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Comment by _nodg | Hacker News Reader

I haven't been impressed with snap as a user.

The jetbrains stuff keeps several versions around by default, which eats disk space. I'm sure there's a way to change that, but I haven't cared enough to dig.

The other day I ran `apt install chromium-browser` on a brand new install; it chose to install via snap (grr) and then snapd promptly crashed ("Waiting for restart" -- https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/installing-the-chromium-snap-in...), but apt's wrapper wasn't notified. I ended up ctrl-Cing, which left dkpg (somehow involved) in an inconsistent state. Took several iterations of dkpg reconfigure and apt update to recover. I've been on linux for 20 years, so not a big deal for me, but my experience has been that snap is less newbie friendly than apt.

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By default, snapd keeps three copies of older versions of a snap package. It does so, so that you can revert easily to a previous version if the latest version does not work. You can disable this feature by setting the appropriate key to `1`.

There is a negative sentiment around snap packages. Even if you are an experienced Linux user, you fall into that negative sentiment and even if an issue is small, it is a deal-breaker for you.

The "chromium" issue has been explained in 2019. Ubuntu 20.04 does not plan to package "chromium" as a deb package (too difficult to maintain properly), therefore there was a need for a backup plan if users were trying to install it.

> Even if you are an experienced Linux user, you fall into that negative sentiment and even if an issue is small, it is a deal-breaker for you.

I don't think that's fair. Apt/deb is solid, battle tested, and works. Introducing snap with this kind of instability is the source of the negativity.

> The "chromium" issue has been explained in 2019.

And the fact that it still crashes in 2020, on a flagship package on a modern laptop, is really really bad. In fact I had the same crash happen during a dist-upgrade on another laptop(!) which locked up the entire dist-upgrade.

If apt is going to call snap, it needs to be rock solid.

> The jetbrains stuff keeps several versions around by default, which eats disk space. I'm sure there's a way to change that, but I haven't cared enough to dig.

See "refresh.retain" from https://snapcraft.io/docs/keeping-snaps-up-to-date - the point is that you can revert an update instantly.

I mean I get it. I don't think the defaults are right though. It could be smarter - automatic purge 7 days after user has used new version, or something along those lines. Keeping 3 versions just in case doesn't sound like anybody's ideal.

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