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Comment by Wowfunhappy | Hacker News Reader

Ugh, is it still impossible to disable Snap autoupdates?

Even if people should be updating regularly, forcing them feels completely antithetical to the Linux ethos of users having control over their devices.

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The Snap team has some experience with this, seeing as how 20.04 has released and you still can't move the fricking ~/snap folder. Creating some generically named top-level folder in the users home directory is a straightforward fuck you to all users.

Since 2017: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snapd/+bug/1575053

Yeah. That is what winds me up the most about snap. It is so... obnoxious! Why can’t it be .snap?! Or even better, something xdg compliant?

Dang, that really sucks. I was planning on updating my desktop to 20.04 but after reading about Canonical pushing snaps and now this thread basically claiming that moving or renaming the directory is impossible because what is in my opinion a design flaw in the entire system design, I think I'll switch to Manjaro or Arch for my desktop instead.

I am on the rolling releases already but I'm not going to install an LTS version that is so deeply integrated with the distributor while at the same time ignores the directory standards so incredible blatantly.

arch is really a pleasure to use on the desktop, especially if you're already comfortable with a rolling release distro.

I agree, I'm using Manjaro on my laptop and it works like a treat. I have read the horror stories of a botched Arch upgrade so I think I'll stick to the slightly-more-stable Manjaro but the ecosystem itself is very nice for the moderately familiar Linux user.

I develop software that tries to target as many distros as possible, and I really don't see how Manjaro is in any way better than Arch. Botched upgrades aside, Manjaro is the only distro that couldn't produce a valid iso to boot on KVM/qemu. It has a very weird kernel config, sometimes users don't seem to have modules that are found on literally any other distro. Which is very sad because Arch just works.

In my experience the Manjaro config tends to work better on some of the hardware I've tried it on, requiring less tweaking to get it to run properly.

I'll also admit that I can't for the life of me get Arch to properly install with all the tools and features that are normally built-in to desktop environments to work on first boot. I'm sure I can make it work if I give it another try now that I've gotten more used to using Manjaro, but the Arch installation experience is not something I want to go through again any time soon.

I understand that most Arch users will want to decide exactly how they set up their system and all, but for my personal (non-work) machine I just want an operating system that works, allows me to mess with the standard Linux stuff and manages to install itself without me holding its hand. I'd much rather tick a box that says "enable full disk encryption" than manually configure cryptsetup and LUKS parameters. It's just too much effort for what I get out of it.

Void Linux is also great if you're not a fan of systemd.

I love arch.

I think the (not that bad) manual installation process might keep some folks from installing it, but it makes you learn to choose from the very beginning.

After the initial install, update it on your schedule, and install things as you decide they are needed.

Ubuntu is the opposite -- install the world, then go madly trying to disable and remove the phone-home, forced-update, bloat.

  # ps

(see pages of stuff you don't need running)

pop os would be good alternative too. since pop os will be on flatpak n apt.

Would you expect anything else from the distro that rammed half-baked versions of systemd, pulseaudio, and unity down users throats?

I really wish it had been .snap

This. Came here to post the same bug. I've been following the thread for the last 3 years, and it's an absolute mess.

I feel bad for the maintainers; it must be difficult to deal with all the rude and borderline disrespectful comments -- and particularly for something you're donating your time for free after all. But I must say that the architectural decision of creating a ~/snap was a colossal mistake.

Are they really donating their time, aren't they Canonical employees? Canonical being a company that is paid mostly by companies that use their distro in production?

My response to "it's free" is "Here's a turd. SHUT UP IT'S FREE"

It's not an argument. It's freeness is a completely irrelevant property.

Props to Microsoft, for getting their approach to Windows updates adopted as an industry standard! /s

Next step, introduce the mandatory restart as a standard.

But wait for the user to have a week-long job running for three days before you do it. That way they have to explain to their boss why there is now a 3 day delay.

It's critical? Don't use hobbyist software for that then. Take Debian or CentOS or something else with a non-cavalier development culture.

Ubuntu is "hobbyist" now? That's certainly not how they bill their entire platform.

I’m not sure how they’re trying to bill it these days, but certainly actions speak louder than words. All of Canonical’s design decisions seem to be aimed at making a consumer OS rather than a workstation or server one.

Ubuntu, no. Snap, seemingly yes.

She was asking for it by wearing that eh?

If it's good enough for Boeing...

I think automatic updates on all platforms are probably an immense net benefit to the world given the huge degree of security vulnerabilities it avoids.

Ubuntu users may be more tech proficient than average users but even for developer machines, I think it takes a lot of concern out of the equation if the software is up-to-date.

As far as I'm concerned this doesn't deserve an '/s'.

The option to have automatic updates (whether it is enabled by default or not) is an entirely different issue than the obligation to have automatic updates. The first one is a blessing, the second one is a nightmare.

Yep: https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-automatic-refresh-for...

I remember updating Ubuntu once. It bricked my installation for some reason. Ever since then I rarely update software.

With Ubuntu I just wait until the next LTS.

May as well use Debian and escape the insanity.

An important clarification: You never upgrade across major versions in place, or you never `apt-get upgrade`? I understand not jumping versions, but never applying security updates seems... imprudent.

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