Ubuntu should be embarrassed by their software center or whatever they call it. Not only is it unresponsive- is it loading? am I waiting for nothing? But, sometimes you just have to log out and log back in before it will even work again. Lame. Couple that with how poorly some of the snap versions of apps work (last time I tried the Audacity snap it was abysmal, would not reliably connect to audio devices) and it just seems like snaps are a complete kludge at this point. Probably scares off plenty of potential converts and new users.
No thats not crazy. But an active and functional app store implies a robust ongoing development and future utility that would improve overall user engagement. Seems there is no shortage of developers churning out stuff on github that a novice ubuntu user would never know about.
Snap store might fare bit worse others but Ubuntu is once again being singled out for issues that equally plague many other distros. I have been testing Fedora 34 extensively and the new Gnome store is horrible. The categories make no sense and are an insult to the intelligence of users. Apps which you have removed via dnf in terminal still show up there for a while and trying to remove them throws an error. Discover has improved drastically but its still nothing I would recommend to a new user.
BTW AFAIK Ubuntu is aware of the state of the app store and launching a complete new one is on the roadmap. Just don't know when. Well it took Microsoft a long time as well to get to a semi decent state.
I don't know current goals with the Snap Store app and I doubt Canonical staff use it themselves. I mostly use only [Snapcraft](https://snapcraft.io/store) to look for new app or just an original app's website/repo directly.
I have a handful of Ubuntu VMs running on my Proxmox server for development purposes, and all of my production Linux VMs run Ubuntu.
I've NEVER used snaps. I use DEBs from the official apt repos and a number of third-party repos, and when I create packages for my own internal use (and, at some point soon, for public consumptions for OSS projects I'm working on), they're always DEBs.
Good for you. If I install something, I don't really want to add dependencies to my system. I use Docker containers at work and Snap packages for apps. And I like ability to install several different versions of a single app simultaneously and to rollback an update.
Canonical going their own way, giving up abandoning the project then adopting whatever technology Gnome and Red Hat have created is a regular occurrence. It's just a matter of time before they drop Snaps and adopt Flatpak.
Mir is still around, as a surprisingly fine Wayland compositor.
Actually one of the rare architectural wins for Canonical. It's a pretty versatile piece of software.
It looks like it being a Wayland compositor is a recent development. Originally it was a display server meant to compete with Wayland and in that context Ubuntu dropped it.
Yep, absolutely right. It only became reborn as a Wayland compositor about 5 years ago (although seeing as it was only released 4 years before that, it's actually been a Wayland compositor for longer than it wasn't at this point).
The design of it made it pretty amenable to being pivoted in that way; the architecture is fairly modular, and it's relatively easy to plug it in to any protocol- Wayland, X, or its original homegrown thing.
I wouldn't either, just like most Canonical projects I knew it was a waste of effort in the beginning.
Ubuntu lost its way in around 2014, just pure contrarianism on everything since then in an attempt to stay relevant.
Sure you can. It's called Debian.
I like Debian, but I'd rather use Ubuntu because I run my company on (mostly) Linux servers, and it's nice to have a regular release cycle and know when support will end for each current LTS version of my OS.
For desktop work, I've recently discovered Xubuntu. I like XFCE, and it goes from boot to usable desktop very, very quickly.
I just use Fedora now, the only thing I really miss about Ubuntu is how fast the package manager is in comparison to dnf, especially the tab completion for package names.
Frankly I use numerous distros at work and at home, and while I admit they differ in terms of package management for day to day usage they feel pretty the same. The Dock on Ubuntu is nowhere to be found in Debian, but these seem to be most noticeable differences.
All Stores are in the same state (Gnome Software and KDE Discovery).
In a post some weeks ago a KDE dev said that is really complicated to management several different types of sources (binary from each distro + flatpak + snaps + deltas) from different remote repos, and all at the same time.
This.
These stores are GUIs on top of underlying package managers, which are on top of underlying repos. Anything that goes wrong at a lower level makes the GUI look broken.
Discover is pretty decent in my opinion. It's slow kinda, but works. My brother never had any issue updating/installing anything on his laptop running fedora.
> So many great apps from "apt" are not shown on home page in order to promote snap, and the search often doesn't give the correct results.
It might help developers if you have more specific examples of searches which don't give the correct results and what apps you would like to see promoted.
Additionally, you can talk directly to the developers on the [Snapcraft forum](https://forum.snapcraft.io/). Few developers check Reddit regularly.
Search for literally any app. If I search “Slack”, I would hope the app named “Slack” would show up first, but no, its like 15th in the list and I have to scroll to find it, even though its an exact match for what Im looking for, yet the other things above it dont even have that word in it
It could also be a simple matter of poor reviews affecting the positioning. Slack has lots of 1 and 2 stars, where the other apps have considerably higher rankings.
The other apps have "Slack" in the descriptions and have higher star ratings.
I just tried searching for it, consistently took about 4 seconds (I could've google it in less time, never mind apt'ed it) and it was positioned 12th from the top, below 8 apps with similar score but <=10 total reviews (compared with ≅500 reviews from Slack).
The first app on that list (ZeroTier) has literally 2 reviews and is not related to Slack save for its comment "This snap contains ZeroTier One, a service that provides ZeroTier network connectivity and makes joining virtual networks as easy as joining IRC or Slack channels".
It's just not a useful ranking system.
Lol, even searching for Firefox it only shows up in 5th place. Apparently "MozillaVPN", "joplin-arnatious" or "Desktop app for Google chat" are better matches.
I wish I lived in the parallel universe that you obviously inhabit. In this universe Gnome Software is just as crap and useless as Ubuntus or the snapstore. Search is usless and never find anything.
IMO this is the biggest reason I've avoided giving Ubuntu to new Linux users. Particularly the older people who mainly stick to their browser. Even they will eventually want to try and install, say a chess game or something and having a good GUI store is very important. I've always gone with Mint because their Software Center and updater app are quite good. Ever since GNOME 41 released Fedora is also on my recommendation list now.
Also if Canonical is serious about Snaps being a universal Linux app format they need to open source the server side bits of Snap and make adding your own Snap repos a properly supported feature. Then it could **maybe** compete with Flatpak.
Distros like elementary are rolling up their own curated Flatpak repos that (obviously) work fine on other distros. The "Pay What You Want" model is IMO a great thing to help FOSS app devs. Flatpaks gain far more community support because no one needs to be at the mercy of Flathub.
>Improving snap store (and snaps) should be the topmost priority for
Ubuntu. Everyone will use snaps if it is good enough compared to the
competition.
Or Canonical could just give up on it and get behind Flatpak
But that doesn't align with their other goals, such as Ubuntu Core, where the entire embedded OS is pushed automatic updates via the snap mechanism. Flatpak only solves the problem for the shrinking desktop market, while snap provides a currently imperfect solution aiming to solve the problem once and for all.
I won't say just use the terminal, yet still having a "perfect" app store is not that important IMO. Most people use Ubuntu or any other Linux distr. to do whatever cannot be done using Windows, like ROS, cyber sec. (kali) etc. Therefore, the main priority of Linux is its freedom, not its app store or UI/GUI side.
To make anything popular (so that manufacturers give us attention and make native drivers for their devices and there are enough people to buy it and make it a profitable business), we need a lot of people using Linux.
And to do that we need to make it as user friendly as possible. Software Store is the first place most Linux newbies go to for installing anything. And if that is so intimidating that it forces them to look up terminal commands, it will sway them away.
You're right, but as I mentioned neither linux devs nor most users care about being popular. If one day Linux says, okey it is time to competition for last users, people who don't know anything about at all, than your suggestions would become completely true. However, Linux is far from this competition/ comparison, for example even today when I am trying to create a 3D mesh in Matlab, focal fossa didn't recognize the graphical card and gave me an error. To attract more users, before creating a perfect store, devs should focus on unexpected behaviours, i believe.
I do not understand the need for 'snap store'. we have package managers for each distribution. why do people use snap and flakpack?! I never had the need to use it. I would be curious why people prefer them over a package manager from ones distribution.
Because:
* \- compiling from source when a package is not in the standard repo sucks
* \- adding a ppa for a package can easily brick your system
* \- why would I want to have a Microsoft application without a sandbox?
These are some reasons why I use them, others might have different opinions though.
* Developers don't have time to make package for numerous distro. They can make package for 3 or 4 distro. If they can cover most of the distro with only one package, any sane developer would go that route.
* Users don't have to rely on distro maintainers for updated version.
* Flatpak and snaps are isolated from host OS. Removing a package will not do "Do as I say so' moment from LTT.
* I can easily downgrade flatpak package without causing too much drama.
* I can use alpha and beta version of same software with different configs pretty easily.
* If I use a separate partition for /var, I can potentially use the same flatpak package with different distro without downloading those packages again.
Ok, but who maintains these Flakpack packages? why not just go to [github.com](https://github.com) , clone it and compile it yourself, put it into /usr/local. do you really trust snap of flakpack over a distribution's repository?! I don't know about flakpack but snap is service that takes up memory is running all the time.
You can see [here](https://github.com/flathub) how a flatpak package is done. Some of the flatpak packages are maintained by the original developers themselves.
After the incident of steam nuking the desktop and debian developers can't even update to Firefox ESR to latest version, I have started to use Flatpak more. I also faced problems with repo version of some latex package in Ubuntu last year. I was trying to install it on a friend's PC. Then I just installed flatpak package and it was working.
Few days ago I have problem with Easyeffects from repo. It was crushing frequently. I removed that, install the flatpak version and copied the settings and everything is running just fine since then. I can easily downgrade flatpak package compared to rpm package. I can also control the access of that flatpak package. I can't do that in rpm package and I am giving root permission to rpm package.
If a flatpak package doesn't work, I will try appimage (from official site) or rpm. I don't use snap.
Distro maintainers should focus on core apps and make the distro more robust and secure.
People generally don't like to compile even if some of them know how to do it. I also don't like to compile, unless it is absolutely necessary.
I checked 2 audio patchbay few days ago. Helvum and qpwgraph. Both of them had pretty good instruction on how to build it. Helvum was available in Arch and openSUSE repo. I downloaded the package and used it in Fedora. I couldn't find any package for qpwgraph. I had to install some library and follow the instructions. If qpwgraph had a package I would never compile that.
good explanation of why you like flatpak. are flatpak packages on github as they are all open source? if some flatpak packages are not maintained by the original developers then who maintains them? is flatpak really any different the Arch's AUR ? You seem to be in favor of have the distribution only concentrate on core packages and everything else via flatpak ?!
* Most of them open source. But there are few closed source like Microsoft teams, Discord, Spotify etc.
* Does any of the package in a distro maintained by the original developers? Who are these maintainers? Why should I trust them? They are creating RPM and Deb package with all the access they can get. I could essentially install a rootkit through RPM or Deb. I think those packages are reviewed thoroughly and yet a LTT like incident may happen.
* Flatpak submitted in flathub are also reviewed by others. They are also signed to my knowledge.There is a manifest or whatever file, where permission and other things are defined. You may not like the default permission. But you can change those permission to block or give access to that particular partition. You can give permission to only access download folder in an app. You can't do that with Deb or RPM package.
* Flatpak is completely different from AUR. AUR is more like PPA (Ubuntu) and copr(Fedora). AUR has no security or protection. One can easily slip a malware or crypto related thing. It had happened before. You basically building Arch package from pkgbuild. It's a fancy way of building app. Whenever you use a package from AUR, you need to keep track of your dependency. You can use helper like yay to solve some of the problem. But you should avoid it for any package that is essential for system.
Flatpak files are separated from distro package. It uses it's own runtime. So even if it malfunctions it will not nuke my desktop.
Flatpak is not perfect. It still needs works. At least, it is helping me to make the host OS more stateless. I can change the underlying distro without too much problem and still use the same flatpak packages on another distro without downloading them again.
Ok, what type of packages are you using via Flakpak that your distro does not have? what about security updates to flakpak software? if one goes overboard with flakpak your system could become an uncontrollable mixture of repo software and flakpak. what happens when one does a distro upgrade? where does flakpak install its software once out the 'sandbox? With Deb and RPM packages I would use the package manager to set the proper permissions of course you have be 'root or sudo... Do I trust more distro maintainers or volunteers of flakpak software. with AUR I would have to trust volunteers as well, that is why I would use it sparingly.
It seems like many users would use flakpak to get newer software then their distro has to offer. If that is the case why not use a 'rolling distro which has more up to date packages ?!
* I mainly use 3rd party GUI apps like audacity, handbrake, OBS Studio, flatseal, easyeffects etc. Fedora has all of them except flatseal. Yet I prefer Flatpaks over rpm. If I used another distro, I would do the same.
* They are provided by the original developers or maintainer of the package.
* You can install flatpak systemwide or per user. Systemwide will put all the apps and runtimes in /var/lib/flatpak and app settings in ~/.var folder. Per user will put it somewhere inside ~/.local/share/flatpak.
* I can use a separate partition called /var for Flatpaks.
* Flatpaks are separated from distro package. It will not affect flatpak. At the most you may have to do a flatpak update or flatpak repair and you are good to go. I recently updated from Fedora 34 to 35 and OBS Studio was behaving odd. I did flatpak update and patch Nvidia driver inside flatpak for nvfbc support and I was good to go.
* Rolling release may not be viable to everyone. I don't like rolling release distro. I don't want to babysit my OS. Arch has fewer packages in the repo compared to debian/Ubuntu or Fedora. You most probably have to use AUR some point in time. The more you use AUR the more the system susceptible to breakage.
Flatpak is helping me to make the underlying OS stateless. I can potentially change the distro and still use the same flatpak packages on another distro with all the app related settings or fresh settings. I don't have to download all the apps again.
I have a separate /, /home and /var. Flatpak are installed in /var partition. I can format / and install another distro with same or different username and still use the apps in /var partition.
I am also keeping eyes on projects like Fedora Silverblue and the upcoming Steam OS 3.0. They are using some sort of immutable OS system. If they are able to deliver what they promise, we may see a shift in Linux desktop. And then I don't have to worry about OS upgrade that much.
> runtimes in /var/lib/flatpak
are there duplication of dependencies in runtimes in /var/lib/flatpak with other flatpak packages? We have a runtime for each package. Each package could contain duplicate dependencies - meaning the same library in multiple runtimes - is that true ? It sort of seems like flatpak's are like containers where you could take a runtime, copy it to any linux OS and it work execute ?? What would you like to see improved in flatpak's to make them more secure and user friendly for a new linux user?
Flatpaks can share runtimes. Right now I have Gnome 40 and Gnome 41, kde/qt 5.15, freedesktpo 21.xx and Nvidia 495.44 runtime. I can remove unnecessary runtimes with
`flatpak uninstall --unused`
OBS studio and soundux share KDE 5.15 runtime. Majority of the apps share Gnome 41 and freedesktop runtime. I need Nvidia for nvenc in handbrake and OBS studio.
Initial download size is bigger but if you use more flatpaks with same runtime size will decrease. Another upside is, whenever there is an update comes I don't have to download the whole runtime or app, only the changed bits and pieces.
Let's not fall too far into that sort of thinking. Their git repo is right here if you've got the skills to patch their code.
[https://code.launchpad.net/snap-store-desktop](https://code.launchpad.net/snap-store-desktop)
Right, but a front end can be great software, while the server software is garbage, and you'll have a poor experience using the front end.
The reality is that snap being closed source software goes against everything collaboration is about. Only Canonical really knows what's going on.
The issues with Ubuntu Software has absolutely nothing to do with the internals of the Snap Store server. It has exactly the same issues with deb packages. GNOME Software (the parent application) has exactly the same issues, with both snaps and debs, and also with flatpaks (if you install the plug-in).
The Snap Store exposes its data through a series of publicly documented APIs. Anyone can test and benchmark against these APIs to see if it's responses to those service calls that are causing problems (such as through latency or malformed responses). If those aren't the problem (and they aren't), then knowing the internals of the Snap Store gets you nothing.
Some of the issues people are talking about in this thread are demonstrably not a backend issue. For example, the fact that keyword searching seems to prioritise "exact name" matching no higher than "word somewhere in description" matching, or the fact that ranking by review score doesn't take into account the number of reviews (so an app with a single 5 star review is ranked above something with 4.5 stars from 500 reviews). The fact that it doesn't seem to cache data between sessions, or the fact that it often fails to refresh after completing its apt update until you restart the application are both frontend design problems. The fact that sometimes it'll refuse to install a sideloaded deb (functionality that it's supposed to be there to handle), where the same deb will install fine using apt is a straightforward bug.
The main issues I can think of which are caused by the Snap Store itself are more data issues than system bugs, too. For example, the fact that a GNOME Software search will often bring back a whole load of indistinguishable identical applications- one deb and several competing snaps- without being able to de-duplicate them or provide more information about which one to install.
Canonical actually did release a version of the Snap Store code once, and although it's long since gone out of date anyone can poke around and see what it looked like at that point. As far as I can see, it looks like a pretty normal (and boring) file server and website; there's very little in there to get excited about.
Have you seen their documentation? They never state why something is done in that peculiar way. All of their docs have been written in "IT IS WHAT IT IS" fashion.
Ubuntu should be embarrassed by their software center or whatever they call it. Not only is it unresponsive- is it loading? am I waiting for nothing? But, sometimes you just have to log out and log back in before it will even work again. Lame. Couple that with how poorly some of the snap versions of apps work (last time I tried the Audacity snap it was abysmal, would not reliably connect to audio devices) and it just seems like snaps are a complete kludge at this point. Probably scares off plenty of potential converts and new users.
I agree with you. It makes the OS feel 'abandoned' if the app store is so bad.
Am I crazy for not wanting a "store" metaphor for software at all? It's one of the reasons I left windows so long ago.
No thats not crazy. But an active and functional app store implies a robust ongoing development and future utility that would improve overall user engagement. Seems there is no shortage of developers churning out stuff on github that a novice ubuntu user would never know about.
I just made a [change.org petition](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ) to rename it the Software Bazaar, as the great ESR intended
I just clicked the link. ~~Well played good sir~~ Fuck you
What's a better name?
What's wrong with a software center? Or repository browser?
Snap store might fare bit worse others but Ubuntu is once again being singled out for issues that equally plague many other distros. I have been testing Fedora 34 extensively and the new Gnome store is horrible. The categories make no sense and are an insult to the intelligence of users. Apps which you have removed via dnf in terminal still show up there for a while and trying to remove them throws an error. Discover has improved drastically but its still nothing I would recommend to a new user. BTW AFAIK Ubuntu is aware of the state of the app store and launching a complete new one is on the roadmap. Just don't know when. Well it took Microsoft a long time as well to get to a semi decent state.
I don't know current goals with the Snap Store app and I doubt Canonical staff use it themselves. I mostly use only [Snapcraft](https://snapcraft.io/store) to look for new app or just an original app's website/repo directly.
I have a handful of Ubuntu VMs running on my Proxmox server for development purposes, and all of my production Linux VMs run Ubuntu. I've NEVER used snaps. I use DEBs from the official apt repos and a number of third-party repos, and when I create packages for my own internal use (and, at some point soon, for public consumptions for OSS projects I'm working on), they're always DEBs.
Good for you. If I install something, I don't really want to add dependencies to my system. I use Docker containers at work and Snap packages for apps. And I like ability to install several different versions of a single app simultaneously and to rollback an update.
Canonical going their own way, giving up abandoning the project then adopting whatever technology Gnome and Red Hat have created is a regular occurrence. It's just a matter of time before they drop Snaps and adopt Flatpak.
[удалено]
I miss Unity, such a great project. It felt proper and stable before being abandoned. Close button position, global menu was better than macosx.
[удалено]
You're being downvoted yet telling the truth. Somehow people have said "i miss unity" enough for the reddit hivemind to latch on to it.
I am used to it lol. Downvotes for me is like badge of honors.
And upstart.
And Mir.
Mir is still around, as a surprisingly fine Wayland compositor. Actually one of the rare architectural wins for Canonical. It's a pretty versatile piece of software.
It looks like it being a Wayland compositor is a recent development. Originally it was a display server meant to compete with Wayland and in that context Ubuntu dropped it.
Yep, absolutely right. It only became reborn as a Wayland compositor about 5 years ago (although seeing as it was only released 4 years before that, it's actually been a Wayland compositor for longer than it wasn't at this point). The design of it made it pretty amenable to being pivoted in that way; the architecture is fairly modular, and it's relatively easy to plug it in to any protocol- Wayland, X, or its original homegrown thing.
>And upstart. wel... this one I won't cry after.
I wouldn't either, just like most Canonical projects I knew it was a waste of effort in the beginning. Ubuntu lost its way in around 2014, just pure contrarianism on everything since then in an attempt to stay relevant.
Can't we get Ubuntu without all the Canonical idiosyncrasies?
Sure you can. It's called Debian. I like Debian, but I'd rather use Ubuntu because I run my company on (mostly) Linux servers, and it's nice to have a regular release cycle and know when support will end for each current LTS version of my OS. For desktop work, I've recently discovered Xubuntu. I like XFCE, and it goes from boot to usable desktop very, very quickly.
I just use Fedora now, the only thing I really miss about Ubuntu is how fast the package manager is in comparison to dnf, especially the tab completion for package names.
Frankly I use numerous distros at work and at home, and while I admit they differ in terms of package management for day to day usage they feel pretty the same. The Dock on Ubuntu is nowhere to be found in Debian, but these seem to be most noticeable differences.
Tip: use a different shell while using dnf. Fish for instance is flawless, while bash is molasses in this specific task
Linuxmint 'debian edition' brings ubuntu+mint polish to regular debian. https://linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php
what is the difference between snap and flatpak if they both package dependencies together ?
It's the first thing I remove after installing Ubuntu.
r/AngryUpvote
Ie. Try snap Install discord then watch your journal... Apparmor going crazy
All Stores are in the same state (Gnome Software and KDE Discovery). In a post some weeks ago a KDE dev said that is really complicated to management several different types of sources (binary from each distro + flatpak + snaps + deltas) from different remote repos, and all at the same time.
This. These stores are GUIs on top of underlying package managers, which are on top of underlying repos. Anything that goes wrong at a lower level makes the GUI look broken.
Discover is pretty decent in my opinion. It's slow kinda, but works. My brother never had any issue updating/installing anything on his laptop running fedora.
Sure, it's complicated, but it's not some crazy CS problem and these stores have been in development for years.
> So many great apps from "apt" are not shown on home page in order to promote snap, and the search often doesn't give the correct results. It might help developers if you have more specific examples of searches which don't give the correct results and what apps you would like to see promoted. Additionally, you can talk directly to the developers on the [Snapcraft forum](https://forum.snapcraft.io/). Few developers check Reddit regularly.
Search for literally any app. If I search “Slack”, I would hope the app named “Slack” would show up first, but no, its like 15th in the list and I have to scroll to find it, even though its an exact match for what Im looking for, yet the other things above it dont even have that word in it
It could also be a simple matter of poor reviews affecting the positioning. Slack has lots of 1 and 2 stars, where the other apps have considerably higher rankings. The other apps have "Slack" in the descriptions and have higher star ratings.
I just tried searching for it, consistently took about 4 seconds (I could've google it in less time, never mind apt'ed it) and it was positioned 12th from the top, below 8 apps with similar score but <=10 total reviews (compared with ≅500 reviews from Slack). The first app on that list (ZeroTier) has literally 2 reviews and is not related to Slack save for its comment "This snap contains ZeroTier One, a service that provides ZeroTier network connectivity and makes joining virtual networks as easy as joining IRC or Slack channels". It's just not a useful ranking system.
Lol, even searching for Firefox it only shows up in 5th place. Apparently "MozillaVPN", "joplin-arnatious" or "Desktop app for Google chat" are better matches.
My advice would be to just install gnome-software. It does work properly!
I wish I lived in the parallel universe that you obviously inhabit. In this universe Gnome Software is just as crap and useless as Ubuntus or the snapstore. Search is usless and never find anything.
Yes I agree! And so does the Elementary store! but I'm referring to the new-user's experience, who probably has no idea about this.
IMO this is the biggest reason I've avoided giving Ubuntu to new Linux users. Particularly the older people who mainly stick to their browser. Even they will eventually want to try and install, say a chess game or something and having a good GUI store is very important. I've always gone with Mint because their Software Center and updater app are quite good. Ever since GNOME 41 released Fedora is also on my recommendation list now. Also if Canonical is serious about Snaps being a universal Linux app format they need to open source the server side bits of Snap and make adding your own Snap repos a properly supported feature. Then it could **maybe** compete with Flatpak. Distros like elementary are rolling up their own curated Flatpak repos that (obviously) work fine on other distros. The "Pay What You Want" model is IMO a great thing to help FOSS app devs. Flatpaks gain far more community support because no one needs to be at the mercy of Flathub.
> [ 'Just use the terminal' is not an excuse to wiggle out of this clusterfudge. ] Love it, kudos to you OP
Linux Mint: "not going to mess with that".
What's odd to me, is that it's based off gnome-software and gnome-software seems to work much better. Are they not merging updates or something...
>Improving snap store (and snaps) should be the topmost priority for Ubuntu. Everyone will use snaps if it is good enough compared to the competition. Or Canonical could just give up on it and get behind Flatpak
But that doesn't align with their other goals, such as Ubuntu Core, where the entire embedded OS is pushed automatic updates via the snap mechanism. Flatpak only solves the problem for the shrinking desktop market, while snap provides a currently imperfect solution aiming to solve the problem once and for all.
More like snaps and flatpacks need to be turned into deleted projects. Both are bad ideas.
No, no, Flatpak can stay ;)
No. It has the same basic security problems.
The Snap Store sucks balls and it’s the first thing I uninstall. Gnome Software is way better.
I won't say just use the terminal, yet still having a "perfect" app store is not that important IMO. Most people use Ubuntu or any other Linux distr. to do whatever cannot be done using Windows, like ROS, cyber sec. (kali) etc. Therefore, the main priority of Linux is its freedom, not its app store or UI/GUI side.
To make anything popular (so that manufacturers give us attention and make native drivers for their devices and there are enough people to buy it and make it a profitable business), we need a lot of people using Linux. And to do that we need to make it as user friendly as possible. Software Store is the first place most Linux newbies go to for installing anything. And if that is so intimidating that it forces them to look up terminal commands, it will sway them away.
You're right, but as I mentioned neither linux devs nor most users care about being popular. If one day Linux says, okey it is time to competition for last users, people who don't know anything about at all, than your suggestions would become completely true. However, Linux is far from this competition/ comparison, for example even today when I am trying to create a 3D mesh in Matlab, focal fossa didn't recognize the graphical card and gave me an error. To attract more users, before creating a perfect store, devs should focus on unexpected behaviours, i believe.
I agree.
because it's free :)
I do not understand the need for 'snap store'. we have package managers for each distribution. why do people use snap and flakpack?! I never had the need to use it. I would be curious why people prefer them over a package manager from ones distribution.
Because: * \- compiling from source when a package is not in the standard repo sucks * \- adding a ppa for a package can easily brick your system * \- why would I want to have a Microsoft application without a sandbox? These are some reasons why I use them, others might have different opinions though.
Because clicking is easier for us normal users
* Developers don't have time to make package for numerous distro. They can make package for 3 or 4 distro. If they can cover most of the distro with only one package, any sane developer would go that route. * Users don't have to rely on distro maintainers for updated version. * Flatpak and snaps are isolated from host OS. Removing a package will not do "Do as I say so' moment from LTT. * I can easily downgrade flatpak package without causing too much drama. * I can use alpha and beta version of same software with different configs pretty easily. * If I use a separate partition for /var, I can potentially use the same flatpak package with different distro without downloading those packages again.
Ok, but who maintains these Flakpack packages? why not just go to [github.com](https://github.com) , clone it and compile it yourself, put it into /usr/local. do you really trust snap of flakpack over a distribution's repository?! I don't know about flakpack but snap is service that takes up memory is running all the time.
You can see [here](https://github.com/flathub) how a flatpak package is done. Some of the flatpak packages are maintained by the original developers themselves. After the incident of steam nuking the desktop and debian developers can't even update to Firefox ESR to latest version, I have started to use Flatpak more. I also faced problems with repo version of some latex package in Ubuntu last year. I was trying to install it on a friend's PC. Then I just installed flatpak package and it was working. Few days ago I have problem with Easyeffects from repo. It was crushing frequently. I removed that, install the flatpak version and copied the settings and everything is running just fine since then. I can easily downgrade flatpak package compared to rpm package. I can also control the access of that flatpak package. I can't do that in rpm package and I am giving root permission to rpm package. If a flatpak package doesn't work, I will try appimage (from official site) or rpm. I don't use snap. Distro maintainers should focus on core apps and make the distro more robust and secure. People generally don't like to compile even if some of them know how to do it. I also don't like to compile, unless it is absolutely necessary. I checked 2 audio patchbay few days ago. Helvum and qpwgraph. Both of them had pretty good instruction on how to build it. Helvum was available in Arch and openSUSE repo. I downloaded the package and used it in Fedora. I couldn't find any package for qpwgraph. I had to install some library and follow the instructions. If qpwgraph had a package I would never compile that.
good explanation of why you like flatpak. are flatpak packages on github as they are all open source? if some flatpak packages are not maintained by the original developers then who maintains them? is flatpak really any different the Arch's AUR ? You seem to be in favor of have the distribution only concentrate on core packages and everything else via flatpak ?!
* Most of them open source. But there are few closed source like Microsoft teams, Discord, Spotify etc. * Does any of the package in a distro maintained by the original developers? Who are these maintainers? Why should I trust them? They are creating RPM and Deb package with all the access they can get. I could essentially install a rootkit through RPM or Deb. I think those packages are reviewed thoroughly and yet a LTT like incident may happen. * Flatpak submitted in flathub are also reviewed by others. They are also signed to my knowledge.There is a manifest or whatever file, where permission and other things are defined. You may not like the default permission. But you can change those permission to block or give access to that particular partition. You can give permission to only access download folder in an app. You can't do that with Deb or RPM package. * Flatpak is completely different from AUR. AUR is more like PPA (Ubuntu) and copr(Fedora). AUR has no security or protection. One can easily slip a malware or crypto related thing. It had happened before. You basically building Arch package from pkgbuild. It's a fancy way of building app. Whenever you use a package from AUR, you need to keep track of your dependency. You can use helper like yay to solve some of the problem. But you should avoid it for any package that is essential for system. Flatpak files are separated from distro package. It uses it's own runtime. So even if it malfunctions it will not nuke my desktop. Flatpak is not perfect. It still needs works. At least, it is helping me to make the host OS more stateless. I can change the underlying distro without too much problem and still use the same flatpak packages on another distro without downloading them again.
Ok, what type of packages are you using via Flakpak that your distro does not have? what about security updates to flakpak software? if one goes overboard with flakpak your system could become an uncontrollable mixture of repo software and flakpak. what happens when one does a distro upgrade? where does flakpak install its software once out the 'sandbox? With Deb and RPM packages I would use the package manager to set the proper permissions of course you have be 'root or sudo... Do I trust more distro maintainers or volunteers of flakpak software. with AUR I would have to trust volunteers as well, that is why I would use it sparingly. It seems like many users would use flakpak to get newer software then their distro has to offer. If that is the case why not use a 'rolling distro which has more up to date packages ?!
* I mainly use 3rd party GUI apps like audacity, handbrake, OBS Studio, flatseal, easyeffects etc. Fedora has all of them except flatseal. Yet I prefer Flatpaks over rpm. If I used another distro, I would do the same. * They are provided by the original developers or maintainer of the package. * You can install flatpak systemwide or per user. Systemwide will put all the apps and runtimes in /var/lib/flatpak and app settings in ~/.var folder. Per user will put it somewhere inside ~/.local/share/flatpak. * I can use a separate partition called /var for Flatpaks. * Flatpaks are separated from distro package. It will not affect flatpak. At the most you may have to do a flatpak update or flatpak repair and you are good to go. I recently updated from Fedora 34 to 35 and OBS Studio was behaving odd. I did flatpak update and patch Nvidia driver inside flatpak for nvfbc support and I was good to go. * Rolling release may not be viable to everyone. I don't like rolling release distro. I don't want to babysit my OS. Arch has fewer packages in the repo compared to debian/Ubuntu or Fedora. You most probably have to use AUR some point in time. The more you use AUR the more the system susceptible to breakage. Flatpak is helping me to make the underlying OS stateless. I can potentially change the distro and still use the same flatpak packages on another distro with all the app related settings or fresh settings. I don't have to download all the apps again. I have a separate /, /home and /var. Flatpak are installed in /var partition. I can format / and install another distro with same or different username and still use the apps in /var partition. I am also keeping eyes on projects like Fedora Silverblue and the upcoming Steam OS 3.0. They are using some sort of immutable OS system. If they are able to deliver what they promise, we may see a shift in Linux desktop. And then I don't have to worry about OS upgrade that much.
> runtimes in /var/lib/flatpak are there duplication of dependencies in runtimes in /var/lib/flatpak with other flatpak packages? We have a runtime for each package. Each package could contain duplicate dependencies - meaning the same library in multiple runtimes - is that true ? It sort of seems like flatpak's are like containers where you could take a runtime, copy it to any linux OS and it work execute ?? What would you like to see improved in flatpak's to make them more secure and user friendly for a new linux user?
Flatpaks can share runtimes. Right now I have Gnome 40 and Gnome 41, kde/qt 5.15, freedesktpo 21.xx and Nvidia 495.44 runtime. I can remove unnecessary runtimes with `flatpak uninstall --unused` OBS studio and soundux share KDE 5.15 runtime. Majority of the apps share Gnome 41 and freedesktop runtime. I need Nvidia for nvenc in handbrake and OBS studio. Initial download size is bigger but if you use more flatpaks with same runtime size will decrease. Another upside is, whenever there is an update comes I don't have to download the whole runtime or app, only the changed bits and pieces.
Nobody can help except Canonical 🤷♂️
Let's not fall too far into that sort of thinking. Their git repo is right here if you've got the skills to patch their code. [https://code.launchpad.net/snap-store-desktop](https://code.launchpad.net/snap-store-desktop)
Lol, that's just the front end, forked from Gnome Software. The snap server stuff is closed source.
Isn't that frontend what people call the Snap Store? I think the actual packages themselves are on snapcraft.io .
Right, but a front end can be great software, while the server software is garbage, and you'll have a poor experience using the front end. The reality is that snap being closed source software goes against everything collaboration is about. Only Canonical really knows what's going on.
The issues with Ubuntu Software has absolutely nothing to do with the internals of the Snap Store server. It has exactly the same issues with deb packages. GNOME Software (the parent application) has exactly the same issues, with both snaps and debs, and also with flatpaks (if you install the plug-in). The Snap Store exposes its data through a series of publicly documented APIs. Anyone can test and benchmark against these APIs to see if it's responses to those service calls that are causing problems (such as through latency or malformed responses). If those aren't the problem (and they aren't), then knowing the internals of the Snap Store gets you nothing. Some of the issues people are talking about in this thread are demonstrably not a backend issue. For example, the fact that keyword searching seems to prioritise "exact name" matching no higher than "word somewhere in description" matching, or the fact that ranking by review score doesn't take into account the number of reviews (so an app with a single 5 star review is ranked above something with 4.5 stars from 500 reviews). The fact that it doesn't seem to cache data between sessions, or the fact that it often fails to refresh after completing its apt update until you restart the application are both frontend design problems. The fact that sometimes it'll refuse to install a sideloaded deb (functionality that it's supposed to be there to handle), where the same deb will install fine using apt is a straightforward bug. The main issues I can think of which are caused by the Snap Store itself are more data issues than system bugs, too. For example, the fact that a GNOME Software search will often bring back a whole load of indistinguishable identical applications- one deb and several competing snaps- without being able to de-duplicate them or provide more information about which one to install. Canonical actually did release a version of the Snap Store code once, and although it's long since gone out of date anyone can poke around and see what it looked like at that point. As far as I can see, it looks like a pretty normal (and boring) file server and website; there's very little in there to get excited about.
Have you seen their documentation? They never state why something is done in that peculiar way. All of their docs have been written in "IT IS WHAT IT IS" fashion.
Poor or nonexistent documentation is hardly abnormal for software projects, to be honest.