Isn’t that kinda the same with, for example, Fedora and Flatpaks? Or Debian and debs? Or Ubuntu and debs? Or Fedora and rpms?
The packaging system that your distro provides gets you the packages you get. For a small number of packages that were a maintenance nightmare, Ubuntu provides a transitional debs to move people over to the snaps (e.g. Firefox, Thunderbird), but if you want to get it from another repo, you can do exactly what KDE Neon does by setting your preferences.
No, Debian doesn’t take your apt install ... command and install a snap behind your back…
I don’t understand how a transitional package that installs the snap (which is documented in the package description) is any different from a transitional package that replaces, say, ffmpeg with libav.
$ apt show firefox
Package: firefox
Version: 1:1snap1-0ubuntu5
Priority: optional
Section: web
Origin: Ubuntu
Maintainer: Ubuntu Mozilla Team <ubuntu-mozillateam@lists.ubuntu.com>
Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug
Installed-Size: 124 kB
Provides: gnome-www-browser, iceweasel, www-browser, x-www-browser
Pre-Depends: debconf, snapd (>= 2.54)
Depends: debconf (>= 0.5) | debconf-2.0
Breaks: firefox-dbg (<< 1:1snap1), firefox-dev (<< 1:1snap1), firefox-geckodriver (<< 1:1snap1), firefox-mozsymbols (<< 1:1snap1)
Replaces: firefox-dbg (<< 1:1snap1), firefox-dev (<< 1:1snap1), firefox-geckodriver (<< 1:1snap1), firefox-mozsymbols (<< 1:1snap1)
Task: ubuntu-desktop-minimal, ubuntu-desktop, kubuntu-desktop, kubuntu-full, xubuntu-desktop, lubuntu-desktop, ubuntustudio-desktop, ubuntukylin-desktop, ubuntukylin-desktop, ubuntukylin-desktop-minimal, ubuntu-mate-core, ubuntu-mate-desktop, ubuntu-budgie-desktop-minimal, ubuntu-budgie-desktop, ubuntu-budgie-desktop-raspi, ubuntu-unity-live, edubuntu-desktop-gnome-minimal, edubuntu-desktop-gnome, edubuntu-desktop-gnome-raspi, ubuntucinnamon-desktop-minimal, ubuntucinnamon-desktop
Download-Size: 77.3 kB
APT-Manual-Installed: no
APT-Sources: http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble/main amd64 Packages
Description: Transitional package - firefox -> firefox snap
This is a transitional dummy package. It can safely be removed.
.
firefox is now replaced by the firefox snap.
Well, that’s your problem for not understanding the massive difference, not mine.
the thing people dislike about that is that you’re silently moved from an open system to a closed-source one.
Debian’s .deb hosting is completely open and you can host your own repository from which anyone can pull packages just by adding it to the apt config. fedora, suse, arch, same thing.
only Canonical can host snaps, and they’re not telling people how the hosting works. KDE seems to upload their packages to the snap store for Neon, judging from their page.
also, crucially, canonical are not the ones doing the maintenance for those apt packages. the debian team does that.
the thing people dislike about that is that you’re silently moved from an open system to a closed-source one.
Yeah. I didn’t realize I had fallen for it until I tried to automate a system rebuild, and discovered that a bunch of the snap back end seems to be closed and proprietary.
And a lot of it for no reason. Reasonable apt and flatpak alternates existed, but Canonical steered me to their closed repackaged versions.
While Canonical’s particular snap store implementation is closed source, all of the client software as well as the store API are open, and snap isn’t even tied to using snaps from their store. One could easily make a client app that treats snapd much the way apt treats dpkg. (In fact given apt-rpm I think it would probably be feasible to quite literally use apt for that.)
KDE seems to upload their packages to the snap store for Neon, judging from their page.
KDE also maintains most of the flathub.org packages for KDE apps. Not sure what the point is here.
canonical are not the ones doing the maintenance for those apt packages. the debian team does that.
This is wrong in two ways. First, Canonical are the primary employers of a lot of Debian developers, including to do Debian maintenance or development. This includes at least one of the primary developers of apt. Canonical also upstreams a lot of their work to Debian. Second, of the three (!) whole packages that Canonical decided to make transitional packages to the snap, none were coming from upstream Debian. Firefox was being packaged by Mozilla (and Mozilla were the ones who decided to move it to the snap), Thunderbird’s package had been something Canonical was packaging themselves due to the Debian/Mozilla trademark dispute that they never moved back to syncing from Debian due to technical issues with the port, and Chromium was, at least at the time, remaining frozen at old versions in a way that was unacceptable to Ubuntu users.
Good info. thanks.
One could easily make a client app
sure, and convince people to switch. it’s been done before of course but it’s a big effort. And anyway, the main point with the closed-server issue is that it’s impossible to know what the server does other than serving packages. this is true for other package repositories to a certain extent since there’s no real guarantee that they run the source code they show, but there’s a distributed trust network there. as for the snap store, they could be doing anything in there.
KDE also maintains most of the flathub.org packages for KDE apps.
what i was trying to get at is that they’re not hosting their own thing. they do host their own flatpak repo but it seems to be only for nightlies so that point wasn’t as strong as i originally thought.
Canonical are the primary employers of a lot of Debian developers, including to do Debian maintenance or development. This includes at least one of the primary developers of apt.
that does not mean that the particular developer agrees with or even approves of the snap thing. it’s good to know though. i know they upstream, but that’s sort of the bare minimum expected of them.
i’ve not really used ubuntu desktop lately, but i’ve been hearing more complaints from friends about it deciding to install snaps instead of debs lately. steam was a big one that a friend had trouble with, and they just installed that though apt i’m pretty sure.
Fedora with Flatpaks is open and up front about whether you’re getting a Flatpak or a system installed package, and lets you choose if both are available. And installing through dnf/yum isn’t going to do anything at all with Flatpak.
And what about Debian with debs? That’s literally what apt was designed to work with. If it gave you Flatpaks, or the flatpak command installed debs, that would be more like what Ubuntu is doing.
The fact that Canonical shoehorned snaps into apt is the problem. I’ve heard bad things about snap, but I wouldn’t know because I’ve never used it, and I never will because of this.
When I tell my computer to do one thing and it does something completely different without my consent, that is a problem, and is why I left Windows. I don’t need that in Linux too, and Canonical has proven they can’t be trusted not to do that.
There are big differences between Snaps and Flatpaks.
- both the flatpak server and the client are open source
- flatpak does not publish 3rd party apps, promoting them as verified (https://news.itsfoss.com/valve-steam-snap-ubuntu/)
