Please, do not use snap into UBUNTU, it's too early

It’s not just for the last LTS and stable releases, there are always about five overlapping releases still in maintenance, just do the math. Personally, I believe this will release paid and voluntary resources for tasks that I care more about than first launch time. So it’s fine for me testing it first with small utility non-critical applications, then with some big hard-to-build package that is arguably a main target of snap.

It could make some users to change distro.

No doubt some will. But in the mid/long term I expect that, except for Debian, every other distribution will follow lead. First, because most of them are Ubuntu derivatives. But even Arch AUR is nowadays relying on PKGBUILDs that leech debs from PPAs and third-party deb repositories for complex packages; they will just wrap snap or flatpak in the future. Except for the huge volunteer effort that Debian is and except for the long release cycle its users are willing to accept, I don’t think there is another distro —not even rolling-release ones— with the manpower to sustain current Linux release models. You’re seeing it now: not even Canonical-backed Ubuntu, not even Red Hat-backed Fedora.

Not only the distro, but also the operating system.

Hey, I didn’t say that, I just quoted that.

If it stayed in official packages, yes. But if it’s a ppa, owner can decide to only do it for the last (current and/or LTS) version…

We’ll see in the future. For the moment as an user running devel version + ppa, I see absolutely no advantage of snap : I’m already up-to-date, they are slower to launch, having to manage 2 sources of softwares at the same time (debs and snaps) is difficult, the “removable-media issue” very painful as I have many hard drives and never use /home for my datas, I keep small place for the OS and snap use lots of space so I would have to redo my partitioning etc…

While you may have some objections due to your specific setup, please consider you’re not the usual use case. Most people install Ubuntu on a single drive, not separate /home, and not multiple disks. Most are quite happy with automatic updates - in line with how their phone is likely setup - both for debs (with unattended-upgrades) and snaps (via automatic refresh in snapd).

Experts such as yourself are capable of managing your own system and are interested in twiddling knobs and adjusting settings everywhere. There are millions of Ubuntu users who are not like that. We should cater for the widest possible use case by default, and have the option to fiddle switches for experts, which is what we have.

In addition, PPAs are awful for software discovery. Average users have no idea what a PPA is, nor how to configure or install software from it. Part of the point of snap is to make software discovery easier. We can put new software in the “Editor’s Picks” in Ubuntu Software then people will discover and install it. Having software in a random PPA somewhere online is only usable by experts. Normal users have no visibility to it.

So, again, please take a step back and consider the wider use cases. Yes, we need to address bugs in snapd, snapcraft and the software delivered via this method, and those of you who are experts should (in my opinion) be the people reporting the issues in the bug trackers, so normal non-technical users benefit.

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Snaps are supposed to be this new something that had started, and the users are told about it. We are suppose to trust them, and are easily discoverable. If you take this Chromium snap as an example, it is there as a ppa. So, as a snap it is good and easily discovorable, but as a ppa, it is not?

Not quite true. There are a number of AUR -bin packages which use the prebuilt binaries provided by debs or RPMs. However, there are from-source versions of the same software also available.

This is simply for convenience.

Most users frankly don’t care how software is packaged. They don’t understand the difference between deb / rpm / flatpak / snap. They just want a button that installs Spotify so they can listen to their music.

Ubuntu has for a long time had a graphical software installer - “Ubuntu Software” which sought to make it easy for users to find and install/uninstall the software they want. If it wasn’t in Ubuntu Software, it didn’t exist as far as some users are concerned. Many people are also very wary of PPAs because they can contain anything. While a PPA might say it contains “Music Player”, the owner of the PPA can put anything in it. The deb installed from a PPA has root on your system when installed, so can do anything - good or bad. So yes, PPAs are inherently un-discoverable, and potentially dangerous.

While the very same software might be in a PPA and a snap, the fact that the snap is shown in Ubuntu Software is the point I’m making. Many people use that to install software. So making software appear there is beneficial for developers - their software is found, and beneficial for users - they discover new software.

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You didn’t, but you mentioned that. The matter is, if someone really needs to install Chromium web browser, and s/he can’t install it normally, but as a snap, and s/he doesn’t want to install snapd and snaps, for whatever reason would be forced to change distros, and sometimes change whole operating system.

This is a by-product of the success of Ubuntu.

Whether people like it or not, most software available for Linux will target Ubuntu first. There may be packages available later for other distros / systems, but on the whole, you can be sure a software developer will target Ubuntu if they target Linux.

This is a double-edged sword for Ubuntu. On one hand we have a vast array of software out there from 3rd parties. It also makes it hard to shift people to new formats (like snap) because they feel they already have a solution.

Look at it from another distro point of view, like Fedora or Arch. On the whole packages for popular software are not made for those distros - by the manufacturers of the software. As a result many flatpaks and some AUR packages are built by ripping apart debs and re-packing them as other package formats. This benefits Arch and Fedora (and other distros) because they now have access to software they might not have.

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Maybe all that is true, about discovorability and trust, and also that most people don’t care about where they find the software, just want to click a button. And, that’s the same philosophy of the operating systems that Ubuntu once lured people from.

I don’t find the software slow, I find the startup time for snap packages when the start for the first time on a session slow, but that has been improved, and it’s public that the snapcraft team has been working hard to improve that.

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Actually, this “ripping apart” is a pretty good thing. I like to do that so Apt would not upgrade what I “installed” with every upgrade. Btw, there’s a tutorial how to rip apart and repack a ppa in the mother distro Debian.

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All right, whoever, who wanted to get the latest Chromium work without worrying about snaps, get it from here, unzip it and make a executable link to executive file “chrome” in it. It opens instantaneously (in a snap). This Chromium web browser is NOT installed, but lives in a folder called chrome-linux.

You can add the extra APIs, if you want.

(Just tried it, for the sake. I am not using it, but another Chromium based browser, Opera.)

.

Really, is it the first launch after session begin?
If yes, y really want the same computer :slight_smile:

Here is my calculator (just after start my computer)
~$ time snap run gnome-calculator

real 0m10,232s
user 0m0,469s
sys 0m2,794s
cartes@cartes-GA-970A-UD3:~$

10 seconds for calculator, not a 3d software, can you imagine chromium or vlc?

Chromium is not gone as a deb package on most versions… That is not what was announced, and I’ll quote @oSoMoN:

All other supported Ubuntu releases (16.04, 17.10, 18.04) will continue receiving chromium updates.

By the way if you’re running 14.04, you should think about upgrading or buying Canonical support, because that version is otherwise without standard support for several months.

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$ time snap run gnome-calculator

real    0m0.671s
user    0m0.232s
sys     0m0.159s

You’re probably not taking into account that the timer doesn’t stop until you close the window. So my 0.67 seconds includes the time for me to react to the window appearing and then closing it.

You don’t need to imagine what VLC or chromium is like. You can test it, and if there’s a problem, report it as a bug.

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That’s what snaps offer with many other beneficial extras for their own security and in software availability, and PPA don’t.

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Did you try just after booting?

If i do my best to close the window
$ time snap run gnome-calculator

real 0m7,078s
user 0m0,465s
sys 0m2,635s

Then in a second launch
time snap run gnome-calculator

real 0m1,856s
user 0m0,447s
sys 0m0,285s

Then i remove snap and install deb gnome calculator. On the first launch

time gnome-calculator

real 0m1,813s
user 0m0,361s
sys 0m0,037s

it’s 7 times faster.

Ok i’ll do a bug report for calculator, vlc, chromium …
But, the post here is not against SNAP but only to say, for everyday users, this is not ready now.

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@diogoconstantino, you’re quoting from a 2018 thread that I originally linked to in order provide an insight into what prompted the move to a snap for Chromium.

Please see the very recent call for testing thread: Call for testing: chromium-browser deb to snap transition where it says that the transition to a snap package will be rolled out to all supported releases in due course:

In a first step, the transition will be happening exclusively for Ubuntu 19.10 (Eoan Ermine) users, and once I’m confident it is rock-solid it will be rolled out to stable releases, starting with disco and then the LTSes.

As I have already said, the problems that originally affected the Trusty release may also be affecting later releases now or will do in the future.