There was backlash, they removed it and never tried anything similar since. But I’m with you on that, the idea was insane and if they pull anything like that again, I’ll be switching away from ubuntu immediatly.
Well. in the modern day, there’s Ubuntu 22.04 and up with their insistence on snaps for many otherwise native apps. For example, Firefox as a snap and taking anywhere from 30 seconds to up to 2 minutes to launch when you first open it.
I used Ubuntu for years, pretty much from 16.04 all the way up to 22.04 but that was a line for me and I ditched it for Manjaro. The experience has been much better overall.
Snaps should be for applications that may not receive updates on current systems or have a hard dependency on old libraries for some reason. Things like Spek come to mind. To use if for something like Firefox, and not only use it, but insist on it to the point you can’t install the native version without ridiculous workarounds… it’s absurd. And on top of this, it’s especially dumb because flatpak already existed prior to snap, but as usual Canonical had to be special instead of working with community standards.
But that delay in opening is only for the very first time after installation, it does not affect any subsequent app starts, even after you reboot. In real world performance, snaps are basically just as fast as any normal app in my experience. And you need to keep in mind what the idea behind ubuntu is - they want it to be useful to experienced users as well as newbies and tech-illiterates. Snap automatic updates are honestly really nice if you don’t want to think about updates and canonical have done a lot of work to make the experience as smooth as possible, and the sandbox is a nice bit of added security. They are very versatile too, allowing any type of software to be a snap, from little terminal tools to full-featured nextcloud instances
Not OP, but… the reason why I won’t use Ubuntu is that whole snap thing. I’m not hating on snaps in general (although I prefer flatpak), but I hate what Ubuntu does with them. You apt install firefox and yet it still ignores your command and do whatever it feels like doing. Why? Why not leave both options available while maybe prefering snaps for inexperienced users (I mean like gui store default to snap)? This is just one thing now, but what might be next? This smells whole lot like Microsoft approach (light version). And I don’t like this direction.
Yes, that’s why I said gui store might default to snap because that’s what new users are using. But when you explicitly put command to terminal and it still ignores it? That’s not what I expected when I jumped MS ship…
That delay happens on first launch every boot. Also the automatic updates happening basically whenever is nonsense. It should tell me an update is needed, not just kick it off whenever it feels like. That kind of crap is why I use Linux and not Windows, and now why I don’t use Ubuntu.
Strange. Never had automatic updates on Ubuntu. Just notifications that there are some. Also I don’t have similar issues with Firefox. Works perfectly fine for me.
Too little too late. They lost what goodwill they might have had with me. I dealt with that for months until I decided to flip it. I won’t be using Ubuntu in the future unless for some awful reason I specifically need an Ubuntu server (and in that case I’d still push for Almalinux or another alternative).
There was backlash, they removed it and never tried anything similar since. But I’m with you on that, the idea was insane and if they pull anything like that again, I’ll be switching away from ubuntu immediatly.
There were a few good lenses for Unity, like the porn one.
Well. in the modern day, there’s Ubuntu 22.04 and up with their insistence on snaps for many otherwise native apps. For example, Firefox as a snap and taking anywhere from 30 seconds to up to 2 minutes to launch when you first open it.
I used Ubuntu for years, pretty much from 16.04 all the way up to 22.04 but that was a line for me and I ditched it for Manjaro. The experience has been much better overall.
Snaps should be for applications that may not receive updates on current systems or have a hard dependency on old libraries for some reason. Things like Spek come to mind. To use if for something like Firefox, and not only use it, but insist on it to the point you can’t install the native version without ridiculous workarounds… it’s absurd. And on top of this, it’s especially dumb because flatpak already existed prior to snap, but as usual Canonical had to be special instead of working with community standards.
But that delay in opening is only for the very first time after installation, it does not affect any subsequent app starts, even after you reboot. In real world performance, snaps are basically just as fast as any normal app in my experience. And you need to keep in mind what the idea behind ubuntu is - they want it to be useful to experienced users as well as newbies and tech-illiterates. Snap automatic updates are honestly really nice if you don’t want to think about updates and canonical have done a lot of work to make the experience as smooth as possible, and the sandbox is a nice bit of added security. They are very versatile too, allowing any type of software to be a snap, from little terminal tools to full-featured nextcloud instances
Not OP, but… the reason why I won’t use Ubuntu is that whole snap thing. I’m not hating on snaps in general (although I prefer flatpak), but I hate what Ubuntu does with them. You apt install firefox and yet it still ignores your command and do whatever it feels like doing. Why? Why not leave both options available while maybe prefering snaps for inexperienced users (I mean like gui store default to snap)? This is just one thing now, but what might be next? This smells whole lot like Microsoft approach (light version). And I don’t like this direction.
I get that, they shouldn’t replace debs with snaps, but offer both. Snap as default makes sense for new users though
Yes, that’s why I said gui store might default to snap because that’s what new users are using. But when you explicitly put command to terminal and it still ignores it? That’s not what I expected when I jumped MS ship…
That delay happens on first launch every boot. Also the automatic updates happening basically whenever is nonsense. It should tell me an update is needed, not just kick it off whenever it feels like. That kind of crap is why I use Linux and not Windows, and now why I don’t use Ubuntu.
Strange. Never had automatic updates on Ubuntu. Just notifications that there are some. Also I don’t have similar issues with Firefox. Works perfectly fine for me.
They fixed the delay after reboots and you can disable automatic updates with a single snap command
Too little too late. They lost what goodwill they might have had with me. I dealt with that for months until I decided to flip it. I won’t be using Ubuntu in the future unless for some awful reason I specifically need an Ubuntu server (and in that case I’d still push for Almalinux or another alternative).
That’s fine, use whatever you like. I’m just saying that current ubuntu is quite polished.