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Canonical Shares Top 10 Linux Snaps of 2018 (betanews.com)

Posted by msmash on from the how-about-that dept.

One of the most refreshing aspects of Linux in 2018 was the popularity of Snaps. Canonical revealed that the containerized packages have been a smashing success. Today, the Ubuntu-maker highlights what it feels are the top 10 Snaps of 2018. From a report: "With 2018 drawing to a close, and many of us spending with family during the holiday season, I thought we'd take a look back over some of our favourite Linux applications in the Snap Store. Some have been in the store for over a year, and a few landed only recently, but they're all great," says Alan Pope, Canonical. [...] Canonical shares the Top 10 Snaps: Spotify, Slack, VLC, Nextcloud, Android Studio, Discord, Plex Media Server, Xonotic, Notepad++, and Shotcut.

13 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. Windows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The annoying thing with snaps is that it's basically going back in time in away. If you have 350 Snap apps then you likely have 350 different copies of the exact same libraries, many which are old and insecure. If a library needs updating then instead of updating it once on your machine, you need to update it 350 times assuming each Snap package gets updated in a timely matter, but they don't.

  2. Not Linux. Can't have it both ways. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They seem to confuse something here.

    Snaps are a concept that deliberately chose the opposite approach to the Linux/Unix one. Namely the mobile OS one.

    Mainly because those who came up with it, clearly came from a Windows world, and are utterly clueless about Linux and things like good package managers (that allow multiple versions of the same package to be installed at the same time).

    Of course they can still do that, if they like to teach themselves a lesson of suffering.

    They can't, however, call things like Snaps, systemd, and Ubuntu as a whole "Linux". As it not only misses, but actively completely rejects the very point of Linux. If you want that, you can aswell just use macOS. Instead of ruining Linux for those who actually need to do work on it.

    So srop redefining the term "Linux" to mean "Apple OS clone", Canonical!

  3. It's still a fairly bad idea by Casandro · · Score: 4, Insightful

    First of all Linux has this great thing called a Distribution where all the software you'll likely ever need is just included and can be installed via a package manager.You don't need snap to install VLC as it's already included in the repositories.

    Secondly Linux isn't application centric, it's data centric. You exchange data and operate on it via programs you already have. Your set of programs is fairly fixed. It's not like mobile OSes where every external service requires its own app.

    Thirdly sandboxes don't work. At best they only keep you from having functionality you want, at worst people will rely on it somehow protecting their system which will give rise to malware exploiting loopholes in the sandboxes. (i.e. Cryptominers, Rowhammer, Spectre, Meltdown, etc)

    In short it's a fairly bad idea. It tries to reproduce one of the worst aspects of Windows, namely that you ship around self-contained exe files which get executed on a double click.

    1. Re:It's still a fairly bad idea by pz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      We are constantly reinventing the wheel.

      https://xkcd.com/2044/

      Each generation of programmers seems to think they have more insight than the previous, but ends up repeating the same mistakes.

      --

      Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
    2. Re:It's still a fairly bad idea by willy_me · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You don't need snap to install VLC as it's already included in the repositories.

      But this gets you an old version of VLC. For the latest version you have to either compile from source, or (possibly) switch to the unstable repository. It is a pain - the snap solves this problem thereby making running VLC on Linux easy. It is a necessary solution if we are ever going to see Linux used by non-IT people.

      In short it's a fairly bad idea. It tries to reproduce one of the worst aspects of Windows, namely that you ship around self-contained exe files which get executed on a double click.

      There are far more things wrong with Windows. For starters, applications were not self contained. Recall DLL hell? I have not used Windows in some time but a major problem with it was that applications would put shared libraries (DLLs) in the Windows system directory resulting in numerous conflicts. Self-contained exe files are the solution - not the problem.

      I personally like the idea of having a solid, well tested base system supported by repositories. The applications are mostly static and rarely see updates. And if I want to run the latest version of an application, a snap allows me to do that without modifying the base system. It is great - I can try out applications then remove them without buggering up my OS.

      My only issue with snaps (or flatpak) is that the applications do not integrate with the desktop environment as well as they should. This is noticeable in the open and save dialog boxes. Some implementations are good but not all. Overall, I am quite pleased with how they work. It is great to have the latest version of LibreOffice always available.

      But I have to say, if "NotePad++" is one of the top 10 snaps.... not a good sign. I tried it out just for the hell of it. Great to have on Windows but on Linux - what a POS.

    3. Re:It's still a fairly bad idea by craighansen · · Score: 4, Informative

      The SNAP version of VLC on Ubuntu doesn't work to play video files mounted on NFS, and hasn't been able to do this for months after the bug was posted.

    4. Re:It's still a fairly bad idea by sad_ · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "But this gets you an old version of VLC. For the latest version you have to either compile from source, or (possibly) switch to the unstable repository. It is a pain - the snap solves this problem thereby making running VLC on Linux easy. It is a necessary solution if we are ever going to see Linux used by non-IT people."

      i don't think people care about that, they get VLC from the repo and it works, great, as long as it keeps working (and i don't see a reason why it should suddenly stop working), why bother with new versions (security updates should still be provided through normal repo updates)? You think people care about this? just look at all those outdated flash, java, ... installations on windows and it becomes clear they could care less.

      --
      On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
    5. Re:It's still a fairly bad idea by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      Are there any really good GUI text editors with similar features to Notepad++ for Linux?

      Textadept perhaps. It seems that EMACS is the preferred option for power users though.

      I also found it a bit ironic that Linux doesn't have any really top notch IDEs for C either. Eclipse is okay, nothing particularly great about it. VS Code might get there one day when they improve C support. But really nothing comes close to Visual Studio, despite a large proportion of Linux users writing at least some code.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    6. Re:It's still a fairly bad idea by craighansen · · Score: 2

      That's bullshit. https://docs.snapcraft.io/snap...

      "Classic confinement is intended as a stop-gap measure to enable developers to publish applications which need more access than the current set of interfaces enable. Over time, as more interfaces are developed, snap publishers can migrate away from classic confinement to strict.

      Classically confined snaps must be reviewed by the snap store reviewers team before they can be published in the stable channel. Snaps which use classic confinement may be rejected if they don’t meet the requirements.

      Users should not attempt to override a strictly confined snap to make it ‘classic’ as this undoes the confinement and interfaces defined by the developer. In addition applications published as strict snaps may misbehave when installed with the ‘–classic’ switch."

    7. Re:It's still a fairly bad idea by Herve5 · · Score: 3, Informative

      "Good luck finding that in your distribution repo. If you're running Ubuntu you get 3.0.4. If you're running Debian Stable then you get 3.0.3."
      Well, I'm 60 years old, using Linux on Ubuntu (mostly out of laziness, otherwise I'd switch to Debian), and I have the latest VLC, because I am still able to copy-paste two lines from the VLC site into a terminal window. And now it auto-updates, contrary to your snaps....
      Your objection only applies to people unable to copy-paste, IMHO...

      --
      Herve S.
  4. Re:Snaps and Ubuntu by craighansen · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Even worse, the SNAP version of VLC cannot play video files from an NFS mount. This bug has been posted for months with no resolution, demonstrating once again Ubuntu's obsession with shiny distractions over making their distribution truly functions.

  5. notepad-plus-plus? by FudRucker · · Score: 2

    thats a ms-windows text editor, no wonder ubuntu is a bugfest, i bet many ubuntu developers write code for ubuntu on ms-windows with notepad++

    --
    Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
  6. Snaps are crap by reanjr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Bloated crapware that doesn't properly integrate with your desktop? No thanks...