Canonical Helps Launch A Snap Store For The Orange Pi Community (ubuntu.com)

"Developers can distribute their applications packaged as snaps to Orange Pi owners," explains a new blog post from Canonical, bragging that "hackers and tinkerers can install complex IoT and server projects in seconds." An anonymous reader quotes Ubuntu's Insights blog: Orange Pi maker Shenzhen Xunlong Software Co. Ltd is launching an app store in partnership with Canonical to foster an active community of developers and users. Through this app store, developers gain a simple mechanism to share their applications, projects and scripts between themselves and with the wider Orange Pi community...

With snaps developers can distribute their application in a secure, confined package bundled with all its dependencies, so users can install applications that could take half an hour to install in just a few seconds. The Orange Pi App Store uses the whitelabel app store offering from Canonical, which lets them distribute applications to the Orange Pi community under its own brand. The store is a place for developers to share their Orange Pi specific applications. It also benefits from the wealth of applications available in the Ubuntu snap store, also available through the store.
Are there any Slashdot readers who are actually using snaps? Or -- for that matter -- are there any Slashdot readers developing with the Orange Pi?

Comments

I'm using an Orange Pi

[codeButcher]

I recently picked up an Orange Pi Zero due mainly to price and availability, just to tinker with. After some initial struggles I got Armbian running on it and some other basic software - the Java Dev Kit and Tomcat to be specific, although once you have some sort of Linux box (Windows also available) you can obviously set it up in whatever way you like.

While competing mainly with the Raspberry Pi "ecosystem", the Orange Pi "ecosystem" lacks a lot in terms of support (official and community). Official support is all but nonexisting - needs a lot of googling and trial&error to find the right pin outs, ampere requirements, where to find (working) OS and other packages, etc. etc. etc. (in unambiguous, complete and standard English). In short, not really hitting the mark for a cheap system where a complete noob can learn about computers and programming easily. At least Raspberry has some momentum behind it in that regard.

Both the Raspberry and Orange Pi user communities have a lot of potential to spew ill-informed "help" by users with more enthusiasm than knowledge - the RPi community being so much larger.

Can't really comment on the quality of the hardware. My sample size of one, with only anecdotal testing, seems to run along fine - so far. I'm still in two minds if I would continue with the Orange Pi if I wanted to develop some more serious (semi-commercial) IoT device on it.

Re:I'm using an Orange Pi

[bluelip]

There is one Raspberry Pi in my house. It just sits there being lonely. The 13 orange Pi devices, mostly Ones, are having the most fun. The most recent is streaming video and running the Octoprint frontend. The 2e is a take on the road to tinker during down time board.

There hasn't been a bit of trouble using the Armbian distro. Do keep away, or at least be cautious, of the "Official" images. They were piling heaps of dung when I first looked at the Oranges. Google will have your issues sorted out in a few searches.

Check out the comparison charts that are out there. With Raspberry, you're paying for a fancy label and gimmicky tricks. They may be a fine fit to spin a wheel for a science fair project. For me, the Oranges are much cheaper and even more capable.

Yes, let's build a walled garden

[hughbar]

To declare interest, I'm a big Raspberry Pi fan and user.

However, I see this as another attempt to build a walled garden (small wall, admittedly) by creating 'snaps'. I'm not sure how these will differ from Debian packages, for example and Debian packaging is arguably more 'universal'. I currently use Ubuntu Mate on Pi3 and it's pretty good. But, unhappily, I'm now going to start watching Canonical for signs that it wishes to be the Microsoft of Linux.

For complex, autonomous applications (as opposed to apps, whatever they are, only joking before someone tells me) easier just to supply a complete image, anyway, like some of the media centre offerings.

Re:Yes, let's build a walled garden

[thegarbz]

How is it a walled garden any more than apt or rpm. It's open source, it's not limited to one distribution, it's not curated, and the only requirement for a snap is that the developer of a program releases it in snap format.

Just because it came from canonical doesn't make it instantly bad.

Re:Yes, let's build a walled garden

[Anonymous Coward]

"copy files from the download folder into some other folder so you can run them."

No. You really don't.

Having said that debian seems to have lost control over what constitutes a suggest, recommend and depend (on purpose) so it's packaging system becomes pretty useless without repackaging. (thanks for that guys)

Re:Yes, let's build a walled garden

[Goaway]

Some of us get to have that every single day on our OS, and the sky has not fallen on us yet. In fact, it works great.

So yes. Yes, we do really, really want that. We have tried it, it works, it's much nicer, and we want it.

Re:Yes, let's build a walled garden

[_merlin]

Yeah, so instead of patching your system-wide copy of OpenSSL for the next heartbleed, you get to patch the copy embedded in every snap. Isn't that fantastic?

What's the point?

[Gaygirlie]

The official Orange Pi - images are total fucking crapshoot, being so bad they make even your mum's cameltoe look appealing in comparison! It's not the availability of apps that is the problem, it's the support for the boards and all of their features, including Mali-drivers, or the closed, undocumented WiFi-chips, and so on that is the problem! Xunlong ain't doing shit to help get drivers mainlined in the kernel, they just produce a shitty image that barely boots and then hope the community will do all the hard work for them.

So, what's the point with these "snaps?" How do they make the situation any better? Oh, they don't? Weeellll...

Re:W.T.F. is Orange Pi ?!

[DontBeAMoran]

The Orange Pi is similar to the Raspberry Pi, but has a different taste.

In the name of all that is holy...

[MountainLogic]

...Can we please not use Linux and IoT in the same sentence. Linux is a wonderful OS. Most IoT devices are a world apart from what Linux needs to live. Most IoT devices are limited to 8k or 16k. That was not a typo - EIGHT KILOBYTES! Even if these little devices have an ARM M0/3, they do not have a memory manager. Many IoT devices have real time requirements and as blazing fast as Linux may be, it was just not architected to meet hard real requirements. Real world, mass produced product are under such extreme cost and/or battery constraints that pennies matter when selling at Home Depot or Target against $13 alternatives. Real world product have to live with one little processor to run the entire RF stack (BLE, etc) AND run the application, all of this in say 8k. Sure, there are exceptions such as smart phones, but how many millions of people are going to pay $800 for a thermostat (a few nest customers excepted).
/Rant Mode off
There is certainly a place for tiny Linux based computers in IoT home projects and as mini PCs and servers, as Orange Pi's home pages suggest. They are an amazing amount of technology for the money, just not scaleable.