Best ever listing of all the extremely valid reasons the nearly global community disdain for Snaps and the "walled garden" of the Snap ecosystem, both ideologically and technically. I knew only some of the general concerns about Snaps and that made me avoid them, but these specifics make me more certain than ever that I will NEVER be using Snaps. FORCED UPDATES (like subscription softwares) should be universally shunned and mistrusted on every level.
The reason I hate snaps is for the reason that they try and force it down your throat in Ubuntu. That is not the Linux way, and I will not support companies doing that. That and you can see a difference in their load times, some of my apps take almost 4-5 times longer to load compared to flatpaks or any other version. The load times isn't the deal breaker for me though, it's the forcing of them that is the deal breaker.
While Snaps have been quite snappy for me, performance does seem to be a every common complaint. Also, while I love Snaps, I agree. Forcing Snaps down people's throats is very bad.
@@PenguinByte I should specify that they are still fast, but it is noticeable especially when you are used to almost instant opening with things like deb and flatpaks. If they would stop with the forcing I'd honestly use them, I can get over them being slower. I have not experienced boot up slowing down though, that sounds like more of a package conflicting issue to me.
I personally only use one single snap package, and that's Nextcloud. In my experience the default configuration for Nextcloud doesn't perform very well. I think the primary reason is that it doesn't use enough RAM to be fast, and it uses a stock Mysql configuration as well. The snap version of Nextcloud seems to be configured really well, including fast configurations of the dependencies. So instead of installing the distro native version and trying to improve the configuration, I use the snap version. Also, Nextcloud is a rare occasion where I want automatic updates. Other than that one single case, I will never install a snap for anything. If something isn't available for the distro I'm running, I'll compile it from source. If it's not available and not open source, I will choose something different.
Is it possible to turn off autoupdates of snaps? I mean, If it is only enabled by deafault but can be disabled then I am fine with that. To me the biggest reason is really this closed source backend. I mean, in reality when I use flatpak I still only use one repo (flathub) but when we are talking about open source space then I would rather support something that from the start is fully open source.
Software like Snap is the reason why I don't use Windows or Mac. I want to have full control of my OS, not the other way around; especially where my personal information/digital interactions are concerned.
@@PenguinByte For now. Think of other corporations that seemed to cater to the consumer/client/user benefits, but once they got a monopoly on their product, they changed their approach to maximise profit & reduce quality, I can think of Uber, Amazon, & Netflix. It's never a good precedent to attempt to entirely centralise products & services for convenience, always end up taking away power & resources from the individual, it's the reason why I went to Linux in the first place.
Autoupdates are so stupid, and snap comes with a million way to delay them, while it could just have 2 commands to check for updates and istall them, if I for some reason want to update without confirmation, I can schedule a script with cron :D
@@tinylith1603 I personally have no issues with auto-updates, but I definitely prefer the way Flatpak does it, where it just prompts you for available updates and lets you decide when to apply them
I feel the fact that they made some companies package their app for Linux, was already good reason for it to exist, since otherwise they would never try to get into it
Whether Flatpak does it better or not is up to the user. I love Flatpaks and that's what I use here on Arch, but I think Flatpak should finally introduce support for non-graphical packages.
Best ever listing of all the extremely valid reasons the nearly global community disdain for Snaps and the "walled garden" of the Snap ecosystem, both ideologically and technically. I knew only some of the general concerns about Snaps and that made me avoid them, but these specifics make me more certain than ever that I will NEVER be using Snaps. FORCED UPDATES (like subscription softwares) should be universally shunned and mistrusted on every level.
Great video, I don't mind snaps myself.
I don't like snap because I use asahi linux which is arm based. And snap never works with arm for some reason
The reason I hate snaps is for the reason that they try and force it down your throat in Ubuntu. That is not the Linux way, and I will not support companies doing that. That and you can see a difference in their load times, some of my apps take almost 4-5 times longer to load compared to flatpaks or any other version. The load times isn't the deal breaker for me though, it's the forcing of them that is the deal breaker.
While Snaps have been quite snappy for me, performance does seem to be a every common complaint. Also, while I love Snaps, I agree. Forcing Snaps down people's throats is very bad.
@@PenguinByte I should specify that they are still fast, but it is noticeable especially when you are used to almost instant opening with things like deb and flatpaks. If they would stop with the forcing I'd honestly use them, I can get over them being slower.
I have not experienced boot up slowing down though, that sounds like more of a package conflicting issue to me.
Good vid. Thanks. (I only install snapd for 3 apps that I need.)
I personally only use one single snap package, and that's Nextcloud. In my experience the default configuration for Nextcloud doesn't perform very well. I think the primary reason is that it doesn't use enough RAM to be fast, and it uses a stock Mysql configuration as well. The snap version of Nextcloud seems to be configured really well, including fast configurations of the dependencies. So instead of installing the distro native version and trying to improve the configuration, I use the snap version. Also, Nextcloud is a rare occasion where I want automatic updates.
Other than that one single case, I will never install a snap for anything. If something isn't available for the distro I'm running, I'll compile it from source. If it's not available and not open source, I will choose something different.
Is it possible to turn off autoupdates of snaps? I mean, If it is only enabled by deafault but can be disabled then I am fine with that. To me the biggest reason is really this closed source backend. I mean, in reality when I use flatpak I still only use one repo (flathub) but when we are talking about open source space then I would rather support something that from the start is fully open source.
I’m actually not sure. I would think you can toggle them off
I like snaps more than flatpaks.
Oh snap!
Software like Snap is the reason why I don't use Windows or Mac. I want to have full control of my OS, not the other way around; especially where my personal information/digital interactions are concerned.
I use Flatpack on Mint.
same.
I don't want anything that snaps, crackles or pops, on my Linux system.
The reason i use Linux is to get away from closed corporate bloatware infecting my system and trying to take control
I agree to an extent, but Snap itself is fully open-source, and it isn't a virus lol
@@PenguinByte lol that's exactly what a computer virus would say heh
Bingo!
@@PenguinByte For now. Think of other corporations that seemed to cater to the consumer/client/user benefits, but once they got a monopoly on their product, they changed their approach to maximise profit & reduce quality, I can think of Uber, Amazon, & Netflix. It's never a good precedent to attempt to entirely centralise products & services for convenience, always end up taking away power & resources from the individual, it's the reason why I went to Linux in the first place.
Autoupdates are so stupid, and snap comes with a million way to delay them, while it could just have 2 commands to check for updates and istall them, if I for some reason want to update without confirmation, I can schedule a script with cron :D
@@tinylith1603 I personally have no issues with auto-updates, but I definitely prefer the way Flatpak does it, where it just prompts you for available updates and lets you decide when to apply them
I feel the fact that they made some companies package their app for Linux, was already good reason for it to exist, since otherwise they would never try to get into it
flatpak does the same thing too though, and flatpak does it better and with more companies.
Whether Flatpak does it better or not is up to the user. I love Flatpaks and that's what I use here on Arch, but I think Flatpak should finally introduce support for non-graphical packages.