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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

I only want to know one thing: did they finally fix the main usability problems with Snap?

Or at least acknowledged them?

Questions like this are easier to answer if you specify which problems you refer to. They have fixed a ton of issues since it was added to 22.04. If the issues you complain of is fixed or not, that is impossible to answer without more information.

My biggest issue is that I cannot start a snap program, e.g. firefox, and allow it to access different mount points than the one used for snap.

I know there have been partial fixes and workarounds, but if they change what it means to run a program in Linux and unexpected things happen, then I consider that broken.

Also, when I use VNC and xeyes works, then I expect any X11 program to work. Except, this does not always hold for snap based programs somehow.

These two points together make snap unworkable for me.

There is a flag to install a snap in classic mode, which I think would allow it more access, but I've not seen more fine-grained control than that. Perhaps it exists, I have not had a reason to look.

As for X11, I'm on Wayland and wouldn't expect xeyes to work. What X11 programs still is used seems to work fine in Xwayland, but I don't use VNC so I don't know how they interact.

So I don't know if these are solved, sorry. I suppose I have simpler needs.

OK. But as you can see Snap is breaking abstractions that have worked for decades ... And these are just the basics of running applications.

Part of that is much of the point behind snaps (and just as true of flatpack for that matter) - once applications are put into sandboxes many things break. And while it is often easy to erect walls against unwanted use it takes a lot of thought building abstractions that let people do what they need in a controlled way that don't leave the system as open when compromised.

But yes I agree, it is definitely a big change compared to how things traditionally have worked. The question is if it is a necessary direction.

Well, if access to my filesystem stops working as expected, then I'm sure many people would agree that is not a desired direction ...

Linux has traditionally used the model of: users are suspect, applications are trusted; of course you can ask questions about that, but don't flip it upside down while breaking stuff. For example, I would probably be OK with it if they added a popup asking me to set permissions. But instead, it just breaks.

Based on Canonical's track record with previous project I'm just waiting for them to give up on Snap.

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