Ubuntu Flavors Dropping Flatpak | Hacker News Reader

Ubuntu Flavors Dropping Flatpak

discourse.ubuntu.com

14 pointslogix18 comments

Nice corporate bullshit article again, that have first thousands of worlds to tell you how they favor diversity... And this is why they will do something to ensure that you don't use anything else than their shitty snap!

I still don't understand this obsession with snap.

One of the reasons Ubuntu effectively lost the privileged spot they had won, among Linux distributions, is this obsession with rewriting backend systems instead of focusing on what brought them users in the first place: all-around polish and ease of use. These things end up generating flamewars and ill-will across users and advocates, and in most cases they simply die after some time.

They should focus again on what really matters. But I'm told Shuttleworth's mind doesn't work like that.

"They should focus again on what really matters."

I'm pretty sure what really matters to them is making money which they weren't doing but increasing have been doing since shifting focus from what you and others here seem to think they should be focusing on.

They definitely didn't make money from Unity or Mir, which is what I was referring to. In fact, they started making money when they abandoned those silly dreams, including Ubuntu Phones, and focused again on their bread and butter: providing a Linux experience that is both familiar and polished.

Snap is the last of their pointless flamewars, achieving nothing but a slowdown in adoption - the only metric that really differentiates them from the pack.

Yay! When do they get rid of snaps?

Heh, they're removing flatpak from the default installation to encourage more Snap

'For the users', please.

The maintenance cost is the same, default or no. It's being built and presumably tested if offered, this serves only to create friction

Edit: before someone says it, yes Canonical can put what they want in their distribution

Just don't try to convince me that taking away defaults improves my options. Be honest, you want to champion your thing.

This is more a criticism of their willingness to rely on dark patterns.

Yet more "snap is a dark pattern" kind of comment.

Why is snap a "dark pattern"?

Dark pattern: a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things

The 'interface' (tool availability) has been crafted such that users are likely to favor Snap over Flatpak... because Flatpak now takes a step that only serves to prop up Snap: installation of the runtime

I don't want to overstate the significance of this -- it's about as dark as dawn-break. Canonical is still maintaining/offering it, and I can get behind supporting Their Thing.

The worst thing about this is the messaging. If they had just done the thing and said nothing, I'd have nothing to complain about.

It could be taken as curation -- the messaging aims to convince that fewer options = more better.

edit: Some irony to this is we'd be closer to their idealized state of 'one way to install' had they instead chosen to adopt Flatpak over insist that Snap has to happen.

The ignorance about dark patterns is partially innocent and partially motivated. Some people cannot believe that their favorite kind of company (OSS, for example) would ever lie to them; the thought of it is too painful to bear. Or they can't believe their favorite company (Apple, for example) would lie to them or lie to others.

Garden variety self-deception.

Okay, but can you explain why getting rid of an obsolete and broken packaging system and replacing it with one that's nearly modern is a "dark pattern"?

You haven't answered the question, though.

> I don't want to overstate the significance of this -- it's about as dark as dawn-break.

I don't see any significance in it. What exactly is the problem?

I feel like I have, they've dripped water on our face and called it rain.

I don't have an issue in them preferring their solutions, I have an issue with them trying to convince us that it's for our benefit -- not theirs.

XKCD standards summarizes my sentiment well: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png

edit: Snap in itself isn't a dark pattern. I've explained why I feel like this change, and particularly the handling, is.

They're doing stuff a different way. They're getting rid of messy, broken, obsolete .deb and switching to something that's nearly as advanced as what Haiku had five years ago, Mac OSX had nearly 20 years ago, and RiscOS had 35 years ago...

debs have always been fine with me.

Same here, generally -- as a user I don't really give a bother.

As long as I can avoid building from source / hunting deps for the most part, I'm good. I'll do this for maybe 10% of what I need; beyond that it's untenable.

If I were trying to publish my thing(s) I may care more, but probably not -- I just maintain several RPMs for other projects on Fedora/EL derivatives.

debs are a nightmare compared to a SlackBuild.

Long live the .txz!

Agreed. I think they're both awful, and so far have been successful in avoiding them completely.

Ubuntu and I have never gotten along very well on a technical level, so I don't use it. Maybe that's working out for the best.

Ubuntu tends to only support these kinds of things for a few years and then they drop it. I suspect that either later this year or sometime next year they will drop it. Could be wrong, but here's hoping.

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