Adios Apt and Yum? Ubuntu's Snap Apps Are Coming To Distros Everywhere (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader shares an Ars Technica report: Ubuntu's "snappy" new way of packaging applications is no longer exclusive to Ubuntu. Canonical today is announcing that snapd, the tool that allows snap packages to be installed on Ubuntu, has been ported to other Linux distributions including Debian, Arch, Fedora, and Gentoo among others. To install snap packages on non-Ubuntu distributions, Linux desktop and server users will have to first install the newly cross-platform snapd. This daemon verifies the integrity of snap packages, confines them into their own restricted space, and acts as a launcher. Instructions for creating snaps and installing snapd on a variety of distributions are available at this website. Snaps can exist on the same system as either deb or RPM packages. Snaps aren't the only new package manager for Linux distributions that aims to simplify installation of applications. There's also AppImage and OrbitalApps.

Comments

And hello problems

[phorm]

Adios to tried and true package managers, hello dependency and network/firewall hell as you try to resolve conflicts between the different sources?

Re:And hello problems

[tlhIngan]

Adios to tried and true package managers, hello dependency and network/firewall hell as you try to resolve conflicts between the different sources?

Well, snaps actually are trying to solve this.

Let's say you have a critical program you need for your work. And let's also say that it needs specific versions of software installed - you can't upgrade those dependencies or your risk breaking the program.

Now, all package managers have the ability to freeze a package - that is, prevent updating it. So you dutifully do it, and it works great - in the beginning. Slowly as time goes on the number of updates you get will slow to a trickle as you get more and more new packages dependent on newer versions of the dependencies. Eventually you'll get to a point where you can't install anything as what you want needs a newer version than what you have, or is dependent on things that need a newer version.

Snaps help solve that - your program can be made into a snap with the versions of libraries it needs, while the rest of your system marches forward

It doesn't matter what the application is - if it needs specific revisions of dependencies, holding back can lead to various DLL hells.

Snaps won't replace apt or yum - those tools are always going to be required. Snaps are useful for programs with a tricky set of dependencies to have them easily met

Re:And hello problems

[Dadoo]

Snaps help solve that - your program can be made into a snap with the versions of libraries it needs, while the rest of your system marches forward

That sounds a lot like the "winsxs" folder, which is currently eating up 25% of the total space on my Windows machine, for no good reason. Having the same "feature" on Linux really doesn't thrill me.

Re:And hello problems

[Anonymous Coward]

FUCKING AWESOME!

You mean certain programs can opt to keep using vulnerable libraries?! YES! Soon Linux will finally catch up to Windows in terms of malware thanks to Snap!

Re:Why switch?

[Fly Swatter]

Its main purpose is for servers that require zero downtime, where you want to upgrade application X and/or its dependencies without breaking even the smallest functionality of application Y.

I disagree, snapd is Canonical's attempt to bring an android/ios like 'app universe' to their linux OS. Unfortunately if it succeeds, I also forsee it bringing the in-app advertisements and micro-payments mess :(

Re:Clickbait headline...

[gmack]

I don't know if I agree with point 1. SNAPS (as a concept) should be better for third party apps because the APP as it is packaged, now imports all of the libraries it needs. The downside of course, l is that if some library has a security issue, you must wait for the package maintainer of each SNAP app that contains it to do the update.

Re:You're making up contradictions that don't exis

[mark-t]

Old does not mean bad.

Slackware is old, but certainly not a relic. And boasts a stability track-record that most other distros simply do not match. It not only adopts the unix philosophy, but embraces it so fully that the only comparable distros to it in this regard that I know of are Arch and Gentoo. Gentoo is a bit of a bitch because you have to compile everything, which can take a long time when doing system updates, and Arch is regretfully somewhat less stable than Slackware because it updates its packages so frequently (although if you are willing to risk some stability in the interests of running the bleeding edge versions of all available packages, Arch might be right up your alley).

But slackware is still being actively maintained, despite having longer release cycles than most other distros. Slackware is at a release candidate stage for 14.2 in slackware-current at the moment, and I'd be honestly quite surprised if 14.2 wasn't released sometime this summer or fall.