Pros and Cons of snap

[uwe-bungto]

Could some one please explain the pros and cons of using snap as compared to the repositories?

Paul

[Frogs Hair]

This thread more of a why (https://askubuntu.com/questions/618471/why-is-ubuntu-moving-to-snappy-packages) use snaps and .debs at the same time which explains some of the Pros. One of the Cons may be security, who checks the snap packages not from the canonical repository for malicious content ?

[uwe-bungto]

Thanks

[ajgreeny]

Another potential "Con" as I understand things, even though I have not installed any snaps, is that they may not adhere to system settings or have access to certain system facilities and libraries.
They sometimes, therefore, do not act as, or do what you might expect them to do.

Many users do, however, use them successfully so it is certainly worth listening to what other successes there have been from users who are happy with them.

[Tadaen_Sylvermane]

Biggest con for me though is they are to Windows like. Big feature for me is shared libraries. I like efficiency. I don't see a reason to change that. If I can load a single library for 10 different things at once instead of 10 different versions of the same library for each, that is a win for me. I know hardware is getting bigger and stronger. I can think of better ways to use said hardware rather than just getting lazy with development. It's also a security thing. I don't recall the name but there was an ssl bug awhile back. For linux users it was fixed by updating a single ssl library and that was it. For Windows I have no doubt there is still software rolling around online that isn't fixed to this day. Nature of the beast.

They definitely do address the fragmentation though of so many different distros and ways of doing things. As much as I hate to admit it, they may be the key to getting big name software on Linux.

[freemedia2018]

Cons include that more people will be more comfortable using applications they have relatively little control over. Some will consider that a plus, but I think it's a con.

This doesn't mean I'm against snap packages as a concept. There will be multiple implementations of this, some will be closer to libre than others, and no matter how you package an application-- if you can't trust the author, you can't trust the software.

Some methods are easier to audit than others. I think this new trend in packaging could add a great deal of convenience-- and from the libre side, would make it possible for the fully-free crowd to make fully-free packages that run on a wider variety of platforms.

And I think that would be great, like an fdroid repo for the GNU/Linux desktop.

But I have a feeling it will take the libre crowd a very long time to get on board with that. I'm not bothered-- some of these packages are easy to take apart and put back together. That's good. I agree with the security concerns. But this is a technology that is worth exploring, could lead to positive changes, and I will be against it when it proves to be a bad idea. I'm not that neutral about everything-- some ideas are just really bad ideas. I'm not at all certain this is one of them, I'm excited about it. I should note that I'm less excited about Snap in particular. As a concept I like it, I am more excited about other versions/brands of Snap that may or may not exist yet. It's universal in the idea of working everywhere, not in terms of being the only possible version. If they're hoping for the latter, they've already screwed up. Snap isn't likely to replace everything else.

[oldfred]

The only advantage for a snap to me is if you want an old app in a new install or a new app in an old install. It then should install the correct dependencies that would not otherwise be there.

I uninstall all snaps, currently.
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1039411/how-can-i-replace-snap-application-such-as-gnome-calculator-with-a-deb
boot time cut in half by removing snap
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2391341