Slashdot Mirror
Canonical Releases Statistics Showing Adoption of Snap Packages (neowin.net)
Canonical is applauding what it calls "exceptional adoption" of snaps -- and has shared some new statistics about its whole "Snappy" software deployment and package management system. Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shared this article from Neowin:
snaps are seeing 100,000 installs every day on cloud, server, container, desktop and on IoT devices, which works out to around three million installs each month. Of course, these statistics don't only take into account snap installs on Ubuntu, but other distributions too. Canonical said that snaps are supported on 41 Linux distributions including Ubuntu, Debian, Linux Mint, Arch Linux, Fedora, and many more...
Snap packages first launched alongside Ubuntu 16.04 which was released in 2016. They have several benefits over typical Linux packages, for example, their dependencies are bundled into the package making them easy to install, they get automatic updates and can be rolled back by the maintainer if issues arise, and they're sandboxed, giving the user more security.
Snap packages first launched alongside Ubuntu 16.04 which was released in 2016. They have several benefits over typical Linux packages, for example, their dependencies are bundled into the package making them easy to install, they get automatic updates and can be rolled back by the maintainer if issues arise, and they're sandboxed, giving the user more security.
Docker has come far.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Relearning history one lesson at a time.
apart from there being 4100 snaps, and there are 100,000( and growing) installs per day, there aren't any stats as far as i can see.
did i miss a link?
White male cis snaps should be banned.
Snap is dead technology, which will soon be replaced by its supperior called flatpak.
Wangtards stuck between downloading sketchy .exe and a corporate "app" store which is a shit filled ghetto. Linux users (and developers) apparently too dumb for Debian package management. Macfags ... less said about them the better.
This is how personal computing gets killed, and turned into interactive TV.
And another fad packaging format will replace that. Linux has enough packaging formats, but not enough pro media apps and games without WINE.
A "snap" is just an image with the application packaged up with the shared libraries it uses?
How is that any different / better than merely using static linkage? In fact, static linkage seems less cumbersome.
I must be missing something.
their dependencies are bundled into the package
So everything is statically compiled?
The only package manager that doesn't suck is portage. Everyone else is doing it wrong.
Bragging about the spread of snaps is like bragging about how you helped the spread of HIV, plague, or My Little Pony.
How soon before systemd is somehow tied together with its own package management system? systempkgctl anyone?
It's called tgz. Used by Slackware since 1993.
Is it April or something? "Snap" packages are NOT being "adopted", they are being thrown down the throats of projects. The way this works is their drones will open bug reports against projects as if they are some how broken for not supporting snap. In some cases the snap camp will offer to "help" the project implement them, usually at the expense of every other fucking distro who uses said project.
They operate essentially the same way systemd, dbus, etc were all "adopted". If you believe these stats then RPM and DEB and even tar dominate.
The link itself to Ubuntu's site is tracking clickbait. Move along.
I have my $HOME on another partition and snaps don't work. Something something about permissions and I haven't dug any deeper than that.
Congratulations on linux implementing the .app setup from OS X.
They forgot to put a . in frount of the folder. I wonder if these statistics include snaps included in Ubuntu installs. 100,000 per day seriously sounds like a bullshit number.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
... or switch to Slackware. Call me Old School but if snaps are the solution to your application installation problems, maybe you should stick to using your smartphone for your computing needs and just use the application store.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I remember the days of windows 3.11 where every application had to have everything it needed in it's own folder to work. As a result you have half a dozen or more versions of the same library. Eating up space. Providing a nightmare for bug fixes..
How many of these 100k installs per day are due to ubuntu installing a number of snaps by default? As of 18.04, parts of gnome are now snaps and installed by default. So that's at least 3-4 snaps, meaning statistically out of those 100k those come from 25k daily ubuntu installations. And how many of those are automated provisions that are actually removing snaps post installations.
Canonical is blowing its own trumpet with some hot air.
Is it really package management when, instead of managing the problem of system wide library X (with security updates), you freeze and bundle some random version of library X with the application? Surely the application developer will fix any problems and keep up to date.
Yet GVFS doesn't show in the mtab (the place that mount gets data) and lies about storage utilization for many sorts of storage.
Snaps are a good idea, poorly implemented. They should be using containers for the different sorts of risks, not for every possible application. Tools that use external libraries to add features have been failing under the "snap" techniques. Just try to watch a commercial DVD using the VLC snap.
It makes no sense for applications with ZERO risks for reading data or network connectivity to be inside a snap. Overzealous use of any new technology seldom turns out for the best.
New is the enemy of stable.
Canonical is excited about snaps, but that isn't the whole story. Since 18.04, they've been pushing snaps without asking first. Common issues that require checking remaining storage have been made much more confusing because of all the /dev/snap* bullshit.
I haven't seen flatpaks anywhere, but read something about their poor security, which seems odd for something that is supposed to be more secure.
Canonical will push snaps for 5 yrs, then give up and migrate everything to flatpaks. The sooner this happens, the better it will be for Linux.
The implementation of real security measures is actually being hindered by sandboxing and these measures have actually reduced security in a number of ways. While it might be possible to update snaps it has been shown that the dependencies are less likely to be updated than with our traditional packaging and update systems. This should not really be a surprise given you are *INCREASING* the number of applications that need to be monitored and updated. The last thing you want is more bloat on a system if you are concerned about security matters. Also just because snaps packages can be sandboxed doesn't mean they are being sandboxed. At least not in the way implied. There is also the issue of malware being introduced into software centers from snaps packages. When *ANYBODY* can upload to a repository without any trust models being implemented (like in our traditional packaging systems; ie Debian requires two other Debian developers to sign off before you will be granted the ability to maintain packages for Debian) you let malware get pushed into the repository and what was once the key mechanisms of effectively thwarting malware on GNU/Linux dies. I've seen more malware in the Ubuntu Software Center since 16.04 than I've seen on GNU/Linux in 27 years of using the operating system.
The snap server is closed, meaning that only Canonical has control over what can and will go into this "app store". That is way too much power for single company to have, especially given canonical's bad track record with incompatible changes (unity, mir, etc) that breaks stuff on other distributions.
More info:
Mir: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_(software)#Controversy
Unity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_(user_interface)#Criticism
Don't be a fool, if you must use such tech, use fully open alternative that are more wide spread anyway, like Flatpak (https://flatpak.org) or AppImage (https://appimage.org).
Only snappy snappers snap snaps.
Not LUDDITE shared libraries.
Have 18.04 running on my Laptop.
All the snaps that I had (GIMP, system monitor, calculator!!..) got desynchronized eventually (running from Gnome fail silently, needed to run from terminal to see the problem). The only simple fix is to delete snap and install apt package. No problems since.
Snaps is an alpha stage technology that has no place in long term release!
Steam on Ubuntu has less than nothing to do with Snapcraft.
I didn't know about "Snaps" and read the comments to figure out what it is. Then I laughed.
There used to be a dependencies problem in Linux. Then package managers solved it, and quite well actually. Very rarely some obscure software needs some specific version of some unusual library and you need to compile it yourself. Ok, not a big problem, thanks to proper versioning Linux can have several versions of the same library installed at the same time.
Then I went back into we development a little and I understood. Everything there, especially the abomination called node.js, was dependeny hell. There are kind-of-but-not-really package managers, well basically just reinventions of the 20 year old Makefile concept, and they just-about-most-of-the-time work. But everything comes with its own little princess attitude, nothing is shared globally, no proper versioning...
Of course, if you live in that environment, you come up with an idea like "Snaps" and think you just invented sliced bread.
I might have been dealing with computers for too long, but I fill like some of the old guys who sometimes write articles where they look at todays computing world and essentially say "come on kids, that is what you got? We had that in the 80s."
Next thing, someone will write "Snap Manager" and "Snap Global Library Storage" (probably with snappier names, pun not intended, and ending in consonant-r something) and we're finally full circle.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Users do not choose snap packages, ubuntu mixes them into the normal programs offered in its graphical package installer. Users do not know, that they are installing snap packages.
Would it be too much to ask for a brief summary or explanation of what a "snap" is for people who aren't familiar with this technology? From what I can see, it's like Docker containers, but how are "snaps" different? Perusing the "snap" site didn't make it any clearer.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
>but not enough pro media apps and games without WINE.
I couldn't really comment about the media apps. It seems like we've got a fairly nice selection of multimedia producers and photography workers - Darktable, etc... but I've not been doing a lot of media work lately.
However, the Linux gaming environment has changed dramatically over the last 3-5 years. Aside from the games that run well under WINE (WoWarcraft is a good example) There is a now a huge selection of Linux-native games on Steam and gog.com.
Frequently the 4A studios give Linux a miss. However, Steam has dramatically cut that number. The 'SteamOS + Linux' category has grown just as dramatically.
GoG focuses on bringing older and niche games to players that would otherwise miss them. There is a very wide selection of Linux games available on GoG.
Many, if not most, indie game devs want their games to be available to as wide an audience as possible, so frequently develop with Linux and/or Android in mind. For example, I'm currently playing 'Terraria'. Small dev team. 29th most popular game ever-- Linux native install with some help from Mono.
Now, in addition all to that, let's go back to WINE. Steam has, in the last few weeks, begun testing 'SteamPlay', which uses a custom build of WINE called 'Proton' that runs underneath steam to run some previously Windows-only titles with fantastic quality. In the last week or so, I've been able to run some games I loved, but abandoned along with Windows like 'MagicMaker' and 'PixelJunk Eden'. Steam is giving back to WINE, which just released a new version.
It's worth noting that the Java version of Minecraft has always worked on Linux and Fortnite apparently plays very well under Wine.
Right now, Linux gaming is in a period of Renaissance. If you've despaired of gaming on Linux, it might be time to give it another look.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!