The Linux Mint distribution team put out another of their monthly updates, and this month was quite interesting.
In the past the Linux Mint team had been quite vocal about Snaps, the next-generation Linux packaging system backed by Ubuntu maker Canonical. Like Flatpak, they're trying to redefine how Linux users install packages. The main issue here it seems (from what they said) is that Snaps are more locked-down. They compared Snaps to using proprietary software as you "can't audit them, hold them, modify them or even point snap to a different store", it pushes Ubuntu directly and Snaps are done in the background.
Mint's founder Clément Lefèbvre has said that with Linux Mint 20, they will push back firmly against Snaps. Currently in Ubuntu, which Mint builds off, Chromium is an empty package which installs a Snap (info) so the Mint team will ensure it tells you why and how to go and get Chromium yourself. Additionally, by default APT on Mint will not let snapd get installed but you will be able to do so manually.
NVIDIA users rejoice! NVIDIA Optimus is to get better Mint support, with their included applet being able to show your GPU and select what card to use from the menu.
Optimus support goes further though, as they will also now fully support the “On-Demand” profile too in the MATE and Cinnamon desktops directly. You will be able to get a menu option to run something with the more powerful NVIDIA GPU. Like we've seen GNOME be able to do with the 3.36 release:
As for theme changes, the additions and tweaks to colours they previously announced will not happen due to a fair amount of negative feedback. They're not stopping though, instead they will seek feedback about each colour option individually during the Beta period of Linux Mint 20.
See the Linux Mint monthly update here. Their attention to the small details are always nice to see.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
Funny. So Snaps are the new systemd. Something one can complain about endlessly, bolstered quite frequently by unfound "facts".
Lets check this out:
My PHPStorm snap package eats up 349MB. The generic tar.gz download unpacks to nearly 900MBs. How's that? And no, there is no deb package available.
I don't have many snaps, but I use the aforementioned PHPStorm daily on a WQHD setup and it looks totally "native". I've also tried it on a 4k display - no problems either.
Agreed. One could add that this only happens the first time. For me it is a pretty standard four seconds delay (on an SSD) - annoying for a browser, not so for an IDE.
See above. Just for verification: The snap package of Chromium eats up 157MB, synaptic tells me that the deb package occupies 219MB. (For the faint of heart: I've removed the Chromium after this check immediately.)
I've checked the snap sizes both with
and
I do use deb packages wherever they are available since I like to have everything in one place - which for me is synaptic. But I gladly prefer snap packages over some tar.gz binaries extracted somewhere without any automatic updates and self-fabricated .desktop files.
Sorry, but this snaps-are-so-evil attiude is... well, pathetic.
Seems as if systemd won't go the way of the Dodo (as opposed to Devuan) and Gnome 3 is still not dead after all those years the community needs something else to be upset about.
Quoting: PangaeaInstead of installing something that usually takes 50 MB for example, it takes 1.9 GB. Errr, no! :crazy:
Lets check this out:
My PHPStorm snap package eats up 349MB. The generic tar.gz download unpacks to nearly 900MBs. How's that? And no, there is no deb package available.
Quoting: KohlyKohlThey look awful on a 4k monitor
I don't have many snaps, but I use the aforementioned PHPStorm daily on a WQHD setup and it looks totally "native". I've also tried it on a 4k display - no problems either.
Quoting: KohlyKohlare slow to start up
Agreed. One could add that this only happens the first time. For me it is a pretty standard four seconds delay (on an SSD) - annoying for a browser, not so for an IDE.
Quoting: KohlyKohland take up way too much space.
See above. Just for verification: The snap package of Chromium eats up 157MB, synaptic tells me that the deb package occupies 219MB. (For the faint of heart: I've removed the Chromium after this check immediately.)
I've checked the snap sizes both with
snap info <package>and
du -hcs /var/lib/snapd/snaps/*I do use deb packages wherever they are available since I like to have everything in one place - which for me is synaptic. But I gladly prefer snap packages over some tar.gz binaries extracted somewhere without any automatic updates and self-fabricated .desktop files.
Sorry, but this snaps-are-so-evil attiude is... well, pathetic.
Seems as if systemd won't go the way of the Dodo (as opposed to Devuan) and Gnome 3 is still not dead after all those years the community needs something else to be upset about.
4 Likes, Who?
Quoting: TuxeeFunny. So Snaps are the new systemd. Something one can complain about endlessly, bolstered quite frequently by unfound "facts".
Regardless of the merits or otherwise of any given change, people frothing themselves up because of something they read on reddit or heard on YouTube is really self-destructive. Desktop Linux, and Linux gaming in particular, has enough stacked against us without people getting distracted by apocalypse du jour. It's all just nonsense, but people like being outraged.
2 Likes, Who?
"You're not fans of a thing I like so you must be ignorant and get all your info on social media." With such a confrontative attitude, I'm sure you feel right at home on Reddit and YouTube.
Please accept that snap does not enjoy the kind of support from the greater Linux community that other controversial projects like systemd (or directly competing projects like flatpak) do. It's very much a Canonical project, and they seem to want to keep it that way. I personally don't mind at all that snaps exist as an option, but I simultaneously don't see why I should mind that Mint is not jumping on that particular train at this point.
Regardless of how useful container tech can be in many areas of computing, there are valid reasons why perfectly sane and knowledgeable people might not be enthusiastic about a particular use case or implementation. And many of those people have embraced projects like systemd, simply because they're useful to them in some tangible way. I'd claim to be one of those people, but I don't think I'm qualified to assess my own sanity.
Please accept that snap does not enjoy the kind of support from the greater Linux community that other controversial projects like systemd (or directly competing projects like flatpak) do. It's very much a Canonical project, and they seem to want to keep it that way. I personally don't mind at all that snaps exist as an option, but I simultaneously don't see why I should mind that Mint is not jumping on that particular train at this point.
Regardless of how useful container tech can be in many areas of computing, there are valid reasons why perfectly sane and knowledgeable people might not be enthusiastic about a particular use case or implementation. And many of those people have embraced projects like systemd, simply because they're useful to them in some tangible way. I'd claim to be one of those people, but I don't think I'm qualified to assess my own sanity.
9 Likes, Who?
Quoting: tuubi"You're not fans of a thing I like so you must be ignorant and get all your info on social media." With such a confrontative attitude, I'm sure you feel right at home on Reddit and YouTube.Agreed. I don't personally see the broader community (outside of Ubuntu fans) as particularly enthusiastic about Snaps.
Please accept that snap does not enjoy the kind of support from the greater Linux community that other controversial projects like systemd (or directly competing projects like flatpak) do. It's very much a Canonical project, and they seem to want to keep it that way. I personally don't mind at all that snaps exist as an option, but I simultaneously don't see why I should mind that Mint is not jumping on that particular train at this point.
Regardless of how useful container tech can be in many areas of computing, there are valid reasons why perfectly sane and knowledgeable people might not be enthusiastic about a particular use case or implementation. And many of those people have embraced projects like systemd, simply because they're useful to them in some tangible way. I'd claim to be one of those people, but I don't think I'm qualified to assess my own sanity.
I'm not on Mint anymore so I don't have a direct stake in this. I have given Snaps a shot, just like AppImage, Flatpak, various distro package managers, PPAs, and the Almighty AUR. I didn't like the system when I was on Ubuntu or Manjaro. I ended up removing it on Manjaro and just using the AUR and Flatpak.
Snaps are proprietary, locked into Canonical, and in my personal opinion don't see the system as community friendly long term. It is a store system designed for single vendor lock-in which I don't like. All systems have their trade-offs and technical issues and boons. I'm not singling out snaps on that. Some of its annoying flaws are shared with Flatpaks which is a system I do like. The reason I can't support Snaps, as an option, is due to that lock-in and what I see as community hostile approach.
4 Likes, Who?
You're right, of course. "a backdoor by connecting your computer to the Ubuntu Store," "back-room shenanigans [between] Canonical and Microsoft," and "filthy bloatware" represent exactly the calm and objective assessment, entirely on the merits, of a new packaging format. That's sure to have people lining up to join our community and have companies taking us seriously.
3 Likes, Who?
I've never used SNAP and reading what i am here , I have no interest in it either.
I've used a few Flatpacks but that's about it.
As an option - no issue.
Forced on the user , like some say here , you might see another systemD rebellion.
Wondering if Ubuntu will get its own version of Devuan like Debian did.
In my case I'm perfectly fine with pacman and how it runs with minor exceptions on some apps.
I've used a few Flatpacks but that's about it.
As an option - no issue.
Forced on the user , like some say here , you might see another systemD rebellion.
Wondering if Ubuntu will get its own version of Devuan like Debian did.
In my case I'm perfectly fine with pacman and how it runs with minor exceptions on some apps.
0 Likes
Quoting: CatKillerYou're right, of course. "a backdoor by connecting your computer to the Ubuntu Store," "back-room shenanigans [between] Canonical and Microsoft," and "filthy bloatware" represent exactly the calm and objective assessment, entirely on the merits, of a new packaging format. That's sure to have people lining up to join our community and have companies taking us seriously.Just pointing out that your dismissive tone towards a bunch of fellow Linux users was not helpful. And if you want to convince them that snaps are a good thing, I don't think sarcasm will go very far either. Linux users tend to be passionate about the software they use, and mocking them for differing opinions (fact-based or not) is surely more divisive to the community than a few competing software projects are to the Linux ecosystem.
I guess I'm coming off a bit patronising now, so I'll just shut up.
3 Likes, Who?
Quoting: tuubi"You're not fans of a thing I like so you must be ignorant and get all your info on social media." With such a confrontative attitude, I'm sure you feel right at home on Reddit and YouTube.
(Don't know whether this targetting me, but I actually never post on YT or Reddit.)
And one of course can prefer whatever containerization or packaging solution. But it's pretty lame when the given "reasons" don't stand the simplest fact check. (Or worse spinning some idiotic conspiracy theory.)
As stated: I prefer "normal" packages, but when it comes to proprietary software snaps are just a way more handy solution than some obscure zip files. So far all my snap packages (PHPStorm, Skype, the desktop clients of Mattermost and Telegram) have worked without any issues (apart from an initial slow start), are far from "bloated" - and looking at the version numbers - get updated regularly.
2 Likes, Who?
Arehandoro Jun 3, 2020
I am, in general, fairly neutral with snap. I don't quite like having to use a different package managers to install certain things, nor canonical ubiquitous control over it, but like @Tuxee mentioned above, for some things, namely commercial hardware, is just very handy and convenient (at time of writing bitwarden cli, digitalocean cli, intellij and postman)
0 Likes
Quoting: GBeeWhat the Mint packagers seem most concerned about is their own demise. If the world moves to Snap then there will be less opportunity for them to screw with code before it reaches the end user. This is a future I can get behindThat's ridiculous. If I choose to use a particular distribution, I want the people in charge of that distribution to have control over the packages. If I wanted the packagers of a different distribution to have control, I would have chosen that different distribution. Duh.
5 Likes, Who?
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