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https://www.archlinux.org/pack... 3.0.4-7 on the rolling distro.
https://snapcraft.io/vlc 3.0.5-1 on the snap.

I don't disagree that the rolling release is faster however it is not the latest and may be slightly missing the point. This is the same point why I'm happy to delay feature releases to Windows 10 as long as possible and run Ubuntu 18.04 LTS on my system. The complete underlying system should remain as rock solid and stable as possible, the opportunity to install the latest and greatest piece of *individual* software however should not be impeded.

That is the problem snaps solve. You risk stability by adding non-sanctioned repositories to your distribution. You risk stability by going with a distribution that rolls out everything as quickly as possible (look at the fuckup that was Arch's systemd migration, compared to the non-event that was Ubuntu 16.04 LTS).

I'm not saying everything should be a snap, I'm saying they are very useful and solve an existing linux problem.

That's bullshit. https://docs.snapcraft.io/snap...

"Classic confinement is intended as a stop-gap measure to enable developers to publish applications which need more access than the current set of interfaces enable. Over time, as more interfaces are developed, snap publishers can migrate away from classic confinement to strict.

Classically confined snaps must be reviewed by the snap store reviewers team before they can be published in the stable channel. Snaps which use classic confinement may be rejected if they don’t meet the requirements.

Users should not attempt to override a strictly confined snap to make it ‘classic’ as this undoes the confinement and interfaces defined by the developer. In addition applications published as strict snaps may misbehave when installed with the ‘–classic’ switch."

https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/d...

Clearly, the 'benevolent dictators' in charge of the Snapper project have a severe case of cranium posterior inversion. Whatever technical merits snaps may have become completely irrelevant in the face of people who think *they* are the ones who will dictate how I manage my own system.

Oh, and the whole thing relies on a store that itself is a closed source service.

I appreciate everything that Ubuntu does to make Debian more accessible, and even with the ever growing list of things I have to fix with every new release, (such as uninstalling snapper,) Ubuntu is still an easier, smoother path. But this is definitely the point where I have to draw the line. If the distro becomes increasingly dependent on snaps to be useful, I have to give up on it.

From the webpage https://snapcraft.io/

"Snaps are containerised software packages that are simple to create and install. They auto-update and are safe to run. And because they bundle their dependencies, they work on all major Linux systems without modification."

Snaps are containerised software packages that are simple to create and install. They auto-update and are safe to run. And because they bundle their dependencies, they work on all major Linux systems without modification.

https://snapcraft.io/ [snapcraft.io]

Ah, so they've recreated PC-BSD .PBI packages for Linux!

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery! :)

Strat

To save people trying to find the link to the official page, here it is: https://snapcraft.io/skype/

Snaps are containerised software packages that are simple to create and install. They auto-update and are safe to run. And because they bundle their dependencies, they work on all major Linux systems without modification.

https://snapcraft.io/

What version of Ubuntu are you running? I'm on Ubuntu 17.10, and clicking the install link here launched the Ubuntu Software center page for Spotify, where I proceeded to click 'install' and watch it successfully add Spotify to my system. I then clicked 'launch' and everything worked as expected. It seems very smooth, even better than downloading random executables.

While I get your (sarcastic?) point of view. Snaps can be considered static binaries 2.0 in a way, and since technology is supposed to advance, this is very welcome indeed (ELF binaries got a bad reputation in some circles, reinventing a.out back in the day)...

Moving beyond the limitation of static binaries, Snaps can better hold non-executable data in directory structures, instead of embedding everything in a huge executable. They are similar to Apple's App packages, but are also mounted and executed in a chroot environment *by default*, improving security. And are much easier to distribute and manage; heck, many "n00b" friends of mine quit linux because it didn't have easy program installers...

Everything old is new again, indeed.
But with a solid promise of improvement!
Those who want more information, https://docs.snapcraft.io/snap...

Please tell me, how can (un)installing one application cause issues with other applications that will not be caused when both applications are installed as snaps?

Explanation here. Basically, Snaps include most of the dependencies they need to run, so installing or upgrading one package is much less likely to break another by changing system-wide library versions and other dependencies. Probably uses a lot more disk space, but that's cheap enough these days that it's probably worth using it to avoid the Linux equivalent of DLL Hell.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Snapd won't support that because that might compromise security."

Use the --dangerous flag, or use the SNAPPY_FORCE_CPI_URL root environment variable to switch the machine to a different store. Or what am I missing?

"Chromebooks only support changing the cert store at the user level. It won't work with your federally mandated content filter because we protect our users."

Then perhaps Google should be playing chicken with a national government as a means of showing that said government's communications policy is harmful to its citizens' well-being by weakening security. When Wikipedia played chicken in June 2015, censorship dropped.

It seems like, if anything, the developers don't trust the users

Given how prevalent PEBKAC is, it saves the support department money not to have to trust the users.

Ubuntu also has something similar now: http://snapcraft.io/docs/core/...

It's not even the first hit on Google: http://www.snapcraft.net/

Or the second: http://minecraftservers.org/se...

But the third: http://snapcraft.io/

Snapcraft: Package any app for every Linux desktop, server, cloud or device, and deliver updates directly.

How do snaps work?

A snap is a fancy zip file containing an application together with its dependencies, and a description of how it should safely be run on your system, especially the different ways it should talk to other software.

Most importantly snaps are designed to be secure, sandboxed, containerised applications isolated from the underlying system and from other applications. Snaps allow the safe installation of apps from any vendor on mission critical devices and desktops.

Looks like it's Linux's answer to Apple's .app folder structure.