Could Apt Package Manager Be Eventually Fased out of LTS Releases?

[TheFu]

They have been throwing in the towel for a lot of their projects, maybe they don't this time. (I hope they do). I can't imagine using a Linux system that is locked down and cannot be changed, snaps or no snaps.

For straight end-users who just want to buy a device and have it update itself for the next 10 yrs, snaps are fantastic. That's where the highly specific "ubuntu core" distro plays. Think of a TV box that you plug in and manage using a built-in web server only. You want it to update, but don't want the hassle of doing the maintenance yourself. Perfect use. A no-touch system that just works.

And for some server things, I have to admit that having a snap deployment is growing on me. They aren't perfect and there are some real problems when a server self-updates without approval and it breaks. If it doesn't break, which happens much more often, it is fantastic. I'm running a snap version of nextcloud inside a dedicated LXC container. About 4 months ago, I found that a major upgrade in nextcloud effectively broke that system. I spent a few hours troubleshooting and found that it had performed a major upgrade from v24 --> v25 without asking. I thought I'd setup the snap to never upgrade from the current major release to the next. I'm 95% certain I'd done that. But then it did. About 2 weeks later, nextcloud started working. I'm thinking it did another upgrade without asking. One of the flaws is that snaps can't be downgraded across major releases. If you don't ask about a major upgrade, then the software should make downgrades possible.

Last week, the nextcloud snap upgraded from v25 to v26 .... again violating my wishes and without asking. Fortunately, nothing broke with that upgrade ... well, besides that fact that when I've told it to be on v25/stable that is ignored. That's broken.

I don't see Ubuntu going 100% Ubuntu Core. That would be like shooting yourself in the head and Canonical knows this.

At my LUG, we have desktop users of Ubuntu/PopOS, Mint, MX Linux, Debian and Fedora. Only 2 people actually use Linux at their $real_job on their desktop.

[agentl074]

I don't ever see this happening... it would go against FOSS principals. Snaps are great, but everything is APT at the base level.

[grahammechanical]

This link has some relevance to this discussion. It is an official explanation.

https://ubuntu.com/blog/ubuntu-core-...-linux-desktop

About ten years ago Ubuntu published an immutable desktop OS. It was called Ubuntu Desktop Next or Ubuntu personal. I installed it and it worked. Not very usable due to next to no applications. It was not developed beyond Ubuntu 14.10 code.

We should always be working to identify new technologies that could improve Ubuntu Desktop in the context of our other values and implement them in a thoughtful, mission-aligned manner.

Ubuntu 23.10: In parallel we are also working on Ubuntu Core Desktop, an immutable version of the classic desktop experience, an additional choice �� for Linux Desktop users designed to improve security, quality and stability.

Ubuntu Desktop - charting the future.

https://ubuntu.com/blog/ubuntu-deskt...for-the-future

Regards