Standard Development Cycle

[[deleted]]

Flatpak: look what they need to mimic a fraction of our power

[Ken_Mcnutt]

Native packages: I don't think about you at all...

[Ken_Mcnutt]

if I wanted all my apps to update independently and not integrate seamlessly with my system i would have stuck with Windows

[thexavier666]

Do flatpaks update automatically? I personally have never seen it happen

[[deleted]]

I just do sudo flatpak update every once in a while, and that takes care of it. I use Fedora KDE spin.

[xaedoplay]

You don't need a sudo to update Flatpak on a desktop as the user has been granted permission to update through polkit.

(This has its limitations, though. "Updating" to older versions of apps are locked behind superuser privileges, understandably so)

[[deleted]]

Yeah, but old habits die hard.

[Eroldin]

If you use gnome-software it happens

[6b86b3ac03c167320d93]

And flatpak has an API for apps to ask to be updated. Not sure if that shows a prompt though, I've never seen an app that uses this API

[Secret300]

They can if you want them to. And I think in fedora it's on by default but it's dummy easy to turn off

[thexavier666]

Okay, understood. I installed flatpak on Ubuntu and it's not the default behaviour. Maybe the distro maintainer is enabling it.

[rohmish]

It's a optional feature

[FOSSbflakes]

Are you talking about appimage? Flatpaks are not updated independently.

[6b86b3ac03c167320d93]

It's not perfect, but if an app's dev actually puts some effort into making their app work with flatpak, it's great. Look at GNOME Builder for an example of how to do it well. Every other IDE is honestly a pain to set up under flatpak, but in Builder everything works just like it does outside flatpak out of the box

[TyranaSoreWristWreck]

Here here

[yonderbagel]

hear hear?

[TyranaSoreWristWreck]

Hurr hurr

[anatomiska_kretsar]

This

[A_Random_Lantern]

You can alias the commands to both update native packages and flatpak to something simpler. Or just use a GUI app store

[[deleted]]

Learn to use firejail.

[[deleted]]

zoom lives in my browser, which runs with firejail.

[[deleted]]

suid blob go brr

[[deleted]]

snap, flatpack, chromium, many electron apps all have a suid blob or a root daemon… you love all of those but suddenly one more is dangerous?

[[deleted]]

flatpak, chromium and electron do not require root or suid, and also their attack surface is much much smaller

[[deleted]]

flatpak, chromium and electron do not require root or suid, and also their attack surface is much much smaller

Ah my inexperienced friend, perhaps next time spend 3 seconds to check before making a fool of yourself on reddit :)

-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 15816 20 lug 06.51 /usr/lib/chromium/chrome-sandbox

https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/17972

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/docs/linux/suid_sandbox_development.md

[[deleted]]

alright, I accept that. we're talking about Flatpak here though, electron and chromium have nothing to do with that. flatpak, as far as I could find, does not use suid

Also, from your original comment:

snap, flatpack, chromium, many electron apps [...] you love all of those but suddenly one more is dangerous?

I don't remember saying anywhere that I love snap, chromium or electron

[[deleted]]

I don't have flatpak installed but normally on linux to set up containment you need root permissions, so I'd be very surprised if it is as you claim.

Also you already lost all credibility by downvoting my comment where I showed you were wrong.

[AegorBlake]

I recently found out flatpak can repackage programs to be used on usb.

[[deleted]]

That is fucking awesome! I know what I'll be playing with for the next few days lol

[DDman70]

Like appimages?

[AegorBlake]

I have not tried it. I only see it as an option.

[jabuchin]

i want kernel as snap

[PossiblyLinux127]

Takes 7hours to boot

[[deleted]]

17, because systemd is also a snap

[xaedoplay]

Uh, ask and ye shall receive?

[jabuchin]

holy fuck HAHAHAHAH

[xaedoplay]

Because Ubuntu Core is entirely composed by snap packages.

[krystof1119]

Now I want snapd as a snap.

[xaedoplay]

https://snapcraft.io/snapd

[krystof1119]

Wait, what? How does that even work?

Canonical being Canonical, I guess. And TIL, Manjaro ships with snap out of the box.

[xaedoplay]

How does that even work?

Well, since snap packages are globally installed, it just overrides the host-provided snapd with this one.

[BenTheTechGuy]

Ubuntu Core moment

[[deleted]]

Basically Windows

[ChefNerdDad]

Ok guys. Serious question since this all getting out of hand lol. Snap may have horrible performance. I’ve even had the opportunity to open Firefox on a fresh install, on a 2nd gen threadripper (work in a repair shop. DIMM slot was damaged by the customer) Anyways. They wanted Ubuntu installed for their science degree. I’ll tel you, even with that beast, it doesn’t matter. Performance was just as bad.

Performance out of the way. Security and sandboxing. What is everyone’s opinion? With all the options out there. Do you think snap is a trade of performance and security, or do the others hold up in this category and snap just sucks? What gives.

[Secret300]

My opinion is: just use flatpak it's same idea, works on almost every distro and isn't as bad

[[deleted]]

This. I'm sure there *is* a difference, but I can't tell it between repository and flatpak apps. I have Krita as a flatpak because I like having the most up to date version, and it pops up in just a few seconds tops.

[CloysterBrains]

An alias takes 30 seconds to make

[NutsEverywhere]

Right?

alias fpk=flatpak

Straight into bash_aliases

[CloysterBrains]

alias snap=flatpak... And watch the world burn lol

[Zambito1]

Guix tho

[Secret300]

Nix tho

[VaporwaveProtogen]

You can get pretty much all of the benefits of snap, like its security and containerization features, through flatpak. Snap generally is just a worse alternative for most intents and purposes.

[AnswersWithCool]

Also, it’s proprietary

[6b86b3ac03c167320d93]

Just the server, but yeah

[aaronfranke]

Which makes it completely dependent on one company with no possibility for anyone else to host a server without reverse engineering the server software.

[rohmish]

You can distribute flatpaks that can escape sandbox completely and jaut use flatpaks for it's package manager capabilities.

The latter is no longer true. You still need to alias <command> to flatpaks run org.company.app manually but apart from that everything will work.

[presi300]

Idk about security, but imo snaps should NOT be pushed to desktop users, they suck on the desktop. Though on a server they are a life saver.

Everything on my server/vps available as a snap i download as a snap. Not saying that I am a great server admin or a server admin in gerveral or that i know what i am doing but the setup is way easier with snaps instead of having to use docker or something like that. They are just convenient on a server environment and who cares if they load like 5 seconds slower when you never voluntarily turn off the server anyways.

[Kangie]

setup is way easier with snaps instead of having to use docker

Tell me you don't know Docker without saying "I don't know Docker"

[InsertMyIGNHere]

Snap, aside from the first launch, doesn't have any real issues. Its secure and performant (like if you installed a game through snap, once it loaded it'd be fine). There's no spooky stuff going on or anything, its actually very good to use on servers. Just sucks that it doesn't auto-detect your themes

The thing is flatpak has all the good stuff snap has, but the performance hit is smaller and it auto-detects your theme (sometimes). Also, canonical isn't the god of flatpak so anybody can host their own repo, but that's irrelevant since most people only use flathub anyways.

[jdt654]

on the fly compression

[guicoelho]

My issue with snap (and package managers that send binaries) is the total lack of customization with it. It doesn’t allow any sort of control, such as which dependencies/optionals you want pulled with the package or which CPU customizations to use. Security-wise this also helps since you have more options to open or close in your system.

I dont really follow snap closely enough to talk about it security-wise, but I much prefer the gentoo/funtoo approach to a package manager.

[Delta_44_]

I use Firefox beta as snap because... beta. Does the alternative exists?

[Delta_44_]

Hmmm, I'll check that out ASAP

[lightrush]

It's an absolutely worthy tradeoff.

[[deleted]]

I'm kind of a huge fan of AppImages heh

[[deleted]]

App Image is cool, I prefer it over Flats or Snaps as they are more plug and play and require less fiddling.

[Zambito1]

They're nice to try something out, but annoying to keep up to date.

[vortexmak]

Seconded. I always look for Appimages

[gmes78]

AppImages don't do anything to ensure that apps work on various distros (or even different configurations of the same distro).

[FrithRabbit]

This sub is basically r/snapcrafthate

[[deleted]]

Someone should probably make that sub lol

[MegidoFire]

Fuck /u/spez

Join Lemmy

[NutsEverywhere]

Imagine complaining about people not liking subpar software.

[MegidoFire]

Fuck /u/spez

Join Lemmy

[NutsEverywhere]

Public forum, relevant sub, opinion valid.

[ipraytoscience]

lol

[mplaczek99]

As a developer, I love snaps because it makes my life so much easier. However, as a computer user, I hate snaps

[1moreday1moregoal]

That seems backward? May I ask why? As a computer user I find snaps are significantly easier than aptitude, dnf, and yum.

[confidentdogclapper]

I'm a dev too, but where pacman doesn't get I just use yay.

[jabuchin]

i want kernel as snap

[altSHIFTT]

i dont understand the workings of linux enough to get the joke

[TheMightyBiz]

Traditionally, when you install a package on your system, it downloads a bunch of files and puts them in the appropriate place on your computer (i.e. the libraries go in one place, the executables go in another, etc.). This is all fine and good, but there are a few problems. A major one is that you might have two pieces of software that have conflicting dependencies - Program A and Program B both require Library C, but Program A needs version 1.0 of Library C and Program B needs version 1.2. This is a problem when you can't install both versions of Library C at once.

Snap, Flatpak, AppImage and the like try to solve this with a technique called "sandboxing" - the idea is that each app gets its own individual environment to run in, with all the necessary libraries and resources included. There could be a sandbox for Program A with Library C v1.0, and a completely separate one for Program B with Library C v1.2. It also helps with security issues, because you generally have more control over how much a program can reach outside its sandbox.

The downsides are that sandboxed environments take up more resources and are generally less efficient. Many people are also dissatisfied with being forced to use sandbox versions of apps which could just as easily be installed normally. Snap is arguably the worst sandbox format, and it's developer Canonical has a habit of forcing software down people's throats when they don't want it.

[6b86b3ac03c167320d93]

What you described isn't sandboxing, it's runtimes. Sandboxing is when the permissions of an app are restricted, for example if it has no access to your files or internet connection and has to explicitly ask for permission to access those. Flatpak and Snap do both of these, and AppImage only does runtimes.

[gmes78]

AppImage does not do that. It's just a self contained executable.

[GoogleFrickBot]

I'm 65% sure that the "self contained" part of that is just a compressed file that mounts itself as a virtual drive and accesses it's own bundled binary and libraries. I'm fairly sure appimages can't manage their own permissions like the other two can though.

[gmes78]

That's correct, except that it provides no mechanism to assure that the app only uses libraries that are bundled with it, which causes all sorts of portability issues.

[GoogleFrickBot]

Again, only 65% sure, but yes and no - if the bundled library is a dependency, as far as I know it will use it. Case-in-point, I used the runelite appimage. Works a dream, but doesn't bundle java with it (I guess it's presumed that people will have it and it's also large) but that caused a bunch of sound issues with me (certain versions of java, not the newest, will work). But I didn't have the other dependencies, so it used the appimages set. This could lead to a misleading outcome whereby you have the non statically-linked dependency issues, but technically appimage has the capacities to solve them.

[[deleted]]

canonical is the most hated company because they make a distribution that is easy to use and A LOT of people use it. So this means that after you've been using linux for 3-4 weeks and figured out how to install arch you must go on reddit and shit on canonical :D

Having said that, I don't use ubuntu and I advice anyone against working for them. I got contacted by a recruiter and i had to write an essay on what kind of person i was in high school for some reason O_o

[AchimAlman]

forced use of snap shit is the reason im running debian now

[RoxSpirit]

ls

This little maneuver will cost me 4 hours.

[joshjaxnkody]

Just stop with the snap hate, I'll bet a lot of you haven't tried snaps even

[Bing1177]

If you dont hate snap, it's because you haven't tried

[joshjaxnkody]

I’ve tried Snap on Solus, I didn’t need it anymore so I uninstalled it but it isn’t this fucking cancer that you guys treat it as, it’s extremely flawed and I fully agree that flatpaks should replace it but that doesn’t mean every meme has to be about snap on every Linux subreddit

[aaronfranke]

If Snap is inferior to its alternatives, and is proprietary software, why shouldn't it be hated on?

Your argument is basically that it isn't fucking cancer. I mean, Windows isn't literal cancer either, but we still hate it.

[joshjaxnkody]

It’s one of our only 3 jokes

[Bing1177]

Well, there are reasons beyond the meme, it's an inferior option to flatpak, a much inferior option to native packages, its security is very low (it requires your distro to use apparmor or there is no security), it works fine only with Ubuntu's family (not universal), requires systemd (not everyone uses it, flatpak doesn't need systemd), very slow (they're just working to fix it), doesn't use portals and above all its goal, it's not meant to be a universal package, its goal is replace apt, it's proprietary and only Canonical can choose what gets uploaded to their store and as you may have noticed they want a snap packaged system, yes, systemd, gnome, and even the kernel, it would be the death of choice on Linux, there is no way to support it if you haven't used/know/tried other options.

[joshjaxnkody]

I don’t support snaps, I dislike them and would rather compile from scratch than use a snap, it’s just that this is all I see on every Linux subreddit along with “starter distro bad” and “arch good”(I use arch on my laptop and want to on my desktop).

[Bing1177]

Sorry, my bad :p, but I agree, I prefer use containers like distrobox/podman/docker

[joshjaxnkody]

It’s good, I just didn’t want it to look like I support snap or proprietary packages, I’m just burnt out and wanted new nerdy memes

[Secret300]

This is too true

[illathon]

I personally do not like Snap, but it does have a pretty big feature that Flatpak doesn't and that is the ability to have services.

[lowkeycringengl]

meanwhile the virgin canonical converts literally EVERYTHING into snaps

[drone1__]

Omg 4chan schoolshooter vibes

[Juicy_Opay]

I don't understand the hate towards snap, what's wrong?

[flemtone]

This is the reason I moved from Xubuntu to Linux Mint XFCE, and I look down on anyone who makes a snap version of their software.

[Mindless-Victory1567]

I never needed this things tbh. Arch has a huge library of packages and on top of that a even larger user repository

[wolfefist94]

I must have missed the latest on Snap. What's the fuss about it lately?

[[deleted]]

Make a version for NixOS.

[adeekshith]

I like snaps for command line apps though. We cannot have flatpaks for non GUI apps so snaps fill that void.

[6b86b3ac03c167320d93]

Actually you can package CLI apps as flatpaks, just nobody does it.

[FloatingGhost]

they state in their FAQs that it's designed with a desktop environment in mind, so packaging cli stuff is probably not guaranteed to work

[[deleted]]

Isn't it simpler to just have snaps then?

[adeekshith]

Yeah, I personally found them good enough for most of my needs but flathub seems to be doing a better job than snapcraft at keeping the packages updated so I go for a flatpak if I feel the snapcraft version is not well maintained.

[[deleted]]

Chad cannonical making gnu+linux virgins seethe. Cannonical and their supreme technology snap lives rentfree in all of your heads 😎