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Comment by kelnos | Hacker News Reader

I think the bad vibes come from the fact that Snap is a proprietary, walled-garden system owned by Canonical. The server is not open source, so no one else can run their own Snap Store.

It's antithetical to pretty much everything about what we think of as a "Linux distro".

I would absolutely never run Ubuntu or install Snap because of this. I'll stick with Debian, thanks.

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I think it's not only that. In my opinion is also about how Canonical handles everything. Everyday they look and act more like Microsoft. Empty words to sell you something, to convince you they're better.

You can't really act like Microsoft with people that are using your OS because they ran away from Microsoft and expect them to shut up.

For example `sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade` CLI log now includes an ad

see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-advantage-t...

It advertises some Commercial product by Canonical and /r/linux subreddit.

Didn't know it had gotten that bad. I stopped using it when it was clear the desktop was no longer a priority for them. Not blaming them since they're a private company but with so many alternatives there's no need to use a second class Linux "desktop". Fedora is more than great imho.

Worse, they lock down and make their standard UI not able to be customized, and keep "deprecating" standard UI tools and configs in favor of some junior intern's idea of how real users "should" work. This sucks, and is why I won't run Ubuntu on any desktop. If I wanted to be told how to use a desktop by an OS, I'd get a f'ing Windows box or a Mac.

I use Linux because I can configure it to work the way I want. If they take that away, they are just another proprietary pile of shit.

And Apple.

snap is the naggiest thing in my computer. it seems like almost every day it's popping up notifications that snap store needs to do something and that I have like 4 days left and then I click on the notification and nothing happens. I have no idea what to do. why is desktop linux still such a piece of crap

Snaps are annoying. But Ubuntu is not the same as desktop Linux. Some alternatives: Linux Mint,[1] Fedora[2] or Silverblue,[3] Pop!_OS.[4]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Mint

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora_Linux

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora_Linux#Silverblue

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop!_OS

THIS! I run Mint 21 on my main PC with the Liquorix kernel (for game performance and desktop responsiveness under load), and it's everything I want out of a Linux distro. More stable and easy to maintain than Arch or Manjaro, more open than Pop!_OS, and just as intuitive as Ubuntu without any Snaps.

> why is desktop linux still such a piece of crap

Snap infestation is highest in Ubuntu - so I am planning to switch to some alternative (and due to other Canonical excesses like ads in CLI system tools).

My current candidates are Debian and Pop!OS.

Try Fedora. I used to be an ubuntu guy, changed to Fedora KDE years ago and never looked back.

Consider Linux Mint as well. It's about as close to "Ubuntu without Snaps" as you can get while still having a separate community and dedicated devs.

> Snap is a proprietary, walled-garden system owned by Canonical.

How do you figure? It's all open source, you can easily see it on GitHub... I know Ubuntu hosts snaps on their servers, but every distro does that. What's the proprietary part?

The server itself is proprietary and the Snap client is hardcoded to point to Canonical's servers (repos are not configurable).

There have been proof-of-concept server implementations by third parties, and some of those have been open-source. But IIRC none of them are maintained or used anywhere.

It could be worse, but at the end of the day it still just seems like a controlling, proto-monopolistic design compared to something like Flatpak, or to any traditional package management repos on Linux.

> The server itself is proprietary and the Snap client is hardcoded to point to Canonical's servers (repos are not configurable).

So fork it and change the code. This isn't the definition of "proprietary". There's still nothing stopping people from having their own snap store except a lil effort.

A client/server application where the server is proprietary isn't really a free software application as far as I'm concerned, even if the server is easy to clone. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I expect better from 'open-source' in my personal computing life, and competitors seem happy to deliver it. If that makes me fussy, oh well.

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