Canonical want help testing their Steam snap package for Ubuntu

If they do this, I'll have to change my mount points and backup procedures :(
I store my Steam games on a second drive. It's mounted on /opt, but in my experience snaps can't access stuff outside of /home unless installed in classic mode. I don't particularly want to change my mount to within /home - /home gets backed up, while the games shouldn't be

"Anyone can create an alternate store that supports snaps. The API is completely open as is snapd. Having a centralized store is actually one of the strengths of the ecosystem. ISVs want that single trusted source for apps. I think the tremendous success we’ve had with ISVs adopting snap is in no small part due to this concept. And I ask, is it really a problem? Snap is completely open, anyone can see what’s being executed on your system. The internals of the store that handles metadata just isn’t interesting."

This quote is from interview. If having a centralized store is good, why do we need to have a snap and a flatpak store? Why can't we have one (Flatpak)? And why is it not a problem? Wouldn't Flatpak or Snap become better if everyone was focused one one of them, instead of having dev resources and attention to bugfixes and improvements being divided between the two? Developers resource are finite, it's one of the major reasons why Linux developers (WINE and others) couldn't keep up with Microsoft ecosystem changes to the degree that WINE compatibility became stable and less volatile, as it has become with Proton.


Last edited by Linuxwarper on 18 March 2023 at 8:40 am UTC

i dont know, this fragmentation of package formats always cause issues for me.
for example, i couldnt find any tutorial on how to install plugins on vlc snap, libre office snap, and even retro arch had issues.

i end up having to install multiple versions of the same software in order to avoid issues.
because sometimes the snpa version has the features A,B,C, and the flatpak B,C,D and the app image C,D,E and the deb, D,E,F...
or the bugs instead of the features.

speaking of it, for example, recently i had to install another version of VLC just to make the fluidsynth plugin work.
gimp also caused issues with the lack of .ora support. (this format is very convenient if you want extract data from an gimp, just convert it to ora and you have all the frame data and time stamps you could wish in an machine/human readale format)

as for retro arch, i cant remember, i think i dont have some shaders instaled for some reason, they should be included by default but they arent anywhere.
or maybe it was video playback?

not to mention when an essential feature dont work, like hardware decoding for videos...

slaapliedje might be overstating, but so are you.

Nope. The bullshit from the tinfoil hat-wearing 4chan/Reddit/Phoronix crowd is bullshit. If you want to use snaps, use snaps; if you don't want to use snaps, don't use snaps. Either way, snaps resolving their issues is a good thing.


Last edited by CatKiller on 18 March 2023 at 11:10 am UTC

A Mozilla developer posted about Snap (and Flatpak) just recently, and I think it's a very interesting read.

Especially since it was Mozilla that asked Canonical to replace the repository version of Firefox with the snap.

I wasn't aware of that, thanks!
In case someone else is searching for an official source (which is surprisingly hard to find), you can read up on it here.

Well done corp world... a container in a container. Unneccessary complexity for the sake of corp agendas. Does Proton even work with this.

What "agenda"?

Every corporation has an agenda... to make money.

Not shit, Sherlock. But "agenda" sounds so much more sinister and secretive than "make some money and - maybe - grow". And since we are talking about Canonical something fishy must go on.

Canonical's best way to make money is to try to get as much vendor lock-in that they can, without pissing off the community enough that someone switches to a different distro. Snap and them being the only ones who can host a snap store is their method of lock-in.

Canonical makes money with support and services for commercial customers. Exactly like Red Hat. Their Steam efforts are just pursued to keep Ubuntu visible as "the" desktop distro that plays well with their customer services. And there is zero lock-in since pretty much every software I can think of is also available via other channels. Snap is a convenient (YMMV) alternative in the Ubuntu ecosystem. That's all.

Every corporation has an agenda... to make money. Canonical's best way to make money is to try to get as much vendor lock-in that they can, without pissing off the community enough that someone switches to a different distro. Snap and them being the only ones who can host a snap store is their method of lock-in.

That's just nonsense. Canonical make zero money from desktop Ubuntu users. They make money, like Red Hat/IBM do, by offering paid support and services. Snaps make that hugely easier for their actual customers, and for themselves as maintainers. They might also have made money from the Ubuntu Phone, which snaps were largely created for, but they ran out of money before that could become a thing.

Snaps only come from one place to solve the discovery issue that PPAs have, and which Fedora users experience from flatpaks where they have access to some flatpaks but not all of them. All the snaps are available in one place - accessible by default for Ubuntu users and trivial to add for users of other distros (except Mint, who put up additional barriers in the way of user choice).

slaapliedje might be overstating, but so are you. Doing it up a bit too brown there, especially when we started this Snap conversation with the exact bit that got Mint annoyed.

they don't make money directly from users, but if Ubuntu wouldn't be so succesful, because (cough cough) users made it popular. I'd bet it wouldn't have high usage in corporate environments or ISV's wouldnt even consider it . I wouldn't call snaps a lock-in tho. But slaapliedje is right they have priorities.. 1st Devs, 2nd IVS's 3rd Corpos (I'm not sure if this is the right order) and the least of their concerns is users. imho

I have actually noticed a pattern where a new distro comes along done by a company, emphasizes the desktop, becomes very popular on the desktop, leverages that popularity to do server stuff etc. where there's some money, pays less attention to the desktop, and gradually loses popularity, which does them little harm because their server business remains intact . . . until the next desktop-oriented distro comes along, becomes very popular, and eats some of their lunch. Well, I say a pattern but it's only happened a couple of times.
Right now the "next" desktop distro (Pop!OS) is based around hardware sales instead, more like Apple, so that may play out differently. Unfortunately as far as I can make out I don't like it much--too innovative for my taste.

Canonical makes money with support and services for commercial customers. Exactly like Red Hat. Their Steam efforts are just pursued to keep Ubuntu visible as "the" desktop distro that plays well with their customer services. And there is zero lock-in since pretty much every software I can think of is also available via other channels. Snap is a convenient (YMMV) alternative in the Ubuntu ecosystem. That's all.

That would be great if it were true, as some software is out there that make snaps available, but otherwise have to be installed via tar balls, or converting rpms, etc. It's a visibility issue. I bet you if there could be alt stores to snap, no one would hate it as much as they do. Ubuntu is like the Apple of the Linux world, or at least they'd like to be.

The difference between them and Red Hat is that Red Hat pays developers to put most of that code back into open source projects and pushes forth the advancement in Linux in ways that Ubuntu have either tried to do their own thing with (mir, Unity, snap) or just minor things that do actually help (gnome performance improvements). The scale difference of how much Red hat improves Linux as a whole vs how much Ubuntu does is kind of staggering.

For myself (and others), Ubuntu would need to do a lot to regain our trust. All the snap vs flatpak does is cause developers to keep shying away from deploying commercial software on Linux (and as much as we as users can disagree on how much we want commercial software, for 'The year of the Linux Desktop' to happen, we need it.

Every corporation has an agenda... to make money. Canonical's best way to make money is to try to get as much vendor lock-in that they can, without pissing off the community enough that someone switches to a different distro. Snap and them being the only ones who can host a snap store is their method of lock-in.

That's just nonsense. Canonical make zero money from desktop Ubuntu users. They make money, like Red Hat/IBM do, by offering paid support and services. Snaps make that hugely easier for their actual customers, and for themselves as maintainers. They might also have made money from the Ubuntu Phone, which snaps were largely created for, but they ran out of money before that could become a thing.

Snaps only come from one place to solve the discovery issue that PPAs have, and which Fedora users experience from flatpaks where they have access to some flatpaks but not all of them. All the snaps are available in one place - accessible by default for Ubuntu users and trivial to add for users of other distros (except Mint, who put up additional barriers in the way of user choice).

They've opened up their support stuff to desktop users, so them making zero money from that would kind of imply that was a bad decision, no?

I personally haven't seen other flatpak 'stores' outside of flathub, but it's still open, and vendors can put a link on their page to add theirs. Pretty simple. The problem with Canonical being the only ones who can curate the snap store is that they don't have the man power like Apple does to make sure malware doesn't slip in, like has already happened at one point.

If they do this, I'll have to change my mount points and backup procedures :(
I store my Steam games on a second drive. It's mounted on /opt, but in my experience snaps can't access stuff outside of /home unless installed in classic mode. I don't particularly want to change my mount to within /home - /home gets backed up, while the games shouldn't be

I use Deja Dup Backup, and it has in it's preferences the directories you don't want backed up.

The scale difference of how much Red hat improves Linux as a whole vs how much Ubuntu does is kind of staggering.

Canonical revenue 2021: $93 million.
Red Hat revenue 2021: $5.6 billion.

Gee, I wonder why Red Hat may be able to do more than Canonical can.

Canonical makes money with support and services for commercial customers. Exactly like Red Hat. Their Steam efforts are just pursued to keep Ubuntu visible as "the" desktop distro that plays well with their customer services. And there is zero lock-in since pretty much every software I can think of is also available via other channels. Snap is a convenient (YMMV) alternative in the Ubuntu ecosystem. That's all.

That would be great if it were true, as some software is out there that make snaps available, but otherwise have to be installed via tar balls, or converting rpms, etc. It's a visibility issue. I bet you if there could be alt stores to snap, no one would hate it as much as they do.

So... The situation without the Snap store would be exactly the same for non-snappers today. Correct?
Now, the alt stores... Yes, it would stifle your Canonical flaming somewhat (though I assume there is plenty of other nasty stuff lurking out there), but apart from that it wouldn't change a thing. How many alternative Flatpak repos are there? I have about 20 Flatpaks installed on my system (about as many as snaps). Exactly ONE is NOT from flathub. (And that's a paid-for software.)

The difference between them and Red Hat is that Red Hat pays developers to put most of that code back into open source projects and pushes forth the advancement in Linux in ways that Ubuntu have either tried to do their own thing with (mir, Unity, snap) or just minor things that do actually help (gnome performance improvements). The scale difference of how much Red hat improves Linux as a whole vs how much Ubuntu does is kind of staggering.

I know. Red Hat. With their NIH syndrome. Painful. They didn't want to contribute to upstart. They had to dish out systemd. How lame. They didn't want to support Unity, no they had to had it their way and concoct Gnome Shell. They could have supported Snap, but no, it had to be flatpak. Because all the Canonical alternatives preceded the Red Hat implementations. Mir was a different beast altogether - Canoncial actually wanted to use Wayland, but Wayland was years from being usable and then Mir served a different purpose.

And just to give you an idea about size and influence: Red Hat has - according to Wikipedia - 19,000 employees and makes billions of revenue. Canonical has a few hundred employees and has an annual revenue of 140 millions. So yes, Red Hat contributing much much more is hardly surprising.

For myself (and others), Ubuntu would need to do a lot to regain our trust. All the snap vs flatpak does is cause developers to keep shying away from deploying commercial software on Linux (and as much as we as users can disagree on how much we want commercial software, for 'The year of the Linux Desktop' to happen, we need it.

Oh puhleeze. The usual BS. This has been the mantra for at least the last 15 years (because that's how long I use Linux on my desktop). The availability of commercial software has never been hindered by "having two or three package formats". Never. I do have my (paid-for) commercial products as DEBs, AppImages, Flatpaks, Tars, script installers. So if companies want to sell their stuff they are perfectly capable and willing to do so.

"the most popular Steam titles which should ‘just work’ based on reports on ProtonDB"

I'm inferring from this that they are working hard on the "weak spot" that sandboxing always had, even flatpak which is a bit superior (imho) has some shortcomings with proton emulation. Personally I won't be using it, if valve provides a deb package I will use that instead. I can't remember but I think it has some issues regarding how linking and hard linking works on sandbox mode that makes proton go bonkers.
Maybe Im barking out the wrong tree, and this is already fixed, but back in the days when proton started, steam flatpak had all kinda of issues, related to sandboxing, even Proton GE didn't work, it was a bloody mess.
Tbh it's kinda of logic, because you are running an "emulation" app (proton) on top of sandboxing, I guess it makes everything more complex.

Nothing is being emulated. Proton, which is based on WINE, is translating windows calls to Linux ones. Sandboxing is perfect here because you don’t want random windows apps and games having access to your Linux system. In fact, proton itself uses the sandboxing technology of Flatpak in it, which leads me to your anecdote of Flatpak Steam issues. I’m pretty sure you’re talking about when old versions of Flatpak didn’t support sandbox within a sandbox, so modern proton versions. This has long been fixed, and, because of the reproducible and immutable nature of Flatpak, it sometimes works better than a traditional install of Steam would. Some examples are:

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/csgo-osx-linux/issues/2815

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/6051

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/5214

A Mozilla developer posted about Snap (and Flatpak) just recently, and I think it's a very interesting read.

Original thread:
https://fosstodon.org/@gabrielesvelto/109976029692454638

Follow-Up with links to the bug-reports:
https://fosstodon.org/@gabrielesvelto/109981179869984715

Most of his points have already been thoroughly discussed before. I’m not sure if that’s him trying to stir up a flamewar again or is just ignorant on the topic, but they’re false anyways.

Edit: that criticism of the thread is also brought up in the replies.


Last edited by fireplace on 18 March 2023 at 11:09 pm UTC

So, there is a working .deb of Steam provided by Valve and then Canonical decides, nah, that is working to well on our distribution, let's introduce additional points of failure by wrapping it into lot's of additional bubble wrap with our personal logo this totally open and free packaging standard that everyone could use if they went a little bit out of their way and accepted a few performance and efficiency regressions - on it an then ask the community - assuming said community can fit the 'improved' product's more ...chunky... dimensions into their existing gaming spaces and time schedules - to QA it because otherwise to big a task?

At first glance one might be tempted to ask: Why?
But then I remembered something that is easily forgotten these days: this is Linux! So if someone is doing to do some crazy and unnecessary Stuff - just because!- , you take a casual, fascinated glance at this marvel, offer a barely audible, but heartfelt 'Neat!' as commentary, and move on with your life.

Why?

Classic case of NIH (link


Last edited by Klaas on 19 March 2023 at 4:20 pm UTC

I am personally not a fan of Snaps, so I wouldn't use this. I prefer using the Steam Flatpak.

The Steam Flatpak, in my experience, works fine about 95-98% of the time. The only explicit problems I've had with it is that modded VtMB using an older version of Proton doesn't work; and sometimes I've changed distros and found a game (Sugar Style and Dokyusei) no longer working and/or launching DESPITE using the Steam Flatpak in BOTH distros! I ended up putting both games on my Steam Deck, because that was easier than trying to solve the issue on the Steam Flatpak.

(for context: At home I use Mint, Manjaro, Postmarket/Alpine, and SteamOS (Deck). For $$, I'm an SA.)

I no longer trust anything from an Ubuntu "store" like offering.

Years ago, Canonical's Ubuntu had a Store where I purchased games (some from bundles, other games from their store on sale.) Then Canonical shut down the store saying, "We're sorry. So sorry." (just like BP in the South Park episode). As the saying goes: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

I won't go down the technical rabbit hole of my pro/con use-cases for Snap. But as a home consumer, I have more significantly more trust in Valve's official Flatpak than Canonical's [3rd party] attempts to repackage Steam for their users. BTW, Did Canonical need to get Valve's permission to do that? Just curious.

I am so very tired of AppStores. I see Flathub morphing into a FOSS "Itch.io" of sorts -- which more tolerable give the level or creator control. Even then, vendors can offer their own Flathub repo to for non-free & commercial stuff vs negotiating with Canonical to host a custom spun Snap.

Given Canonical's financial & other operational challenges over the last decade (more like two), they could really save some $$ & Cycles if flatpak as enabled out of the box. It would allow them to focus on where Snaps' use-cases really shine.

...am I the only one who felt "neat," and then just shrug?

Maybe because I'm starting to get used to using Flatpak, distrobox, Conty, and Nix that I'm just not fussy about how I get my apps. If app don't work with Flatpak, I find it on Nix, if it's not there, then I'll use Conty, distrobox, or AppImage, and if it really wants to be installed on root... then I'll just install it.

My only issue with snaps is the clutter, otherwise I'd probably use it as well. It's, like, whatever man. Just install your app and do what you need to do. People getting more access for Steam is nice, and Canonical's the one doing the work anyways, so, uh... neat. Have fun!

I don't have anything against snaps as such, but the way Canonical are pushing them onto users feels disrespectful. Like if you apt install firefox, it will pull in snapd, and install the snap package of Firefox. Not quite what I expected the system to do.

A truly classic way of getting those people who initially don’t really care one way or the other to start caring in the wrong direction.

Anyway, I generally find that deb works best, but I’m always curious to test apps as either snap or Flatpak. Both are really interesting, but I usually end up with the deb version as the stayer installation.

E.g. when trying to handle profiles in Thunderbird under flatpak. It’s not straightforward to find the right directiry in which to pop your old profile directory.


Last edited by Appelsin on 20 March 2023 at 2:48 pm UTC