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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Snapless Ubuntu (programming.dev)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Not sure what others are doing to use Ubuntu (23.04) without snaps, but this is what I am doing:

for Firefox I found a guide here
for chromium I am actually using the Linux Mint packages (which work absolutely fine), and I have just set up a small repository I can add to apt:

deb [arch=amd64 allow-insecure=yes] http://snapless.cmeerw.net victoria upstream

this just syncs from Linux Mint and only republishes chromium in the Packages file (with downloads redirected to a Linux Mint mirror). BTW, I am not signing these...

What are others doing?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Very true and good points, and when it comes to snap I mostly agree with you. I would guess the "war on Ubuntu" going on is more due to Ubuntu's history of making controversial decisions that go against the grain of what most other distros are doing at the time (creating and dropping Mir, creating Unity instead of using GNOME and then switching back to GNOME when they finally got Unity working well, installing an Amazon app out of the box in one version), many of which angered a lot of Linux community members before who are still angry despite Ubuntu rolling back most of those decisions, and they've found snap a great current scapegoat issue to use to vent their long-standing frustrations with Ubuntu at.

I agree with just about every word here. I lived through all this stuff. Mir and Unity were hugely disruptive to the OSS desktop community beyond Ubuntu and I was as salty about them as anyone. If someone is aware of this history and just fucking done with Ubuntu's bullshit they'll get no flak from me. I rarely see this coherent an argument made though, it's much more often "snap bad, use this other distro that's downstream of Ubuntu and shares all the same foundations but has a different default desktop and disables snap by default", which I think is pretty nonsense and is rampant in the comments of this post.

But I've done my share of distro hopping and if someone wants to use something else for any reason or no reason... more power to them. I will make the counterpoint that no one has to care about snap specifically and if you just pretend it doesn't exist then your life will be no different. And if history is any indicator, snap has about 2y left before they abandon it anyway.