What Are Snaps for Linux

Snappy is a universal packaging format with sandboxing capabilities originally designed for Ubuntu phone and Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

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[sonickk]

I'm not a fan of sandboxed applications, but aside from that I think snaps are beneficial to a regular user. They can just get a snap and install it. I just prefer building from source or doing pacman -S/apt-get install to get my package.

[michaeljamesmoore]

I use a bunch of them for electron applications on Debian. Never been a fan of continuously grafting ppa's into sources.list. AUR is tops though for efficiency.

[aeriose]

I don't exactly understand the security aspect of snaps. Are you saying that the OS keeps strict permission rules on what the snap is allowed to access? Would this mean that snaps are unable to be malicious unless the user gives explicit permission for the snap to have write permissions outside the install folder?

[MrVecheater]

Won't snaps increase the risk of some problems never getting fixed?
If a bug in a shared library gets fixed, every program gets this fix.

But snaps require each individual program to update their libraries. Some programs will probably never recieve these patches or take too long to apply them

[TaylorSwifty]

Great video, quick question tho, I’m using Parrot OS and I just installed discord via snap install and I checked the snap discord’s confinement level, it’s set to strict. But when I tested my web cam on the discord app, it just worked, shouldn’t I receive a prompt/interface to accept or decline the apps connection to the webcam? Isn’t the discord app supposed to be sandboxed?

[serge]

Hello quidsup ! I prefer to rely on the native package manager. On Gentoo if the package is not in the official repos you can fetch the sources yourself and build it yourself or get them/it from a reliable overlay.
Best regards,
Serge

[mspeter]

This is a bit new to me but here's a small question:
So once I install a snap package, I don't touch it at all? It'll do whatever it needs on its own?

[tostoday]

Actually snaps is what happens when a Windows user loses his mind trying to fix a problem in Linux :)

[BruceChastain]

thanks for the video, I just installed my first snap app

[BaDitO]

I don't really get the hate about snaps. wouldn't it fix most of the packaging problems across most distros?

[llothar]

Do i see this correctly: Snaps (via the snap build chain) still require to use one predefined built system? This was Canonicals huge previous mistake a few years ago when they started there software store - and thought they can make 3rd party vendors push their proprietary software source onto Canonicals Build Servers - not even worth considering it.

Our software is not using Git/Travis and has a very well working inhouse build system. If i can't configure this or has to outsource the build to an untrustable 3rd party then this is not a solution not for our company and not for anyone i know who sells proprietary software.

[ryanyoder]

The squashfs format doesn't really have anything to do with the sandbox. The sandbox is mostly provided by AppArmor.

[abinthomas]

I recently installed arch from scratch. It is my only operating system now. How much useful is this snaps thing for me?

[jeremycheatham]

I'm interested, but my concern is that when Snaps becomes available for Mac and Windows users, it'll have more people working for those companies helping to manage it. Thus it could lead to certain conflicting agendas. LOL Windows 10 installation pushed via snaps :D

[lemler]

What's wrong with the old fashioned tar ball?

[JackOwens]

Do snap programs automatically update?

[shater]

0:15 Really quids Really! that snap meme! lets do a flat and appimg memes!

Snapd is spyware. It tracks all usage of all snap packages per user.

[JamesR]

Ahh SNAPS, the "Windows Store/Mac App Store" garbage now being pushed on linux users. Ubuntu 17.10 is a pain in the dick due to this horrible crap. The Ubuntu Software Center has turned into the garbage heap that Apple users and Windows users consider the Mac App Store and Windows Store to be.