Lord Boltar
Well-Known Member
Probably the biggest reason why I changed my Expirion - it use to be based on Ubuntu now is based on Debian, do not have to worry about the whole Canonical thing with snaps
And in response to Ubuntu Snaps...
- Thread starter KGIII
- Start date
I'll comment on this...
Yes Canonical own/control the infrastructure Ubuntu uses, but as for decisions on where packages reside ('main' or 'universe') I see that as a Ubuntu Technical Board decision, and yes if you look at who is currently sitting on it (https://launchpad.net/~techboard/+members#active) you'll see many people who also work at Canonical thus Canonical could influence it, but I don't see direct control.
My 2c on decisions is that its always for technical reasons, though my understanding of all that is involved only scrapes the surface of the issues/alternatives & thus I have far less than full understanding of decisions I've seen.
I'm not involved with Canonical, being a Ubuntu community member, but my permissions & CC hat allows me to peruse the TB ML etc should I wish to see more than the items that already hit my inbox. Maybe what I see (which isn't control; the potential for influence for sure) is covered in your "good stewards" comment too.
They do have potential to control though; just as it is with other distributions, or in fact occurs everywhere with companies/organizations.
The standard snap packages have very limited access to your actual file-system.
Yes when installed you need to give them root/elevated privileges so they can write the data where it needs to, but that's the same as installing a deb package with the install needing 'root' equivalent. But once installed it depends on the type of snap.
Snap confinement | Snapcraft documentation
Snaps are containerised software packages that are simple to create and install. They auto-update and are safe to run. And because they bundle their dependencies, they work on all major Linux systems without modification.
snapcraft.io
If the snap package has normal confinement permissions (strict), it has access to your $HOME or user directory; but little access beyond that if you exclude /mnt or /media and connections to other snap packages. (Its these confinement issues that have been so problematic for Mozilla since they moved to snap package, esp. with regards extensions & some banking etc requirements)
If the snap is classic as regards the confinement, which is much harder to get when creating the snap package due to full rights (ie. full reason needs to be given & then the page on the snapcraft store will report the package has these rights - it's meant for system utilities only, ie. snap equivalent of a deb package that can change your actual install). These snap packages (which are few, but they do exist) do have full access to your root file-system.
I won't cover --devmode as they're somewhat rare... though many 3rd party apps will use it as it's easier to get a snap package into the snapstore using this than using the classic confinement.
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OP
I probably could have worded it better. Ah well... The point remains the same, that there's already people in control of the OS. And, Canonical could just disband the team and make the decisions themselves. (Which would, and rightfully so, be much drama.) IIRC, all the people on that team had to be approved - voted on *and* approved.
All that said and done, it's not my job to try to sway opinions. Folks are gonna believe whatever they want, often without facts and just speculation. If you search for a boogeyman, you'll eventually find him.
Also, I don't really have the energy to respond to everyone tonight. I'll rely on a quote from the great Jim Morrison:
"When the music's over, turn out the light."
You worded it fine, I just reacted & wanted to comment; which I did.
Condobloke
Well-Known Member
Flatpak could become a universal app store for Linux systems
Some influential people in the open-source community are pushing for the adoption of a one-stop app store for Linux-based operating systems. The store would be built on...
www.techspot.com
OP
There's a lot of FUD-spreading and misinformation out there. I did not notice how much until the past few days. Even the 'like Microsoft' claims are pretty spurious, as pretty much every major OS had an 'app store' type of thing well before Microsoft decided it was a good idea.
I am an 'official' Ubuntu/Lubuntu member, but my thoughts are my own. I think Canonical would have an easier time at this if they made the store itself opensource. I can understand why they don't want there to be multiple Snap stores (fragmentation and negating the whole point to begin with), but making the code available for scrutiny might make it more palatable to the teeming masses.
D
Deleted member 137406
Guest
OP
Would you like this merged with the existing thread on this subject?
Sure. It goes hand in hand
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