Re: Snap to it

[Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com>]

Quoting tom r lopes (tomrlopes@gmail.com):

> What is the deal with snap and or flatpack?
> 
> I'm still installing via apt  but I guess if you are going the gui route
> you will see snaps.
> 
> What is the use case here?

In my probably cynical opinion, the use case is:  'I'm from the
proprietary software world and expect applications to be bundled with
everything they need including libs, rather than going through the
bother of keeping applications in harmony with system libs, like one of
those long-haired open source hippies.'

Flatpaks are able to be created in a decentralised fashion by any old
person.  They're more than a bit like PPAs, except with more
self-contained bundling of software resources.  Snap packages are under
the central thumb of Canonical, Ltd., feed through Canonical's Snap
online 'package store' (only), and can be contributed to only if you
sign a licensing agreement with Canonical, Ltd.

The whole thing is obviously inspired by the Docker container-software
craze in cloud computing, which itself has a lot of that proprietary
software mentality behind it.

The Ubuntu propaganda machine is of course pushing Snap.  Flatpak has a
more diverse rah-rah squad including Docker types and gamer punks, and
unlike Snap/snapd isn't distro-specific.  Fans of either implementation 
tend to call them 'universal installers', rather than the unflattering 
characterisation I've made of them above.  (In case it isn't obvious, I 
personally have no use for either one, and think they're both yet
another way to try to replicate the mistakes of Microsoft Windows, for
which, no thanks.)

And _of course_ Canonical is in the middle of the latest of those
efforts, because it's always trying to make itself relevant by muscling
into anything currently fashionable.

Views Differ[tm].

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