Is Ubuntu Changing the Desktop As We Know It?

Today we talk about Ubuntu's upcoming full snap desktop and what this could mean for the future of the Linux desktop.
#ubuntu #snaps #linux

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[SwitchedtoLinux]

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[VictorYarema]

Very good sober analysis of the situation. And special thanks for explaining some technical details here and there. Very good balance of material you provided. Thanks!

[henryomad]

I ran neofetch the other day and noticed I was running LMDE - I forgot I had installed that when the last major update came, I was intending just to try it out for a couple of weeks but it is so good now that I completely forgot I was not using the "normal" linux mint. Ubuntu is becoming irrelevant I think.

[joshua_lee]

Flatpak and Flathub is proof that the community doesn't care about the centralized repo argument....

[basilcat]

For those who criticize Ubuntu, please wake me up when there is an actual good contender(That's not based on Debian) that ships third-party drivers and codecs in the iso.

[m.m]

NixOS is not immutable.
The base system files (in /etc for example) are editable. It does not separate base system from applications, the whole system is based on different applications and components that you can swap in and out.

[Ben-hgbz]

They started with Chromium not available in deb package, at that time I removed ubuntu and installed Debian.
Chromium in Snap was just the beginning

[GoodNewsTech]

I hear a lot about immutable OS's lately and how they help keep your system stable and secure. But I haven't heard anything about how their containerized applications can be audited. Is it possible to audit Snaps, Flatpaks, or AppImages in order to maintain a FOSS system?

[kpcraftster]

Let me play -the devil's- Canonical's advocate (Please fact-check and debunk!):
- Snaps are completely locked-down by Canonical, whereas Red Hat is far less controlling of flatpaks. Ideally [though apparently not in practice], that means snaps should be better audited than flatpaks.
- Snaps can package software that flatpaks cannot (e.g. servers, daemons, drivers or even a kernel).
- Snaps support differential updates and rollbacks, where flatpaks require the whole package to be replaced, yet without offering the benefits of not sharing libraries, not requiring root privileges, being portable or being atomically installed and updated (cf. appimages, nix and guix).
- Flatpaks require prefixes, to be run from the command line, and must be manually added to menu systems (e.g. dmenu), where snaps should just work.

[rayzer]

i had to install ubuntu 22.04 on a laptop recently due to some wifi driver issues but i removed snapd and changed the desktop to xubuntu's. its running away nicely without snap or flatpak on it, might be the last version of ubuntu ill run if the snaps are made mandatory across the other spins.

[bobbyfried]

LMDE should get more attention...ubuntu is doing some freaky stuff.

[paulgee-ij]

In what ways, if any, are Flatpaks or appimages less likely to distribute malware?
All I keep hearing about is how snaps are a disaster but no evidence is given.

[AbdelazizYakout]

Ubuntu is going to the right direction

[JustinGoldsmith]

I kind of made the same switch I made from Windows to Ubuntu. Started using Arch on a second disk off and on and now I'm using it full time. I was really swayed by the option to use flatpack or snap if you want them. That and it's like Arch and KDE were made for each other. Arch at home, Fedora at work, and Garuda for the kids. IMO Canonical has gone full Microsoft. I still use Ubuntu server for a lot of my servers but even there I've started moving to Debian stable.

[tonywise]

Thanks for a rational video, although I believe that Canonical are causing Ubuntu to commit suicide in the long run.

[fredmckinney]

Ubuntu, IMHO, is digging its own grave. I refuse to have anything to do with Snaps. This is part of why I dumped Ubuntu in favor of Debian Stable.

[leendert]

It's a pity LMDE keeps crashing in my multi boot .
LM doesn't.

[noferblatz]

This is why I've avoided Ubuntu completely. From the beginning, they went their own corporate way. To me, snaps seem like a way to cut out distro maintainers in favor of putting the entire burden on the upstreams. This makes sense for Ubuntu. It's expensive to pay maintainers. Instead we just trust the upstreams to do everything. I'm sticking with Debian. Because Fedora, SuSE and others are all corporate.

[rohitk]

I hope mint team focuses more on LMDE and abandons the buntu derivative.

[anonytuser]

Snaps are corporate Linux cancer. They were intended for the server but are awful execution on the desktop.

If I want an immutable desktop, I will use Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite, Nix or VanillaOS when they move to Debian Sid.