16GB ram, corei 5, ssd based machine. WHAT?

In the same hardware the .deb Chromium takes maybe half a second to load and be fully responsive.

The occurs with LOTS of software, and yeah, the start time of an app IS a thing.

If something takes more than half a second to start, and you know it is A LOT faster, you end up pissed off,

What have they done with MY hardware and why?

If Canonical start to annoy me with many more packages forced to snap like chromium, I'll be jumping to whatever distro lets me start MY apps in less than a second, as it is usual in 2020.

And if this unfinished, unpollished crap starts to show off in Ubuntu server in its current sorry state, I cannot express how fast I will be ditching LTS for Debian or anything "not snapped".

You NEED to make this thing to start A LOT FASTER,

and stop making "end user assumptions" about what you _could_ mess up behind scenes in the system (yeah, you could end stomping actually useful things like sleeping in notebooks).

<comment><USER67> This seems like a legit problem. Hopefully one that can be easily solved, but thank you for pointing it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> IMHO this was the wrong problem to focus on (from a user perspective) for Canonical. The latest version is a mutant UI; you never know where the "Confirm" button in any window will be, some times is on the top-right, some times on the bottom right, and sometimes somewhere random. And like that for all of the OS UI buttons. Even the toolbar apps I was using broke.

The last (LTS) great UI experience and where I think Ubuntu peaked was 16.04, but of course it's not practical to keep running that forever. I've since moved to using a mac last year and it's been okay. I'd _love_ to go back to Ubuntu, but not to the thing it has become. Maybe I try another Linux distro, but I also want something stable.

<comment><USER69> Funny how arbitrary peaks are, for me it was 6.06 — LiveCD, Gnome 2, awesome orange-brown theme and no PulseAudio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Ubuntu has gone way to far in this. Reminds me of Microsoft in the 90s. It's really really sad and totally unbelievable. Why on earth would they make such terrible choises, I just don't get it. Linux Mint is an awesome alternative, recommended!

<comment><USER71> I went from Ubuntu to Fedora because of the recent decisions made by the devs and the hard push of Snaps. I use Chromium every once in awhile and am amazed at how long it takes for it to start up; it's almost instantly on every other distro.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Unrelated to the main thread, but

> "I have a soft spot for it, especially the amazing Unity days."

I found that funny since unity was why I left ubuntu (sort of, cos Linux mint) until I discovered i3wm and came back without unity's stupidity.

</comment><comment><USER73> The handling of the 20.04 release was enough for me to switch my work machine to Fedora 32. I had been running it on my personal laptop previously, so I already knew what using it was like. Haven't looked back since.

</comment><comment><USER74> Snap can be disabled in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. See the following blog post: [https://www.kevin-custer.com/blog/disabling-snaps-in- ubuntu-...](https://www.kevin-custer.com/blog/disabling-snaps-in-ubuntu-20-04) (discovered this before seeing relevant comment by @guiambros on the 2nd page :-). Relevant HN discussion at the time can be found here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22972661](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22972661).

</comment><comment><USER75> > Ubuntu 20.04 LTS' snap obsession has snapped me off of it. I have switched > to macOS as my daily driver, for many other reasons. I don't have the time > to keep fixing things on Linux and be constantly finding ways to work around > standard OS features that should otherwise just be available and work.

Funny, that's exactly what I thought when I tried a MacBook for the first time. Everything just seemed off about it and I spent 11 months trying to tweak it until it was just right, but never got to that point.

30 minutes on Pop!_OS and I'm good to go.

</comment><comment><USER76> It seems that current LTS relase needs more bug and glitches fixing, quality is worse than before :-( It's not just snaps, also software center have it's problems (crashing, glitches/lags in listing and installing apps, driver detection problems). I used Ubuntu for many years, it's normal that some relases are more polished that other. Overally great OS and it's "free". Let's hope they will fix it. I used error reporting functionality and also donated to Ubuntu.

</comment><comment><USER77> I have Ubuntu 20.04 LTS installed on WLS2 (I've added and using desktop/GUI layer as well) but the first thing I've done after installing original image from MS is to wipe out any trace of Snap after disabling it. All nice and rosy but yeah as I am not sure what other shenanigan Ubuntu will come up with in the future I'll be switching to some other distro. I do not trust Canonical after such f..up unless they will openly revert the decision and get rid of that dreaded Snap themselves.

</comment><comment><USER78> I thought 20.04 would be the version where I went back to Ubuntu from Mint. Then along came the Snap stuff and, looks like I'll be keeping Mint for a while longer.

</comment><comment><USER79> They haven't been on my radar since the Amazon Lens integration, but in light of snap, what does Canonical's near-future goal for Ubuntu Desktop look like?

Also, why snaps?

</comment><comment><USER80> What I hate most about snaps is that they show up when I use "df -hl" ... but I don't use Ubuntu anymore so I don't have that problem.

</comment><comment><USER81> I agree.. This incessant pushing of snap, and the closed nature of the snap store are also things I hate. And that practice with chromium is aim to Microsoft resetting edge as default browser every update. And it is indeed wasteful.

I'm sure they'll eventually abandon snap just like they did with all their other attempts at introducing their own stamp on Linux (like upstart, mir). Just hope it'll be soon.

</comment><comment><USER82> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23052108](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23052108)

<comment><USER83> TFA:

 _The article has been updated to accommodate changes since the original four months ago._

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> I honestly don't see the issue here. Snaps may not be perfect, but they are _optional_.

I use them to install Blender and Godot on my Elementary laptop because it's simpler to do so than other ways, and (even the isolation is slightly broken in Blender's case, which requires a legacy flag), it is _super convenient_.

But, again, why complain about an optional thing that benefits many people?

<comment> ayush--s It's not optional for all software. Eg: Authy only publishes their electron based app through snap

<comment><USER85> Quite a few software does that. I just avoid them at all costs, and boycott them.

People who keep saying snaps are optional, and so forth are ignoring the bigger picture here. You know, I am just going to use a Linux distribution with saner defaults, where I do not have to disable Snap to begin with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> Has Canonical still said nothing about this?

The conclusion is inescapable: they do not care. And that is why we should all find alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER87> Linux is only useful if your time has no value. I use it on my server but that's about it. Couldn't use it on the desktop. it's just as bad now as it was back in 2007 when i first tried it. in fact i think it's actually gotten worse in some aspects. it' definitely slower and more bloated now for sure.

</comment><comment><USER88> Sadly some vendors of computer hardware have based their offerings on Ubuntu.

For example, NVidia's Jetson platform is based entirely on Ubuntu 18. You can't run it with other Linux distributions (or you end up with broken stuff left and right).

Therefore, vendors, please (!) build your products around kernel drivers, not around Linux distributions.

</comment><comment><USER89> Once again I live mostly outside of the Ubuntu desktop world except for a few servers I have running. Dumb question here, but why 'should' a package management system (I imagine the job of which is predominantly installation/update/removal of software) impact the load time of a package once installed?

<comment><USER45> Snaps are shipped as compressed squashfs images that are dynamically read at runtime rather than being extracted to your filesystem at install time. The trade-off is that you win on hard disk usage and installation / revert time, but the payment is increased startup time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> Forced automatic updates are a dealbreaker for me as I need an OS to run on a slow satellite connection on a ship with 35 people. I need total control over updates. I guess Ubuntu is designed for an idealised sort of user that does not need total control, and that's OK, no Ubuntu for me

</comment><comment><USER91> Can someone offer a good alternative to Ubuntu for a home server?

I tried Debian but was disappointed with the "latest" versions of software I received on stable.

I do like the apt system and systemd and other features of the latest Ubuntu, so something that doesn't fall too far from that tree would be ideal.

Any suggestions for alternatives?

<comment><USER22> If you don't want a stable server, use testing.

<comment><USER91> How stable is testing? I want a stable build with relatively recent packages. I don't think they're exclusive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> You can remove existing snaps and disable snaps, because Linux. It's fairly quick and easy:

[https://www.kevin-custer.com/blog/disabling-snaps-in- ubuntu-...](https://www.kevin-custer.com/blog/disabling-snaps-in- ubuntu-20-04/)

</comment><comment><USER85> Snap is just goddamn horrible! It goes against the FOSS philosophy in every way imaginable, seriously.

</comment><comment><USER93> I tried Ubuntu, again, very recently and had to give up. This was like only 2-3 days of usage. And it is only the stuff I can remember now

I have two monitors, but Ubuntu thought their positions were swapped. I swapped them back in settings and it looked good and I hit enter to accept "is it good" pop up. Then I noticed my mouse was on left screen while it registers the clicks on right. Took me quite a while to revert it back

Firefox was really unresponsive. Was hanging at times and generally felt slower

This is subjective, but its UX sucks really. I tried to install some apps, there is like 3 different application managers? None of them was pinned.

Can't even install 7z via application managers. There is one application but it didn't work for me. Had to use console.

Can't install unrar by default unless you add some repositories. I guess since it is not free. It is even harder for codes since they are just binaries I think? And they come with a package that contains a lot of other stuff that includes chromium? Wth

Tried to figure out what my local ip is, couldn't find it on any user interface. Opened console typed "ifconfig" and it is not there now. I had to google which command it was

It decided to do some random updates in the background and stuck I think. It had apt-get lock, which was blocking me to install applications manually

\--

In my opinion Ubuntu Desktop is not improving, at least for average Joe (and I am a bit above that). The opposite really.

</comment><comment><USER94> If you're a tiling wm user, you might want to try out regolith linux. It's a i3wm desktop variant of Ubuntu (latest release based on 20.04 LTS) like Pop!_os, and I just checked, I don't have 'snap' installed.

</comment><comment><USER95> > _Users wanting to install Flatpak apps need to revert to using the .deb > version. It's not an ideal solution when previous Ubuntu Software releases > could handle all three formats. In all, the latest Ubuntu Software is a step > back._

Supporting fewer competing formats (and eventuallu just one) sounds like progress to me...

> _And that's another place where snaps don't shine. They are slow. I hate > that Chromium's snap takes more than 10 seconds to load on cold boot on a > freaking SSD, whereas .deb and Flatpak apps load in 1-2 seconds. Snaps are > simply not fast enough to be default anything yet._

That said, this sucks. How can this be? I though snap was just some packaging wrapper format (so one wouldn't expect any difference in loading time) -- is it more like ELF instead? Or is it some extra overhead like non-shared libs?

<comment><USER96> I'm sure Ubuntu considers it progress when they can push more people to use their pet project and it's app store nobody can self-host and give less room to its competitor. But is it progress for the users, for whom access to software not available as Snap and not in repos became harder? The developers who hoped supporting one of the competing formats would be enough to reach most users, and picked for Flatpak for any number of reasons?

<comment><USER95> > _I 'm sure Ubuntu considers it progress when they can push more people to > use their pet project and it's app store nobody can self-host and give less > room to its competitor. But is it progress for the users, for whom access to > software not available as Snap and not in repos became harder?_

The progress being having a single standard -- then all the software will be available for that.

Mixing and matching 2-3 different package/distribution formats to get all of your software because some is available in one and not the other is not ideal, and doesn't lead to a consistent sytem.

<comment><USER96> If there's anything approaching consensus about the "single standard" then maybe, but to me it seems like a good chunk of the ecosystem right now wants Canonicals idea of that to fail, at least in its current form, and instead of attempting to fix the problems and trying to make the user experience more consistent across the different options they try to force it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> what is the main problem this snap thing is looking to address ?

<comment><USER45> > what is the main problem this snap thing is looking to address ?

Third party software developers wanting to push their latest software releases directly to users, and for users wanting to install such software.

For users who are happy to use the traditional distribution-curated model, getting all "feature" software updates when doing a distribution release upgrade only, snaps are not necessary and you can use Ubuntu 20.04 perfectly fine, as normal, without using snaps.

<comment><USER29> thanks, that explains . is it okay if such users get rid of all snap stuff from their Ubuntu 20.04 installation ? would the Ubuntu continue to work fine ? Browser, terminal, vi, java, python, etc mainly .

<comment><USER45> Yes - that'll work fine.

As others have pointed out, Chromium is no longer packaged as a deb. You can use Firefox, or get Chromium from another source. An AppImage is available for example. I haven't tried it, but it should be functionally equivalent to using a distribution deb.

Or use Google's Chrome deb, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER97> Yep, all debian and cent now, no more snap craziness for me

</comment><comment><USER98> I'm not a snap fan either, for the reasons listed in this post-- slow starts and forced autoupdates.

I do use it for LXD, where it's the only way to stay up to date.

</comment><comment><USER25> So, people are complaining that distributions _they can modify_ include something that _they can remove and replace_ by another thing like Flatpak...

Interesting...

</comment><comment><USER99> In the face of advances in security and usability brought about under iOS/Android/MacOS and yes, Windows S, these complaints are frankly ridiculous. The days of running applications without confinement, that run with the full permissions of the user, are gone.

Ubuntu might have been able to make this a smoother process, but they lack the literal BILLIONS of dollars that has been spent achieving that on other operating systems.

If you want to be an old greybeard, use apt or build it from source.

<comment><USER26> > but they lack the literal BILLIONS of dollars that has been spent achieving > that on other operating systems.

They could have just stepped aside and used one of the alternatives—priceless.

Not to mention it doesn't cost billions to develop a read-only chroot archive, the building blocks are available to combine. Just have to have the humility to choose the most elegant design, which already exist.

<comment><USER99> Just use the Red Hat tool chain for everything? How does that end up? Subject to the whims of a few guys. Red Hat itself is better from having to compete.

The use of 'just a chroot' thinking brings all the problems and none of the gains.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER100> I'd been happy with KDE Neon for a while, but since the upgrade to the Ubuntu 20.04 base, snap became so annoying that I switched all of my machines to openSUSE.

Snap is an endless source of frustration. Unless you jump through a bunch of hoops, apps can't access network mounts, you have the obligatory ~/snap folder, startup times are atrocious, and I'm seeing a number of weird glitches especially in Chromium.

Flatpak is marginally better, but has a lot of similar issues.

</comment><comment><USER101> I haven't dealt with snaps yet. Isn't there really any way to disable snaps? Not even an obscure one?

<comment><USER102> [https://cialu.net/how-to-disable-and-remove-completely- snaps...](https://cialu.net/how-to-disable-and-remove-completely-snaps-in- ubuntu-linux/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> I actually like snap.

At the end of the day users like me matter.

I cannot find 1 decent pomodrone app for linux. I now have 2 of those from snap store.

I could not get that mycroft ai app to run for some reason. One in snap actually works.

Ya the startup time is noticeable but they work.

For intermediate like me and noob users its awesome.

Edit: also purple task is good to do list maker. So at the end of the day what ever attracts developer to make cool little app is a win for me.

<comment><USER104> It's nice to have as option, but I think the issue is that software that becomes a snap doesn't stay a normal package anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER105> Keep the Ubuntu apt package telemetry activated and uninstall Snap. Vote with the uninstall.

<comment><USER22> Or vote by leaving for Linux Mint or Debian.

<comment><USER105> They won't be able to measure this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER106> Switched to Debian because of all this useless Ubuntu crap. Never looked back.

</comment><comment><USER107> Yes. I'm staying with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS for now.

Maybe Mint next.

</comment><comment><USER108> Canonical does not work for free. Open source has turned into a marketing term. Canonical made Amazon a default install on Ubuntu and now they are trying to turn the Snap store into something like the Apple or Android store.

</comment><comment><USER109> That's a no no for Ubuntu, going back to Debian

</comment><comment><USER110> I just apt remove --purge snap and life is good

</comment><comment><USER111> my personal solution : Use Kubuntu and ignore snap stuff and use Firefox instead of Chrome

</comment><comment><USER112> Which distro do you recommend?

</comment><comment><USER113> \- Snap cannot be avoided in Ubuntu. Key parts of UI are or will be delivered as snaps. \- Snap uses SquashFS, that is optimized for small size, not fast extract speed. \- Snap share some functionality via other core snaps, but overall files can be repeated on each snap and include files to run in all platforms, resulting in more space needed in device. \- The location where snaps are and key folder locations cannot be changed by user. \- Snap keeps a unique machine id and unique per snap cookies that are used to collect statistics and identify same instance, even after remove and reinstall of the snap. User has not control over that. \- Snap store collects geo-location data based on IP and install and usage information based on machine id and cookie ids. \- Snap uses loop devices, a lot of them (all revisions are mounted). UI tools are being patched to hide them, but gnu tools such as df look messy. \- Snap daemon and server are closed source. \- Currently old revisions are not removed. \- Manual remove does not remove snapshots and config unless --purge is used. \- Cache and config folders as seen by a snap application cannot be changed or pointed to other locations. \- Users can connect or disconnect plugs that are already defined in a snap, but cannot add new ones. \- Snap updates cannot be avoided. \- System misleads users by making it confusing to know what is deb and what is snap. \- Many snaps do not really work. They expect something that is different in my machine. I tried rclone snap, ended up installing it manually. \- Many snaps have old versions of software, people did them once to have them apper in store and do not maintain them anymore. Users will be forced to leave away security of deb packages in official repos, and install things manually on their own. \- Some snaps due to limitations have limitations in functionality. For example, gimp snap cannot start xsane anymore. \- I have no doubt that snaps are checked by Ubuntu team for security, but as user I have no way to check that and there are many snaps that have both :home and :network interfaces enabled, although :network is not needed. Especially snaps from "Snapcrafters" are somehow liberal on plugs combinations they allow. \- As other have notes, snapcraft.io is hard to use to find things. \- The only winner I think of Chromium browser being a snap is Google. We are forced to install Google Chrome directly as that is the easiest alternative that works. Ubuntu could better decided not provide it than make it a snap. \- I tried Chromium snap and my Gnome mouse cursor does not work there. I read in some Ubuntu snap forum entry the fixing that (using user themes) is against the idea of snap running same in all systems. I do not care about that, I only care they respect my UI theme. \- The snap sandbox is not a complete sandbox. Snaps still see XWindow data, and other variables and memory. The main security behind snaps does not come from the sandbox, but from review of Ubuntu security team. A non-transparent process done by few people. \- These being said, if I want to run or test some app quickly and not mess the system, snap is a choice, but forcing it over users without having a choice, will increase the risks uses have to take to figure out alternative installs for all cases where snaps do not work for the user needs.

<comment><USER26> You need to add two newlines to each bullet point or they combine to a single paragraph.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> > RMS ousted from the FSF

Wtf. Looks like I must have been living under a rock! What happened?

<comment><USER114> He was politically outspoken, like he has always been. But being outspoken is not acceptable in modern times.

He said it was likely that some women of Epstein's _presented_ as entirely willing to Marvin Minsky. This was twisted by the press into him saying they _were_ entirely willing.

For this he was ousted.

<comment><USER115> also for the bit on the CSAIL email discussion where he objected to the use of the term "sexual assault" when referring to statutory rape, the other bit on the CSAIL email discussion where he was questioning whether statutory rape actually counts as rape, and mostly for the new publicity that everything else objectionable he's been doing and saying for the last several decades received (e.g. his stated views that laws against child pornography are censorship, that pedophilia, necrophilia, incest are actually fine (IIRC he revised his view on pedophilia a few days prior to resigning), his MIT office sign reading "knight for justice and hot ladies").

<comment><USER116> Statutory rape is not the same thing as rape, that's the whole point of having a separate term for it.

If you look outside the Anglo bubble, you'll discover that sexual relations between teenagers of various ages are not uncommon at all.

<comment><USER117> right. It blows my mind that anyone who considers themselves intelligent would argue that statutory rape is rape.

Statutory rape _LITERALLY_ means " _consensual_ sex with someone below the age of consent". Because if the sex was non-consensual, it's called rape regardless of age.

RMS's biggest problem is that he was technically correct, but surrounded by a society of idiots.

<comment><USER118> Your idea of statutory rape not being rape fails at the definition you specified for the former term. Someone below the age of consent has been deemed by the law to be unable to make an informed decision about their body - which is true in all cases; in cases where that may not necessarily be true, the child would be smart enough to realize the act they're engaging in is unhealthy if not for their development then for their partner. Sexual relations with someone who cannot consent is rape. This doesn't include the fact that a large age discrepancy between two parties engaging in sexual relations will generally lead to an inequality in power, and sexual relations between two inequal parties in that way may not be rape but certainly isn't "good sex".

Many states have "Romeo and Juliet" laws, which decriminalize sexual relations between people under the age of consent as long as they're similarly aged, solving the biggest issue most people have with the idea of statutory rape ("what if children rape each other?").

I use the term "sexual relations" because the act of sex necessitates consent. And although sexual relations with children may be uncommon outside of the "Anglo bubble", they still harm the child whether via physical or mental trauma.

<comment><USER117> Lets be clear here. When you say child you're referring to teenagers, not prepubescent children.

The question is whether or not a 15 or 16 year old can consent to non-harmful sex, and the answer is obviously yes. At that point they are sexual creatures with their own urges. two 16 year olds having sex is not harmful in any meaningful way, many many people start having sex at 16 (or younger) and go on to be just fine.

At this point, as far as I'm concerned, it's been clearly established that young people under the age of consent _CAN_ actually consent to sex.

Statutory Rape is not about consent, it's about manipulation. Due to the differences in life experience between a 16 year old and a 20 year old, the 20 year old can manipulate the 16 year old to give that consent. This does not imply that the sex between them is implicitly harmful to the 16 year old, just that it's immoral for a 20 year old to do this sort of manipulation.

It's also clear that a 20 year old can rape a 16 year old. Actually rape. And they'll be charged with rape, regardless of the age of consent. This is because, by definition, with statutory rape the 16 year old DID consent.

And one last piece of evidence to show clearly that you are wrong here.

It's possible for 2 25 year olds to have sex and statutory rape charges be brought. How? Because one of them is mentally handicapped.

Because Statutory Rape is not specifically about the age of consent, or giving consent. It's about the coercion of someone who is not considered mentally capable of protecting themselves from said coercion. It's about the morality, not about any sort of inherent harm of the sex itself.

And to head off one argument that I KNOW is coming. The age of consent in Japan is 13, pointing out that the age of consent is 16 in many places in western civilization is not meaningful or useful here. It doesn't change the ideas that I've presented in this post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER119> It's a "I can remove it but instead I'll just switch distros" episode.

</comment><comment><USER120> This reminds me of the whole systemd debacle - hundreds of Linux curmudgeons getting unreasonably angry about an improvement to their distribution of choice, just because it's different to what they're used to.

The great thing about free and open source software is, if a distribution or package maintainer does something you don't like, you don't have to use it. Simply modify to suit your desires, and enjoy.

But I guess it's easier to just complain loudly and with an inflated sense of entitlement, despite not having put in any work whatsoever.

<comment><USER114> If your software auto-updates, then you no longer own your device. Anti- features, spying can be pushed onto it from above and you have no choice but to accept it.

I like auto-updates. I almost always turn them on. But _being able_ to turn them off is an important bargaining chip, to pressure devs to behave. I'm not excited about giving that up.

<comment><USER80> I make sure to turn OFF auto-updates on Android... but I use automatic updates on Linux.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER121> Stop bitching and moaning and compile it yourself. ./configure && make is pretty easy and pretty much the way it was done up until mid 2000s

</comment><comment><USER122> Counter to the current thoughts.

I love Ubuntu and haven't had any problems with Snaps via the software center in Ubuntu.

I use apt at the command line so I may not be getting the brunt of snaps problems.

But using Sublime, Chromium, Spotify, Intellij, has been pretty flawless for me so far.

Maybe I'm not a snap power user.

Ubuntu desktop is wonderful. Not as good as Mac imo, but infinitely better than Windows.

Just wanted to stick up for Ubuntu a little.

I think it's great there's finally an open source Desktop OS that is as nice to use as the big two and I hope they continue their great work.</comment>


Unusual Business Card Designs - <AUTHOR> http://oddstuffmagazine.com/90-most-unusual-business-card-designs-of-all-time.html?sms_ss=hackernews

<comment><USER2> I think there must be about a hundred websites listing the same "unusual business card designs". Once you've seen one, you've seen them all.

<comment><AUTHOR> ya you right bro .. there are many lists around ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Overall a decent list. But any such list is incomplete without Adafruit's spirograph card: [http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2009/05/25/adafruit-business- ca...](http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2009/05/25/adafruit-business-cards-laser- cut-spirograph-cards/)

<comment><AUTHOR> nice video .. its really inspiring to see that work in video

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One thing to keep in mind for people using creative business cards is who your selling to. A creative business card may help get you in the door but businessmen will likely want at least the option of one that fits with their others in a rolodex.

<comment><AUTHOR> quite right .. its like a first impression, so it should be creative enough to capture attention

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A spotted a few from this large collection:

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/dailypoetics/sets/7205759410438...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/dailypoetics/sets/72057594104389710/)

<comment><AUTHOR> ya right dude .. many are from there.. but i choose .. that i liked from there and other places .. check out other sources as well

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can't forget the business card catapult: [http://www.instructables.com/id/Cardapult-the-Business- Card-...](http://www.instructables.com/id/Cardapult-the-Business-Card- Catapult/)

<comment><AUTHOR> really impressive .. like the creativity in this :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> good listing

nishant</comment>


Crash: how computers are setting us up for disaster - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/crash-how-computers-are-setting-us-up-disaster <comment><USER2> We take a lot of very complicated systems that seem easy for granted but if you look closely we can see that they are a mesh of very complicated systems. I'm of the mind that there will be a time when we won't be able to access old information because of encryption and file formats. So we'll need to recreate things we take for granted from scratch. Which in essence is a dark age except we'll be in deeper trouble than the previous dark ages. We will not have access to knowledge other societies had since all the important knowledge will be locked up in some computer system somewhere and society as we know it will slowly breakdown. I think it's only a matter time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Normal Accidents by Charles Perrow ISBN 0-691-00412-9</comment>


Now Gmail on Android is forcing Chrome as web browser - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.gm <comment> r-w Strange. 1.6 _million_ clicks on Feedly; 5 points / 3 comments on HN.

<comment><USER2> I think feedly counts clicks to the Play Store page not to the HN story

<comment><USER3> I had thought it indicated clickthrough by Feedly users. How could they have overall clickthrough numbers?

<comment><USER4> I think it's bookmarks ("Save for later"). If I bookmark an article with a low number, I can see Feedly adds 1 to the number beside that little flame.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A link to Play Store and no link to any proof of that claim?

</comment><comment><USER6> What do you mean? I have the latest Gmail app, non-Chrome default browser and it works as intended. What's the issue again?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Oh shit, after the upgrade to Android 6 on my OnePlus the default browser is not there anymore. My fault, sorry Google, at least for now.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is it? It isn't for me.

</comment><comment><USER8> Browser Wars Revisited. Starring: Google as MS, Chrome as IE.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why can't Gmail on Android handle ICS files?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> So lame!</comment>


Teagueduino Early Access Workshop in Seattle (it's free) - <AUTHOR> http://labs.teague.com/?p=1063 <comment><AUTHOR> a bit more about the Teagueduino platform can be found in the first post here: <http://labs.teague.com/?p=947></comment>


The Uncertainty principle and Nonlocality found to be linked - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6007/1072.short Huge, huge day in physics.<p>Also: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101118141541.htm <comment><AUTHOR> This will help understand the limits (or methods) on quantum teleportation in some sense.</comment>


Ask HN: How much equity should I be getting? - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone. I started with this partner who is in the US and started to work on a startup. I'm living in a 3rd world country and we talked about splitting of equity.
3 of us in my country (which build the startup from ground up) and our partner is in the US. Then a new person comes in who is in the US and started to split the equity again.
Then a new guy is getting 26% and my partner is 36% then 3 of us in our country is getting 5%.There are other people to be split, the lawyer, investors, employees.
We are not yet funded but considering that we got funded. Is the splitting of equity fair? <comment><USER2> Please try out the co-founder equity calculator at [http://foundrs.com](http://foundrs.com)

I can't stress enough the need to put in place vesting.

</comment><comment><USER3> The way I understand it, four of you (one guy in the US and three guys in another country) got together and built a startup from scratch. I further assume that there were no discussions on equity split at any time.

Now when a new guy comes in, you are told for the first time that you have only 5% equity in the company.

I would suggest that before you do any further work in this startup, have a call with your US partner and speak to him about this - get everything clarified. If he does not speak to you directly about this, then you need to be very concerned.

It is very hard for HN to tell you how equity should be split, as no one here knows what each of you bring to the table. Typically, equity discussions should be carried out right before you start a partnership, so I urge you to have this discussion with him now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Basically it was 2 of us at first then hired 2 people from my side. Right now he's the one paying for all of our salary. Does that even count? I'll try to talk again about this.

<comment><USER4> If you are getting paid market salary, then you are closer to an employee than a founder. If he is paying the salary from his pocket, then he's a founder and also an investor.

Does he expect to be paid back or does he want equity from the money he's putting in? If he's not getting paid back, he's buying some of his equity.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see what you mean now. Currently he isn't being paid back but and I think your right. He's buying some of his equity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can you give some additional context about your roles? Right now you make it sound like you and 2 others did all of the development work but are only getting 5% equity (which is IMO too low). Has your partner in the US found clients/customers/funding?

<comment><AUTHOR> Right at the moment we have none but we are already getting a lawyer to set this in papers. Which concerns me in the long run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A general rule I stick to is that the person who gets a salary gets less than 2 digits equity early stage. Same applies for founders who work 40 hours a week and so on.

How important is everyone to the success of the startup? If you have 5%, you should be increasing the valuation of the company by 6%. 26% share should increase valuation by 36%. 36% share increases it by 57%.

However, this assumes it's unpaid. The ones getting salary need to increase valuation by far more.

I don't know the credentials, but if the two larger portion guys play a big role in valuation, it should be fine. E.g. good degrees, previous experience with startups, investments, rare skills.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for enlightening me. Currently the 2 guys do the business stuff and we do all the development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you think it's fair, then it's fair. What else could "fair" mean?

If you don't think it's fair, then it isn't for the same reason. What I think isn't really part of the equation.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is anyone getting paid? Did anyone put in money?

At this point, you should just be figuring out the founder split (not saving some). You will dilute evenly when you take investment and start an employee pool.

<comment><AUTHOR> Were getting paid by my partner in the US. My partner is funding us at the moment.

<comment><USER4> Market salary? If not, what % of market?

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean by market salary?

<comment><USER4> The salary that is generally paid for your role in jobs you could get (with no equity)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, currently he gives me that. With no equity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If your getting paid equity is just icing on the cake. investors probable aren't going to like all those shares floating around anyway.</comment>


Ask HN: Tokn or Talken as product name? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN, I'm now building a payment solution for decentralized apps. Please help me choose my product name. Do you guys like the name tokn or talken better? Which one is easier to remember? <comment><USER2> Split the difference and go with Talkn. Added bonus: gives absolutely no clue what the service does.

</comment><comment><USER3> Both are bad names. Think of something else. However, if you must go with one, pick Tokn.</comment>


To Improve Customer Experience, Embrace the Outliers in Your Data - <AUTHOR> https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/to-improve-customer-experience-embrace-the-outliers-in-your-data <comment><AUTHOR> Automation can produce a more consistent customer experience!</comment>


A tribute to the Russian poet Sergey Yesenin - <AUTHOR> http://warriorkitty.com/site/a-tribute-to-the-amazing-russian-poet-sergey-yesenin/ <comment><USER2> I am not Russian but understand some. Out of all the Russian poets I've read I think Yesenin is my favorite.

I didn't see Russian on site (just English and Croatian). I found this with Russian versions, not with too many ads:

[http://samlib.ru/w/wagapow_a/yesen.shtml](http://samlib.ru/w/wagapow_a/yesen.shtml)

but the English translation is off. For example in "Letter To Mother":

[http://samlib.ru/w/wagapow_a/yesen.shtml#a_letter_to_mother](http://samlib.ru/w/wagapow_a/yesen.shtml#a_letter_to_mother)

"Ты жива еще, моя старушка?" is translated too literally as "Are you still alive, my dear granny?". Granny means more grandmother while in Russian it means more old woman, not just necessarily grandmother. So the translation from OP's link is better: "Are you still alive, my dear old one?"

<comment><USER3> There used to be a pretty good website which had most Russian poets (in the original): [https://web.archive.org/web/20110310062154/http://litera.ru/...](https://web.archive.org/web/20110310062154/http://litera.ru/stixiya/)

Not sure what happened to it though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You may be interested, if you're not familiar, with The Retuses, a Moscow-area band that has used Esenin's poems as the basis for several songs. Unfortunately, they were never recorded as part of an album, but many recordings are present on Youtube. Some are better than others, and the recording for Письмо к женщине is particularly well done: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYgcUfMXJLw&t=2m30s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYgcUfMXJLw&t=2m30s)

Шаганэ: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8NYyVB_QyI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8NYyVB_QyI) Though I like this cover of it more: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEN3Zugtqgs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEN3Zugtqgs)

Пой же, пой. На проклятой гитаре: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME_Kxc9VlFw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME_Kxc9VlFw) though I've sadly never found a better recording.

</comment><comment><USER5> Mayakovski wrote a poem in honour of Esenin: [http://m.poemhunter.com/poem/to- sergei-esenin/](http://m.poemhunter.com/poem/to-sergei-esenin/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I think HNers would also like Velimir Khlebnikov / Igor Severyanin / Vladimir Kamensky / Vladimir Mayakovsky and other Russian futurists of early 20th century.</comment>


More Focus: Why we're no longer supporting JPG & PNG formats on Folio - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fol.io/post/29902659840/were-dropping-support-for-jpg-png-formats

<comment><USER2> This makes sense in terms of eliminating random content, and more importantly, editable content. The most useful files are those you can customize for your project. However, PNGs can be useful from time to time. There are many times I'm looking for an image and I just wish the silhouette (cut out) work was already done for me. I think folio could be a good place for things like that too, and they may come in the form of pngs.

+1 on "loads of sites out there that do photography already and far better" - good move on sticking with the layered/interface elements</comment>


Show HN: Introducing Blogvio – Integrate beautiful widgets into your website. - <AUTHOR> http://www.blogvio.com

<comment><AUTHOR> _Some real life examples_

Our pitch on Roon: [http://andreipotorac.roon.io/from-blogvio-with- love](http://andreipotorac.roon.io/from-blogvio-with-love)

On WIX: [http://hi8969.wix.com/vuzum](http://hi8969.wix.com/vuzum)

On Weebly: [http://vuzum.weebly.com/](http://vuzum.weebly.com/)

On WordPress: [http://www.andreipotorac.com/san-juan-2013-in- coruna/](http://www.andreipotorac.com/san-juan-2013-in-coruna/)

On Tumblr: [http://blog.blogvio.com/post/62511677274/usability- test-2](http://blog.blogvio.com/post/62511677274/usability-test-2)

On Blogger: [http://bibliotecahellin.blogspot.com.es/](http://bibliotecahellin.blogspot.com.es/) (scroll down)

Real user: [http://www.ciaraconlon.com/2013/why-you-should-try-for-a- min...](http://www.ciaraconlon.com/2013/why-you-should-try-for-a-mind-like- water/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Making the demo widget on the landing page switch to a stream of Paul Graham's essays when visitors are arriving from HN is pretty clever.

The problem however is that it leaves most of the space above the fold empty. I was wondering if some page elements hadn't loaded or if my AdBlock was preventing them from doing so.

<comment><AUTHOR> We thought that is a good RSS feed to show the widget's functionality. :-)

Clicking on the widget title at the top will change it with a widget from a different category.</comment></comment>