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Comment by worik | Hacker News Reader

Of course there is the option of moving away from Ubuntu

Canonical did good work with Ubuntu, bringing the first very good desktop distribution that was usable from a mass audience.

But time has moved on, and Canonical has moved on, too. Snap makes a of of sense for a lot of purposes. But for geeks and their desktops, not so much. Canonical is no longer interested in us.

A breakdown of a relationship is always stressful, but in this case we have just grown apart, and now we both need change.

I wish Canonical all the best in their pursuit of profits in cloud software and systems, and in the IoT world (where snaps are ideal).

I am in another relationship now. We have both moved on

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What makes snaps so ideal for IoT? I'd think all the extra overhead causes major headaches on resource constrained platforms. But I'm not really in IoT.

The containerization of snaps allows for easier control of different types of permissions. Of course the flip side of that is that snap packages often lose features because either the permissions aren't properly setup or the security model doesn't allow them. For example, the XSane (scanner) plug-in for GIMP was discontinued because GIMP moved to a containerized distribution, and the XSane developers aren't able to enable the permissions required to use scanners.

I think the real issue isn't making it work for IoT, it's making their devs spend less time on making desktop things work, so they can devote more time to IoT things.

Unattended update. SO the IoT devices get patched.

If geeks and their desktops are out, the only thing remaining for Ubuntu is server and cloud. That is okay, actually, but a bit sad.

I stopped using ubuntu on my servers and in my containers the day I tried to install a package, and it "succeeded", but then at runtime the binary I thought I'd installed just printed "This is now provided by a snap package, use that instead" and exited.

I consider ubuntu completely unsuitable for server and cloud. I don't think there is any use case they are suitable for anymore. Which is definitely sad.

This is an extreme overstatement. I have used Ubuntu LTS server editions for years without issues. It's widely without much issues. Sure, things could be better, but "completely unsuitable" is laughable. You're free to pick something else if you don't _like_ it, but that doesn't mean that it's unsuitable for server usage for a fact.

That's ridiculous.

The fact Snaps are automatically updated in the background, and users have to resort to half-assed workarounds[1], should be an absolute deal breaker for server use, where you want total control over when and if packages should be updated.

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

It depends on the server and maintainer.

I cannot remember what software it was, but some of our Ubuntu servers 2-3 years ago tried to auto update from a running piece of software to a snap based version, which failed, and then the process was killed or shut down. Needed manual intervention to rescue. It was a bit shocking at the time and I should have made some notes about this.

I mean, that's where large majority of their efforts have been for the last couple of years, at least. It's self-inflicted.

There is no money in desktop, it is self inflicted by the Linux community themselves.

You're right. Self-inflicted was the wrong term to use here. I just meant that Canonical themselves, in some part, have been pushing the desktop crowd away, even if it's a feedback loop between Canonical and the community like you allude to.

I just wish they had followed a similar approach as Red Hat have, where they're still able to place a significant amount of effort into the desktop side of things thanks to their enterprise offering and specialized focuses, like embedded systems for automobiles, which I believe is where much of the Pipewire work came about for example.

That's not to say Red Hat is perfect or a crowning example of a Linux company "done right". Rather, it's just an example.

Red-Hat officially abandoned the Linux desktop citing exactly this as a reason, that is why they became the most successful commercial distribution.

As a refresher, here is the announcement.

https://lwn.net/Articles/56947/

For Red-Hat naturally there needs to exist some form of desktop for enterprise customers, but that is as much as they care, which also reflects on GNOME decisions, as they have most of the main developers on their payroll.

I'd say that's a bit harsh - they've been employing a lot of the Wayland, Pipewire and Gnome people for example. I'm pretty sure they've been involved in a lot more core Linux Desktop projects but those are the examples I could think of in a minute.

Definitely this. As much as I like Linux, the community hasn’t been that great. So much man-hour wasted on reinventing the wheel. There’s just too much diversity in the Linux world, from distros to desktop mangers to package mangers to …

Except with snaps, its like using a desktop OS on a server, which is not really OK.

That feels most correct to me, too. Snaps are an easy way to deallocate personnel from Desktop duties without harming Server. It sounds more like an attempt at a cost-saving measure than something that benefits customers.

For the last 20 years the the only things which made the difference between the Windows Server and Windows not-server were the things which weren't available on the client SKUs at all (like Active Directery and so on).

The worst offenders were the software which doesn't allow you to install if you aren't running a servrr SKU, oyherwise I haven't any difference between a client or a server SKUs

Ubuntu has long realised that Red-Hat was right in that regard.

>But for geeks and their desktops, not so much

I don't think installing software through snaps or deb packages makes a difference in terms of geek street cred. It's a linux system, you can still do with it whatever you want, they're not locking your machine down. The idea that something can't be for a mass audience and nerds is strange.

The snaps update according to their own schedule ant it is not in the control of the owner of the machine. That is enough, do you not think, for most computer geeks to prefer another system?

Comes down to definition of Computer Geek.

> The idea that something can't be for a mass audience and nerds is strange.

Really? I completely disagree. The requirements of nerds and civilians are different

You can disable snap auto updates or control all aspects of auto updates, just like you can with apt.

Not without hacks like https://askubuntu.com/a/1270215

> The maximum number of days you can hold updates for is 60.

If I wanted a system that enforces arbitrary mandates on me, I'd use windows.

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