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Comment by abnercoimbre | Hacker News Reader

To go back to Snap for a second: didn't Linux Mint drop it recently?

I'm not happy on Ubuntu with snap because of what seems to be auto-updates -- maybe it's another thing that's auto-updating?

I use Hugo [0], whose binaries are still < v1.0, and my websites break when they upgrade so I want to do that manually. Imagine my surprise after an update / reboot to see I can't build my sites anymore. This has happened several times.

[0] https://gohugo.io

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Snap is auto-updating and you can't stop it [0].

I actually liked the idea of the snaps on paper, especially combined with Ubuntu Core for running lightweight VMs (via LXD). But the tone on that exchange and the "we know best" attitude put me off it.

I have an Ubuntu 20.04 installed for tests on one of my home machines, and from time to time I catch doing who knows what. What tips me off is seeing the drive light going crazy when I'm doing basically nothing. And for some reason it doesn't log anything while doing this...

[0] https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-automatic-refresh-for...

> Snap is auto-updating and you can't stop it

Kill the daemon and make it non-executable. Only restore it when you want to manually do an install.

What is this, Windows 10?

I wish Windows 10 were that nice. First you need a nice race condition to break the updater's updater's unauthorized change prevention service....

Boot into your linux install, dd /dev/random onto the executables, done.

Huh? I think it's easier to just add to /etc/hosts this line:

127.0.0.1 api.snapcraft.io

On paper snap is great, but at this point we've got better alternatives. If you want to use something snap-like either flatpak or appimage will likely work and be way less user-hostile.

I didn't look closely into either flatpak nor appimage. But I get the advantages of such a system and I think it might actually help with the "Linux on the desktop situation". It's very easy to deploy something with restricted access to the file system, something that has all its dependencies in one place, that updates atomically, etc. It's also nice for random app vendors to be able to know that all their users are on the latest version, or not far behind. Could even push some devs to consider going back to desktop apps, as opposed to the web, knowing that they wouldn't have to deal with 1234 different, obsolete versions because someone's grandma didn't update her system in years.

After spending some time reading the exchanges on the posted link, I've come to the conclusion that the actual problem with snaps might not be snapd nor the automatic updating in and of themselves.

Rather, the problem seems to be a scope mismatch. This whole snap thing looks to me as something that should be aimed squarely at the "desktop user". I use that term as opposed to "system use". So distributing Spotify or whatever via snaps? Great! LXD for a home user to test? Sure! But as a way of managing low-level system components on production boxes? No way!

So I have to say I don't necessarily take an issue with Ubuntu pushing this on the desktop version. Sure, it is a pain by certain aspects, main one being slow startup for apps. But pushing this on Ubuntu Core in its actual state is, to me, the real issue. Sure, apparently you can run your own "Snap Proxy" or whatever they call it, which allows you to manually approve upgrades, etc. But why go through this trouble? It seems easier to just run apt-get from a central location when you want and for the packages and versions that you want.

Yes, auto-updates are built into snap. Also, the "solutions" to disable it are pretty much workarounds [1]. All this looks like just what made me stop using windows 10.

[1]: https://askubuntu.com/questions/930593/how-to-disable-autore...

Sigh. I'm a developer that is on early-version binaries often, and need to keep them frozen and update them manually. I shouldn't have to default to compiling from source.

Can I bypass snap entirely without major issues? I like Ubuntu, but indeed, I left Windows 10 officially due to auto-updates.

Yeah, there's no reason you have to use Snap. You can even use flatpak on Ubuntu (I've just started trying that out myself).

The Yaru developers even publish their theme on Flathub so Flatpaks look good on Ubuntu.

Try Pop!_OS. It's boils down to Ubuntu, but without snap and with better NVIDIA support.

The broken updates are what essentially forced me off of windows. Basically I get some awful untested update every 3-4 years that causes a boot loop. Happened in Vista, 7 and 10. The worst part is that the broken update stays in cache and forced updates basically brick your machine every single day until you decide to simply disable the windows update service, delete the windows update folders in hopes that this fixes the problem or reinstall the entire system hoping Microsoft removed the boot loop update.

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