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.
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
The comments on this article are closed.
Quoting: CatKillerI watched that video. That particular point he made did not impress me. It seemed designed to sidestep broader issues by cherry-picking a sensationalized case.Quoting: PatolaYes. The granularity/heterogenity of PPAs is commonly poised as a disadvantage, but here they are an advantage, because you can disable/enable the sources individually. You have granular control in who you decide to trust.
QuoteIt's interesting. I asked for some statistics recently from our IS people, and they didn't give me anything other than number of hits over a period of time on a PPA. I can't get any detail about where those people are, who they are, or anything like that, all I know is relatively which are the most popular PPAs and interestingly there are a large number of people who have a PPA - and I'm not going to tell you which one it is - but there is a PPA in Launchpad that is more popular - popular in terms of number of people who hit it every day - and that PPA is empty. It has nothing in it. But it's because people read documents and blog posts and instructions that say, "this is how you get that thing. You add this PPA," and so people just blindly do it, right? And so there are people out there who will blindly follow instructions, even if they are patently wrong they will still do it. And so the Number One most-hit PPA is not providing any value to any user at all, because it doesn't have anything in it. There are no packages in it. It used to but it doesn't any more. It's a problem that people wanted solving and somebody solved it by creating a PPA but subsequently deleted the stuff from that PPA. And none of those users probably even know that that PPA is empty and they probably don't even know that they're no longer getting updates for that piece of software.
(Edit: the transcript is in the "long quote" so I'll repeat the key point: the Number One most-hit PPA is not providing any value to any user at all, because it doesn't have anything in it.)
From the video I linked to earlier. Of course, rather than simply not having anything in, the PPA could put something else there, like the infamous case where someone changed the wallpaper of everyone that was hammering their home machine because some instructions somewhere said that people should get software from there.
As a side note, why does he even know how many people are downloading PPAs from outside Ubuntu?
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 3 June 2020 at 9:20 pm UTC
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Quoting: KohlyKohlI gave up on snaps. They look awful on a 4k monitor, are slow to start up, and take up way too much space.I can dig the other stuff, but how on earth can they look any different?
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I think for people in charge of, or using and supporting, distributions other than Ubuntu, the centralization problem cannot just be waved away. From what Alan Pope of Canonical himself said, you can't get Snaps from anywhere except Ubuntu. Period. He thinks this is a feature, and I can see where from Ubuntu's perspective it is; the issue of fragmentation, as with lots of undiscoverable PPAs, is real, even if I think he maybe exaggerates. If Ubuntu is using Snaps it makes some sense for Ubuntu to want them to be Ubuntu's Snaps in Ubuntu's store.
But the same is true the other way around; from the perspective of any other distro, this "feature" is a problem. If you go with Snap, you are handing control over part of your repository to another distro. If you want those Snaps to work well, this may in turn impose limits on how you build other parts of your distro. Further, since the particular distro controlling those snaps is a for-profit corporation, what you have handed control to is a competitor, which has a motivation to get rid of you. Depending on the workings of a competitor's closed source software (the Snap store) does not strike me as smart.
And for people using those other distributions there are related problems. I pick a distribution because I like what that distribution is doing and how, maybe even why, they are doing it. If what I pick is not Ubuntu, particularly if I don't even really like Ubuntu, I'm not going to be wild about my distribution using something that's in Ubuntu's centralized control.
But the same is true the other way around; from the perspective of any other distro, this "feature" is a problem. If you go with Snap, you are handing control over part of your repository to another distro. If you want those Snaps to work well, this may in turn impose limits on how you build other parts of your distro. Further, since the particular distro controlling those snaps is a for-profit corporation, what you have handed control to is a competitor, which has a motivation to get rid of you. Depending on the workings of a competitor's closed source software (the Snap store) does not strike me as smart.
And for people using those other distributions there are related problems. I pick a distribution because I like what that distribution is doing and how, maybe even why, they are doing it. If what I pick is not Ubuntu, particularly if I don't even really like Ubuntu, I'm not going to be wild about my distribution using something that's in Ubuntu's centralized control.
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Here is an example of what I mentioned earlier. And I've tried to install such things in the past and it did indeed take up an enormous amount of space - wildly more than the actual program does. I don't like bloatware, and you'll be hard pressed to find bigger bloat than this. Are the sticking the entire Linux OS in there or what the hell?
If you download the program from their website, the deb is ~50 MB and the AppImage ~80 MB. And this isn't even the most egregious example. I've seen +2000% as well, maybe even more. It's totally absurd. I much prefer to download from the repo, or directly, or from a PPA that I can instantly disable afterwards.
Snap sounds even worse, but in different ways, so I'm very happy about Mint doing the right thing here and ensuring the safety and interests of their users. If people absolutely want snap, you can manually install the stuff.
Not the first time Canonical has done something dodgy -- and surely not the last time.
If you download the program from their website, the deb is ~50 MB and the AppImage ~80 MB. And this isn't even the most egregious example. I've seen +2000% as well, maybe even more. It's totally absurd. I much prefer to download from the repo, or directly, or from a PPA that I can instantly disable afterwards.
Snap sounds even worse, but in different ways, so I'm very happy about Mint doing the right thing here and ensuring the safety and interests of their users. If people absolutely want snap, you can manually install the stuff.
Not the first time Canonical has done something dodgy -- and surely not the last time.
1 Likes, Who?
soulsource Jun 3, 2020
Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: KohlyKohlI gave up on snaps. They look awful on a 4k monitor, are slow to start up, and take up way too much space.I can dig the other stuff, but how on earth can they look any different?
Probably someone packaged their own version of a font-renderer as part of a Snap.
That's actually my main point of critique regarding all container formats: They delegate dependency tracking to developers, what makes it basically impossible to prevent situations in which users end up installing the same libraries over and over and over again, in different versions, some of them with up-to-date security patches, some outdated. Flatpak is not as bad as the other formats in that regard thanks to the runtimes, but still the situation is not ideal.
My second point of critique is that the container formats delegate the responsibility to supply updates and fixes from the distributor to the developer. This is a good thing for packages that see active development, but many quite important projects have mostly been abandoned, and need a distributor's work to remain usable and get their worst security holes plugged.
I fully agree however that container packages are preferable to some developer-hosted binary tar.gz. Yet, I don't see how they could be a suitable alternative to distributor-maintained traditional packages (deb, rpm,...).
I have the feeling that the ideal solution for end-users is a co-existence of containers and traditional packages, each having its own preferred use case.
And honestly, if I as a user have the choice, I'll pick Flatpak over Snap any time, simply because of the standardized runtimes.
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Quoting: Purple Library GuyAs a side note, why does he even know how many people are downloading PPAs from outside Ubuntu?
It's explained in the video (and, y'know, the transcript that I provided) PPAs are hosted on Launchpad, so they know which ones get the most traffic. People other than Ubuntu could have their own Launchpad instance, since they open sourced it, but no one does. They don't know who is using the PPA (again, as it says in the transcript) but they know how many.
2 Likes, Who?
Quoting: PangaeaHere is an example of what I mentioned earlier. And I've tried to install such things in the past and it did indeed take up an enormous amount of space - wildly more than the actual program does. I don't like bloatware, and you'll be hard pressed to find bigger bloat than this. Are the sticking the entire Linux OS in there or what the hell?
Really? Showing an image of a flatpak package to prove the bloatedness of a snap? Really? (Besides I can't find a XNView snap to see whether this is different.)
Quoting: PangaeaIf you download the program from their website, the deb is ~50 MB and the AppImage ~80 MB. And this isn't even the most egregious example. I've seen +2000% as well, maybe even more. It's totally absurd. I much prefer to download from the repo, or directly, or from a PPA that I can instantly disable afterwards.
Why are you doing that? You are aware, that you can download the deb packages of a PPA without setting up the PPA.
Quoting: PangaeaSnap sounds even worse, but in different ways, so I'm very happy about Mint doing the right thing here and ensuring the safety and interests of their users. If people absolutely want snap, you can manually install the stuff.
You are aware that in Ubuntu 20.04 there is only one snap package installed ("Ubuntu Software"), that this can be replaced by the native application with a few mouse clicks, and snaps are not forced on Ubuntu users? Ubuntu users have exactly the same variety of native packages available as Mint users. Plus a snap installer and daemon which you can use or not.
Quoting: PangaeaNot the first time Canonical has done something dodgy -- and surely not the last time.
Ah yes. Another sinister conspiracy...
3 Likes, Who?
Quoting: soulsourceThat's actually my main point of critique regarding all container formats: They delegate dependency tracking to developers, what makes it basically impossible to prevent situations in which users end up installing the same libraries over and over and over again, in different versions
It's the other way round: that's the reason why you have these containers - to have dependency compatibilty on a per-application level.
Quoting: soulsourceI fully agree however that container packages are preferable to some developer-hosted binary tar.gz. Yet, I don't see how they could be a suitable alternative to distributor-maintained traditional packages (deb, rpm,...).
I have the feeling that the ideal solution for end-users is a co-existence of containers and traditional packages, each having its own preferred use case.
I don't think that this was ever seriously disputed - even by container enthusiasts.
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Duke Takeshi Jun 3, 2020
Hot take: Ubuntu is meant to be the most locked-down distro. Imho, it is meant for people who want to have an easy start with linux and who know shit about computers. If I was to install a linux system for my mom, I would pick Ubuntu for a distro. Canonical has it all cut out for her and it is convenient not to struggle with the details.
It's fine with me if people don't like snaps for one or the other reason, but actively prohibiting users from using it seems kind of a drastic way to me.
It's fine with me if people don't like snaps for one or the other reason, but actively prohibiting users from using it seems kind of a drastic way to me.
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