Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Could Come with Snap Apps Preinstalled (omgubuntu.co.uk)

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 'Bionic Beaver' could ship with Snap apps installed by default. From a report: A proposal from Ubuntu developer Steve Langasek suggests that Snapcraft now stand as a 'first-class' alternative to traditional packages, making them ripe for inclusion. "As more software becomes available as snaps, we want to take advantage of this body of packages as part of the default Ubuntu experience," he writes. As part of his proposal -- which is just a suggestion for the moment, so don't get excited/angry -- Langasek wants to iron out policy and rules around seeded snap app. This is to ensure they are updated and maintained accordingly, inline with Ubuntu practice. While Snaps by default would be something of a first for the regular version Ubuntu, it wouldn't be a first in general. That honour goes to Ubuntu MATE 17.10, the first distro to ship with a preinstalled Snap app.

Comments

A Question on the Difference

[ytene]

In the linked article, the author seems to be making an argument that one benefit of using Snap Apps is that, particularly with LTS releases, there comes a point at which package maintainers simply stop providing "new" packages for a release which may have been generally available for two or more years.

If I understand this particular argument, the author is making a case that "snap apps" have the ability to "stay current" - something which may be relevant for software packages on fairly short release cycles, such as browsers [Firefox] or office suites [LibreOffice].

But what is not clear from this section of the article is whether snaps contain some inherent functionality that makes them more suitable for this than traditional Debian-pased .deb packages. Can anyone help clarify this, just to give the article some context please?

Thanks.

WTF is a snap app

[HeckRuler]

Presumably something that installs programs?

But hip and new and calls them apps?

Come on people, the world of tech is wide and deep. You don't have to define what Ubuntu is, but you do have to define what the hell this new thing is.

Re:WTF is a snap app

[sinij]

So they reinvented MSI installer, only on Linux?

Re:Security concerns?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm curious what kind of horrendous security wholes this would open up?

Is that better or worse than security halves?

Snap packages are great but

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

They're humongous and completely inefficient. Case in point, vlc:

As a Debian package (assuming you have the other libs of course):

$ apt-cache show vlc | grep Installed-Size
Installed-Size: 4828 (4.7M)

As a Snap package:

$ du -ch /snap/vlc/current/ | grep total
771M total

Snap packages have no dependendy problems, can be installed on any platform, are dead easy to maintain and very easy and safe to install/uninstall.

BUT! They start much slower, waste a LOT more disk space and a LOT of memory - since each Snap package is self-contained, and each package has different libraries that need to be loaded.

I use Snap packages to try out software easily, or to install a testing version of some software on a stable machine without messing up all my libraries (in the case of vlc, to use the version that plays Youtube videos correctly, since the stable Debian version is hopelessly outdated). But really, having 3 of 4 of them in an otherwise normal, lean install is as much as I'm willing to put up with.

An entire distro distributed as Snap package is plain suicidal.

Re:Snap packages are great but

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you. The majority of comments seem to side on the argument, "Well, we have space, so why should we care?" You should. Always. This is the major problem that I'm seeing with people who code now vs say, 20 years ago. Oh, lets import this entire library for one function that we probably could have optimized and created our own. So what if it takes another 4MB of ram, thats nothing. Compound that by people who never close applications, or have slightly older hardware, and it becomes an enormous mess.

Just because your test platform can support something, doesn't mean people who may adopt your solution can.

How about this? Write your code in the most efficient way possible. Eliminate cruft, and just take pride in what you do. I understand that big business cares more about time to release than efficiency, but do your part. I first installed linux on a machine with 4MB ram (upgraded to 8 soon after). Now I'm pretty sure GRUB uses more than that.

Re:Snap packages are great but

[popeydotcom]

Disclaimer, I work for Canonical and worked with the VLC devs on the snap.

The snap of VLC is nearer 190MB, not 700MB for data-transfer and on-disk size comparisons. All snaps are loop-mounted squashfs files. What you are "du"ing is the mounted read-only files. The actual snap file is in `/var/lib/snapd/snaps/` and on my system is 189MB. The snap contains not only VLC but a bunch of libraries of course. However the bulk of the space (300MB uncompressed) is taken up by VLC plugins which make the snap a great out of the box experience of many users, whatever their use case.

Sure we need to optimise startup time, and that work is ongoing. We could certainly trim the snap down a bit, and I will be looking at that when I'm back from vacation.

 

Re:have I lived under a rock?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

You've lived under a rock.

Re:It's a Linux software package

[Aighearach]

That's what we started with, with static linked libraries, so if that was the Hole Grail then dynamic libs should have never been invented.

I'm not buying it. This is not a list of advantages from something new, this is an old tradeoff that usually goes the other way, but with only the pros listed. I guess some people are falling for it because they look at the nouns instead of at the semantics. And it does indeed have a nifty new name.

Re:Found the LUDDITE!

[ToTheStars]

SnApps!

FTFY

DRAM price has trended upward

[tepples]

Even if disk space and memory aren't in short supply on full-size tower PCs nowadays, they're still in short supply on compact laptop PCs. And I thought the price of DRAM had been trending upward over the past several years.

RAM is twice as expensive as it used to be

[tepples]

Since when in this day and age is hard drive and memory space been an issue?

Since at least 18 months ago, the general price trend for memory space has been upward. (Source: Memory - Price Trends - PCPartPicker)

Re:I'll just be happy if CUPS works correctly

[dbreeze]

I love living in Linux Land. Thanks again to Linus and all those who contributed to get us here. I was just remarking to someone recently about how what I loved about running Linux, is that I never feel held back by someone else. I can dig and root around on my computer as far as I can imagine and/or comprehend. There are no walls.
This place doesn't suit everyone, but I love living here.....