Imagine flatpack did smth like this
ok, what is snap and why should I care?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap_(software)
As to “why should I care”, you don’t have to… unless you use Ubuntu.
I didn’t really understand what I just read, but it sounds like flatpack but different. I’m on mint, so I’m pretty sure it doesn’t affect me. The memes I’ve seen on the subject give me the impression that people don’t like it.
Snap is far more like nix. Flatpak deals with a limited subset of what nix and snap do (e.g. it can’t distribute kernel packages).
While snap is certainly not without its problems, people repeatedly make massive negative claims about it that, while often based on a core of truth, are highly embellished to the point of being misinformation. (This is the same tactic I see with bad-faith political trolls, and with a similar result really - they’ll consistently try to use that core of truth to make far stronger claims than are defensible and, when it’s pointed out to them, they move the goalposts to a smaller, more defensible claim, only to repeat the bigger, debunked, claim later.)
One of my friends spent like a month distrohopping just to find a debian-based distro that fits these two criteria:
-
First-class support for KDE
-
Isn’t broken all the time
Ubuntu fails both. KDE Neon excels on the first one, but fails harder than ubuntu on the second one. Kubuntu as well. Debian has horridly outdated packages, and he refuses to use nix/flatpak. Tuxedo OS is obscure and broken. Mint is great, but installing KDE takes some effort.
He finally settled on Ubuntu Server with the native KDE package. Still has to do some weird incantations to banish snap tho.
How did things get this bad?
Why not try Void. It’s fairly up to date regarding all packages, including KDE and it’s rock solid.
He really insists on debian-based, I don’t really know why. And, while Void IS really solid, it isn’t exactly known for the most expansive package collection. Xournal, for example, is not available through XBPS (there is a xournal package, but it just installs xournal++), which is one of the programs he likes a lot. I told him it’s on nix, but he doesn’t want to use nix.
But I agree, Void is amazing, I use it on my laptop. One little-known cool feature of Void is that its official docker images come in busybox/musl libc, busybox/glibc, and coreutils/glibc variants, it gives you a nice scale from most minimalist to most compatible.
He could make his own templates for the packages… he doesn’t even have to rebuild. If he could at least find a .deb or .rpm package of the app/package he likes, he could use that and just repackage. That’s what I do for stuff I can’t find… and update them from time to time (like every few months or so).
This is why I use Windows.
sudo apt-mark hold snapd
