Snap is why I will never use or recommend pure Ubuntu to anyone.
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/24/whats-the-deal-with-snap-packages/
While we asked the system to install the native package, what we actually receive is the snap. The user is given no choice, no warning. If they weren’t paying close enough attention, they wouldn’t even realize what happened. At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, this is subversion.
If it was just snap I could get over it but… Canonical has a long history of doing nonsense that goes against the rest of the ecosystem as if they’re Microsoft and they can just get away with it.
Well they did team up with MS to help them with WSL so they probably share some corporate ideals
aww snap.
Why do people even use Snaps? Is their any advantage to it?
Sometimes you specifically try to install the non-snap version, and Ubuntu just says “no, you’re getting snap”. There was a kerfuffle about Ubuntu and chrome a while back.
There is sometimes an “advantage” in being able to user a new version with your OS than you would otherwise, or not needing to try to find/download dependencies.
The downside is that it’s slower, they take up more room, they have issues when the program needs to talk to other programs, and that Canonical is creating a weird walled garden.
…also, if you want something similar-ish to snaps, with the same upside and with less downsides, use flat-packs.
…but honestly, just install the actual program.
It’s the easiest way to let Canonical fuck you in the ass!
If they don’t know much about Linux then they will be duped into using it: Ubuntu guides users towards it.
Ever since the Ubuntu/Amazon thing I have tried to steer people towards Mint or just plain old Debian. People moving away from locked down/commercialized OSs shouldn’t have to deal with Canonical right out of the gate.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Canonical announced some time ago their Steam Snap which was promoted as stable with Ubuntu 23.04, as they continue to push their own packaging format with Snap but it seems this has been causing problems for Valve.
Writing on Mastodon, developer Timothee “TTimo” Besset, who works on various things for Valve posted asking people to consider using the official Valve .deb package or at least consider using the Flatpak:
Valve is seeing an increasing number of bug reports for issues caused by Canonical’s repackaging of the Steam client through snap.
The best way to install Steam on Debian and derivative operating systems is to follow the instructions at http://repo.steampowered.com/steam/ and use the official .deb
So if you’ve been having various problems with Steam on Ubuntu (or a derivative like Kubuntu), it may be because you’ve installed it as a Snap.
You can also give Canonical feedback in your issues on their Discourse Forum and report issues to Valve on GitHub.
The original article contains 207 words, the summary contains 157 words. Saved 24%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
If there was one benefit with Canonical pushing snap, it got me on using flatpaks for various things more than before.
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