PSA: Spotify Now Available As a Snap For Linux (betanews.com)

BrianFagioli shares a report from BetaNews: Speaking of Spotify, the most popular streaming music service in the world has long supported Linux-based operating systems. Installing the official app was not an easy affair, however. Today this changes, as installation gets much simpler. You see, Spotify is now officially available as a Snap for easy installation on any Snap-supporting operating systems such as Ubuntu and Linux Mint. Canonical, the creator of both Ubuntu and Snaps, explains, "Snaps are containerized software packages designed to work perfectly and securely in any Linux environment. As well as supporting all major Linux systems from a single build, snaps can be also updated or rolled back automatically to ensure that users are always benefiting from the latest version of the application. Since their launch last year, close to 2,500 snaps have been released by developers as they adopt the format for its reliability and security."

Jamie Bennett, VP of Engineering, Devices & IoT, Canonical says, "In launching their own snap, Spotify has ensured that their users in the Linux ecosystem are now able to enjoy the latest version of their leading music streaming application as soon as it's released regardless of which distribution they are using. We're glad to welcome Spotify to the snaps ecosystem and look forward to unveiling more leading snaps in 2018."

Comments

Re:PSA: Stop calling stories PSAs

[Anonymous Coward]

Payed Slashdot Advertising.

FTFY

Static Binaries

[Etcetera]

Congratulations, guys, you've re-invented static binaries. I'm glad you're happy. I look forward to what we have in the smartphone ecosystem now, with vulnerabilities out the yin-yang, and 25 apps getting updated when some weird library has a flaw in it, and your other 75 not getting updated at all and remaining vulnerable even though you don't realize it.

Everything old is new again. Woot.

Re:Static Binaries

[Volanin]

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...

Re:Static Binaries

[serviscope_minor]

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.

Hi! Welcome to 1998. It's really nice here. Britpop is on the rise, 56k modems are awesome and Tony Blair is promising that things can only get better.

Seriously though you've been able to untar an binary (static or with its own .sos bundled) with a bunch of files into a directory for ages. I've shipped stuff like this. I really don't understand the meal people have been making of it.

Re:Static Binaries

[ewhac]

...heck, many "n00b" friends of mine quit linux because it didn't have easy program installers... [emphasis mine]

Are you kidding me?

apt-get install kdenlive

How fscking easy did they want it?!?!!

Yay! Exactly what nobody wanted!

[Anonymous Coward]

This reads like an ad for whatever the fuck a "snap" is and whoever is behind that.

If you can't give us a source tarball, then we don't want it.

Re:Yay

[fisted]

I copied the snabb to /c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/Snapname but it doesn't work. Help?

3 clicks and a failure

[petes_PoV]

Installing the official app was not an easy affair, however. Today this changes, as installation gets much simpler.

So I tried this. I followed the link which took me to some place that explained what "snaps" are. That contained a link that told me to click on it to grab the snap.

But that only took me to another page (form Canonical) which, again, explained what a "snap" was and told me to click another link to download the snap.

But no! That just took me to another link on snapcraft with (yet another) link to install it. When I clicked on that link Firefox croaked up an error message to say it didn't understand and that I might have to install some other software.

So I went back to a terminal and typed apt install spotify-client, created an account (disposable, of course) logged in and now I have music playing.

Can someone please explain how snaps make the installation process "simpler"?

Re:Yay

[TechyImmigrant]

What's a Spotify?

RTFS. A Spotify is a Snap.

Re:PSA: Stop calling stories PSAs

[TechyImmigrant]

Yeah, plus, I have no idea what PSA means.

Prostate-Specific Antigen
https://www.cancer.gov/types/p...

Re:Help me out here...

[jrumney]

It's a way to turn 100kB Linux packages into 200MB self contained downloadable installers like WIndows users get to enjoy.