Comment by jillesvangurp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jillesvangurp | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

The problem with package managers/installers/setup scripts/etc. is that they turn file systems in a mess and that filesystems tend to be different between linux installations, even of the same distribution.

So snaps do for user facing software what docker did for server side software. Good idea in general and since most distributions struggle to stay on top of release quality updates from upstream, a great way to stay up to date, quickly try out some sofware package, or download software that your linux distribution hasn't gotten around to absorbing into their repositories.

Sort of the Linux equivalent of dragging an OS X .app file to your /Applications folder (or to trash for uninstall). There's no good technical reason for application install/uninstall to be more complex than that.

Normal user facing software should not require modifications to the OS to run. The linux practice of packages basically taking a royal dump on the filesystem and generally requiring root access to even get installed is no longer something that is remotely sane to do.

IMHO, operating systems should ultimately be immutable and basically be similar to a snap. You update it as a whole and you don't modify parts of it.

Linux has had a hard time with end users despite decades of "surely this year is the year of linux on the desktop". Never happened. A lot of that has to do with software installation, package managers and upgrades being a convoluted mess that always ends up in somebody doing stuff in a command line terminal to fix.

>Linux has had a hard time with end users despite decades of "surely this year is the year of linux on the desktop". Never happened. A lot of that has to do with software installation, package managers and upgrades being a convoluted mess that always ends up in somebody doing stuff in a command line terminal to fix.

Snap still has a little bit to go to be much better though! The "programs shouldn't mess with the system" mentality includes restrictions to the filesystem. That's a problem because many programs do need to mess with local files (e.g., sending a file in an IM program, working on a file, saving a file...). You get a spooky message about installing such programs with "classic" permissions, and, even then, such functionality suffers. Discord can only access some subset of the filesystem, and Skype straight up crashes when it tries. Also, opening links in Discord doesn't work in the Snap version while it does in the non-Snap version. Rabble!

But the idea is great. Convenience and no dynamic library breakage for some MB of disk space in ${current_year}? Yes, plz!

Yet their web based counterparts work just fine. Discord works great, Skype not so great, maybe because they pour resources into the app thay displays ads.

> Linux has had a hard time with end users despite decades of "surely this year is the year of linux on the desktop". Never happened. A lot of that has to do with software installation, package managers and upgrades being a convoluted mess that always ends up in somebody doing stuff in a command line terminal to fix.

I couldn't agree more, and am glad to see that there are others who recognize this issue. Personally, I'm a fan of AppImage because it doesn't require any of the complicated runtime Snap and Flatpak do, meaning it is about as close as you can get to a universal Linux application today (*NixOS notably breaks them, but other than that...).

>IMHO, operating systems should ultimately be immutable and basically be similar to a snap. You update it as a whole and you don't modify parts of it.

Absolutely agree. Ubuntu Core is trying to achieve something like this: https://www.ubuntu.com/core

the problem is invariably with upstream making assumptions and changes on a whim, not with distros.

As for linux on the desktop, until there is a credible brand offering a credible pre-installed computer, via credible outlets, backed by a credible support service, and MS actually allows them to exist beyond the first revision, then you will have your Linux on the desktop independent of all the effort (or anti-effort) the big DEs etc put in.

Linux Desktop evangelists have been saying that for decades. Rather than fix any of the problems people are actually complaining about and that they can actually fix, they prefer to believe the real problem is one they have no power over so they don't have to take any responsibility for the terrible platform they promote.

Thank you, that explains a lot.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com