The Ubuntu Core Desktop demo at SCALE this year actually got me pretty excited for my desktop in a snap, or at least for playing with that. The closest analogy I have is to NixOS, since it’s way more flexible than just an immutable base.
If I can get some sort of KDE Neon type distro with immutable apps and desktop, I could potentially switch my family over to that and manage it all remotely (really big deal since my family is spread across 3 continents). Landscape is pretty good at remotely managing Ubuntu Core (I’ve not found anything even close for NixOS), so I’m hopeful this would reduce my management work when my family’s current Chromebooks need replacing.
I don’t have anything against Snap itself. It’s the exclusivity to snaps and nothing else that bothers me. Like, you don’t have a choice but to use snap for some packages.
While it may be a good solution for your scenario, but it’s not for mine. I should be able to decide if I want a software as a snap or not. And if someone wants to use snaps exclusively, there should be some configuration to set to do this. It shouldn’t be imposed on the end users.
It’s the exclusivity to snaps and nothing else that bothers me. Like, you don’t have a choice but to use snap for some packages.
Seems like a weird take. Before snap came along this was true to the same extent of Ubuntu with Debs. The fact that they’re migrating some of the packages they maintain (that also happen to be the trickier ones to maintain as deb files) to snaps doesn’t prevent you from getting another repo that has the package as a deb and using that any more than your distro not having the latest version of an app prevents you from downloading and building a tarball.
The Ubuntu Core Desktop demo at SCALE this year actually got me pretty excited for my desktop in a snap, or at least for playing with that. The closest analogy I have is to NixOS, since it’s way more flexible than just an immutable base.
If I can get some sort of KDE Neon type distro with immutable apps and desktop, I could potentially switch my family over to that and manage it all remotely (really big deal since my family is spread across 3 continents). Landscape is pretty good at remotely managing Ubuntu Core (I’ve not found anything even close for NixOS), so I’m hopeful this would reduce my management work when my family’s current Chromebooks need replacing.
That might be a good solution for you, yes.
I don’t have anything against Snap itself. It’s the exclusivity to snaps and nothing else that bothers me. Like, you don’t have a choice but to use snap for some packages.
While it may be a good solution for your scenario, but it’s not for mine. I should be able to decide if I want a software as a snap or not. And if someone wants to use snaps exclusively, there should be some configuration to set to do this. It shouldn’t be imposed on the end users.
Seems like a weird take. Before snap came along this was true to the same extent of Ubuntu with Debs. The fact that they’re migrating some of the packages they maintain (that also happen to be the trickier ones to maintain as deb files) to snaps doesn’t prevent you from getting another repo that has the package as a deb and using that any more than your distro not having the latest version of an app prevents you from downloading and building a tarball.
That’s if the maintainer of that software provides the repo. Like Firefox. But that’s not always the case.
And I don’t see why I should be the one that has to take the extra steps to add these to my sources when having the choice should be the default OOTB.
I simply don’t understand how this is any different from the fact that Ubuntu doesn’t include RPMs?
That’s totally different.
Do you even know what’s the difference between a .deb/.rpm and a snap?
I’m quite aware. I’m currently a maintainer of packages in all three formats.