Canonical bring more Steam Snap improvements, also hiring more Desktop Software Engineers

did they fixed Retroarch? because its segfaulting as soon as it opens

Quoting: kaiman- Want to update your browser while it's running? Tough luck! (Never noticed that issue with the .debs.)

I'm going to have to beg to differ on this one, at least with regard to Firefox.

Also, as someone who has never really used Snaps, I've never seen this behavior happen with Flatpak.

Quoting: kaiman- Want the snap store to update itself? Again, tough luck! (Can be done from the command line.)

I think they've finally fixed that. That really annoyed me too.

Quoting: kaiman- Want to use extensions with a native component? Finally can do that again! (Took only two years to sort it out.)

I don't understand this one—extensions for what?

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I'm looking forward to an Atomic Ubuntu comprised entirely of Snaps. That might be a reason for me to come back to the distribution one day. The potential for a completely Snappy Ubuntu is beyond a completely Flat Fedora given the current state of Flatpaks and Snaps. Silverblue is a kind of clunky experience where you need to know what you're doing and how parts of the system interact, and I'm sorry for saying this, but I really think Toolbx is a kludge. With a Snapified Ubuntu, CLI tools are first-class citizens and you can even get development toolchains in Snap: https://users.rust-lang.org/t/rust-as-a-snap-package-for-several-linux-distributions/13463

That has the potential to be a really user-friendly and unified experience. You can interact with Snap packages using Apt so you don't even need to learn another tool. The downsides, as we've seen, seem to be compatibility issues like with Steam. As we've seen with the Steam snap, these issues will go away over time.

Many big developers like Jetbrains and Microsoft decide to use Snapcraft to distribute their applications on Linux. I can only imagine this will get bigger over time. This isn't a loss for Flatpak because Snaps can be unraveled and re-packaged as Flatpaks too.

And if they could upstream the kernel patches for Snaps so they're properly compatible/secure on all distributions, that would be great! This is the primary reason I don't use Snaps; I don't use Ubuntu with a patched kernel. If the patch series gets upstreamed, then I could have a real opinion on Snaps.

Just to add some more dissent to this thread

When they first decided to go "unity", I was running Ubuntu. Did an update and suddenly my min/max/close buttons weren't on the right anymore. It's a little thing but for me personally, disruptions/unexpected changes in my workflow can cause issues. Naturally, I went to the forums because this is Linux - I can move it back, just need to fix a config. Nope - "We have plans for that space" is the only answer I found.

I ditched Ubuntu right then and there. Similar issues have cropped up over the years but that's the only time I've run into something purposefully locked down.

Whether or not Canonical has a "Not invented here" issue, there is a history of the community going one way followed by Canonical doing their own version.

Canonical could have kept going with Gnome, branding bits of it for their fork and such. Nope - Unity - Now ditched.

Canonical could have kept going with Wayland as the X server replacement. Nope - Mir - Now ditched.

Dash, Upstart - Same thing.

Canonical could have made snap universal when it came out. Nope - Initially bound to Ubuntu. I can't seem to find a definitive "Snap was announced/started at <somedate>" but it at least looks to have started about the same time as Flatpak and wasn't updated for use by other distro's until 2016 - A year after Flatpak released. Snap is still going, but if they had released it initially for all/any distro, would Flatpak have been needed?

Honestly, I think Canonical/Ubuntu were at least partially responsible for getting Linux where it is now. However, IMHO, they wanted more control over things than the Linux ecosystem would tolerate.

Quoting: BeemerCanonical could have made snap universal when it came out. Nope - Initially bound to Ubuntu. I can't seem to find a definitive "Snap was announced/started at <somedate>" but it at least looks to have started about the same time as Flatpak and wasn't updated for use by other distro's until 2016 - A year after Flatpak released. Snap is still going, but if they had released it initially for all/any distro, would Flatpak have been needed?

I'm a little fuzzy on the details here.

My understanding is that Snap requires kernel patches mainly related to AppArmor. Even without those patches, the new Snap confinement (there are two versions IIRC) will work on all distributions but it's not very secure.

Canonical has been trying to upstream those patches for a few years now. That's the issue with cross-distro compatibility, right?

Quoting: kaimanWant to update your browser while it's running?

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualAlso, as someone who has never really used Snaps, I've never seen this behavior happen with Flatpak.

Iirc I've read that if you update a flatpak app while it's running, there is a guarantee that the running app will not actually see any changes and they're only really applied on restart. So it's safe to update firefox for instance, while updating a native package will cause new firefox tabs to start crashing, at least sometimes.

Generally I've had very little issues with flatpak for a couple of years of running Silverblue but also on any random systems, while my recent VM experiments with Ubuntu have been pretty weird. Broken appstore self-updates are still there on fresh install, but maybe 24.04.1 will actually fix that. Flatpak also adds some intersting features, for instance if you want to play a game with bleeding edge drivers in case they happen to include some fix for a game you're trying to play, you can run stable Steam flatpak with mesa-git flatpak, and it's way safer and easier than actually installing mesa-git on your system.

Quoting: rustynailIirc I've read that if you update a flatpak app while it's running, there is a guarantee that the running app will not actually see any changes and they're only really applied on restart. So it's safe to update firefox for instance, while updating a native package will cause new firefox tabs to start crashing, at least sometimes.

Yeah, that makes sense. Each Firefox update is an entirely new commit with a new sandbox.

So technically Flatpak guarantees fewer disruptions than native Firefox!

Quoting: rustynailmy recent VM experiments with Ubuntu have been pretty weird. Broken appstore self-updates are still there on fresh install, but maybe 24.04.1 will actually fix that.

I have honestly never had a good experience with Ubuntu. I tried to install 23.10 on hardware and the installer just failed the first time and I needed to start again. And I couldn't install updates in Jammy Jellyfish.

But in principle, Snap and Ubuntu have potential.

Quoting: rustynailFlatpak also adds some intersting features, for instance if you want to play a game with bleeding edge drivers in case they happen to include some fix for a game you're trying to play, you can run stable Steam flatpak with mesa-git flatpak, and it's way safer and easier than actually installing mesa-git on your system.

Yeah, this is great. Codecs too. I assume you could do the same in Snap.

Quoting: kaimanBut why would the maker of the distro go that route, especially if it goes hand in hand with a degradation of the user experience!?

You know who else does this but doesn't get a bad rap for it? NixOS.

Quoting: BeemerI can't seem to find a definitive "Snap was announced/started at <somedate>"

It wasn't "snap" at the start. It was "click" for the Ubuntu Phone in 2013, then "snappy" for containers and IoT around 2014/2015, then became "snap" at some point after - potentially around the time it was made available on other distros.