Want to completely rid your Ubuntu of Snap applications?

KGIII

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This was the first article on the previous domain. I never shared it here.

I also rewrote it, making it fit the current format.


This was also a test of my planned method to transfer the old content to the new site without incurring the 'duplicate content' penalty. If you knew the old URL, you could click it and it will 301 redirect to the new one. So, when I redo the articles I can also just redirect the older ones. Slowly but surely, I'll get all the content transferred.

Feedback is awesome.
 


I was expecting a much longer article. I followed a different method that took way longer, removing each snap individually then finally removing the tentacles of it.

Right now, you can find Snaps being more or less mandatory in current Ubuntu Core versions. If you want to use Livepatch to keep your running system protected then you’ll need to use snaps. The list of places Snaps are in use goes on, but more and more applications are being packaged exclusively as Snaps and that trend looks likely to continue.

To be frank, I can’t blame the developers. Package it once and it runs everywhere – or it can run everywhere. This saves time, presents a single point of contact, and helps to ensure uniformity across the myriad distros out there. It does away with things like ‘Dependency Hell’. It even makes it more secure.

Can you elaborate on this for a layman? I understand your 2nd paragraph in isolation, in relation to something like a browser. But I don't understand why an OS should follow the same logic.

If everything becomes a snap, especially at a fundamental level, would you not end up packaging the same dependencies over and over again? Every single transparent thing on Lubuntu will be wrapped up with its own version of Picom, which in turn will have its own version of Compton. Excuse my ignorance in advance.

What are the packages that are packaged exclusively as snaps? I have only come across Notepad++ which isn't available otherwise (afaict) on Linux.
 
Quite a few are just Snaps now. I don't have a list of them all, but they include some important OS tools - such as Livepatch. Browse the Snapcraft.io site.

Common packages won't need to be repackaged in the Snaps. There could be some duplication if you have multiple Snaps involved. You may have the same dependency packaged more than once.

Dependency Hell is when you spend hours digging deeper and deeper to get the right dependencies to make an application work. It's when you're forced to maintain multiple versions of the same file, linking to each as needed. It's horrible. It's the way it is right now. Snaps aim to fix things like that.

This in no way reduces transparency. The information is still there, and still open.

Also, my understanding of Notepad++ is that it's huge because it contains a bunch of code from WINE. That's pretty neat.

The minimum disk space is likely to change. Ubuntu already recommends something like 20GB as a minimum.
 
Quite a few are just Snaps now. I don't have a list of them all, but they include some important OS tools - such as Livepatch. Browse the Snapcraft.io site.

Livepatch is for Ubuntu, what is gained from it being a snap? I would've thought you just package it for Ubuntu and your done.

Also, my understanding of Notepad++ is that it's huge because it contains a bunch of code from WINE. That's pretty neat.

I'm not sure you'd agree that the Notepad++ snap is pretty neat, if like me you'd installed it and ran it. It's closer to a disgrace! It makes a bit more sense though that it uses WINE, which I might start another thread about because this isn't really the place to ask about it.
 
what is gained from it being a snap?

Darned if I know. I am not on their development team. They're approachable people. You could go ask them. They won't mind.

I'm not sure you'd agree that the Notepad++ snap is pretty neat,

No, you're wrong. I find it conceptually fascinating - or, in simpler terms, 'neat'.

Snaps are, at their core, kinda brilliant. There have been previous attempts - from appimages to flatpaks, and I didn't really want those. That doesn't mean they're not useful. It just means I skip them.

I just personally don't use them. That doesn't make them any less nifty or beneficial. The idea that you can wrap WINE up and ship it with an application? That's awesome. If I had a compelling reason to use Notepad++, I'd download it.

Just because I personally don't use (or like) something doesn't mean it's not awesome to other people.
 
Darned if I know. I am not on their development team. They're approachable people. You could go ask them. They won't mind.

I just thought you'd know tbh. I've looked up how to get involved (loosely speaking, like how I am involved here) but didn't really find too much aside from forums. If you don't know, I'd probably need to look up a bunch of stuff to try and start comprehending any answers anyway.

No, you're wrong. I find it conceptually fascinating - or, in simpler terms, 'neat'.

I was being a little tongue in cheek. I notice my Scottish humour sometimes passes you by. Doesn't help it's written mind you! I get what you mean, although I can't personally appreciate it.

Packaging notepad++ inside WINE in a massive snap, it just seems a bit like "look what I can do". As does WINE really (I'm not a gamer). It's clever to have the actual 'sticky notes' in a 1GB snap package running on a linux machine, but it seems daft when you can just run xpad.
 
it just seems a bit like "look what I can do"

It is! And it's awesome! (Not that I am ever going to use it, but seeing it being done is great when you've been watching this scene for long enough.)

I've looked up how to get involved

They're most easily approached on IRC, though their IRC channel is bridged with things like Telegram.

I don't really like chat, but I use it as a contact point. In fact, it's time for the weekly Lubuntu meeting.
 
"
Common packages won't need to be repackaged in the Snaps. There could be some duplication if you have multiple Snaps involved. You may have the same dependency packaged more than once.

Dependency Hell is when you spend hours digging deeper and deeper to get the right dependencies to make an application work. It's when you're forced to maintain multiple versions of the same file, linking to each as needed. It's horrible. It's the way it is right now. Snaps aim to fix things like that."

Snap is very similar in one respect to .sfs in Puppy and static apps. Libs inside the package. Great when you OS gets older and it uses the libs within the package instead of the OS ones. Which means no overwrighting the systems libs.
 
They're most easily approached on IRC, though their IRC channel is bridged with things like Telegram.

I don't really like chat, but I use it as a contact point. In fact, it's time for the weekly Lubuntu meeting.

I see you on the lubuntu channels, although there isn't much action! Maybe no one likes the chat! Is that where the weekly meeting takes place? It seems strange that you don't need to sign up or anything.
 
Dependency Hell is when you spend hours digging deeper and deeper to get the right dependencies to make an application work. It's when you're forced to maintain multiple versions of the same file, linking to each as needed. It's horrible. It's the way it is right now. Snaps aim to fix things like that.
Dependency hell used to be a thing when building from source and there were no pkg managers available, i.e. apt, pacman, zypper, dnf ... they were created as a mean to solve that. Snaps, flatpaks and appimages try to solve the problem of having to create different pkgs for every distro out there; they're "universal", so devps can create 1 pkg that works regardless of the distro, and let's not forget NixOS
https://nixos.org/
https://web.archive.org/web/20150708101023/http://archive09.linux.com/feature/155922
 
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I see you on the lubuntu channels, although there isn't much action! Maybe no one likes the chat! Is that where the weekly meeting takes place? It seems strange that you don't need to sign up or anything.

The weekly meeting is in the 'devel' channel. So #lubuntu-devel is where the devs hang out. Note that it's not for off-topic stuff. That's in #lubuntu-offtopic.

And, no... It's not very active, even with all those people in there.
 
Snap is very similar in one respect to .sfs in Puppy and static apps. Libs inside the package. Great when you OS gets older and it uses the libs within the package instead of the OS ones. Which means no overwrighting the systems libs.

I need to spend more time with Puppy. I don't have hardware old enough to justify using it, so I've only ever really played with it in VMs.
 
The newer versions are for newer machines and there are 64bit versions. Not just a Distro for old kit.
 
Thanks! I'll grab an ISO and (hopefully) get time to play with it this weekend. We'll see how much free time I have. I might have time tomorrow afternoon. I'll be busy in the morning - depending on the weather.
 
I gave it about 30 minutes. Being able to save files without really installing is kinda neat. I was able to have persistent storage out of the box.
 
Hm... I smashed a button, but once I refreshed the page, it looked like the site had crashed for a few minutes:

1619820424726.png


I dunno if it was my fault, though...

The site has since recovered.

[Edit] However, my button-smash seems to have not been registered.
 
You should be able to smash it again.

I was working on the site at the time, trying to get rid of a bug that keeps escaping me.

It *may* be gone now. May be...
 
Selection_108.png


*crosses fingers*

The last spike was me continuing to poke around.

I may have to do this the hard way, but that looks better.
 
What reporting tool is that?

cPanel's Resource Usage. Let the "Current Usage" load and you can do some sorting. The above is a partial snapshot (there are more graphs) from a 4 hour period of time.

It has settled down to a dull roar now.

Selection_109.png
 

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