this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2025
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    Ubuntu based distros (s3.thehackerblog.com)
    submitted 1 day ago by nutbutter@discuss.tchncs.de to c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world
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    [–] Cevilia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    What's wrong with snaps? I'm relatively new to Linux and keep hearing people banging on about them.

    [–] erotador@lemmy.blahaj.zone 27 points 1 day ago (3 children)

    snaps are similar to flatpaks, little containers that hold apps that can be sandboxed for security, reproducibility, and convenience. cannonical decided to push their own snaps over flatpak, a widly accepted standard. the big problem with snaps is the store where you get them is proprietary, and they will sneakily install snaps instead of standard packages when you try to install programs you didn't realize we're even snaps.

    [–] Cevilia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

    ...so they're the flatpaks we have at home? :P

    Seriously though. Wow, that royally sucks. Thanks for the info.

    [–] rtxn@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (2 children)

    That's not the full picture.

    The proprietary store backend really isn't consequential. Most websites are, and if you have a modern computer, you've got proprietary firmware running at ring -3. At best, it's a distraction from Snap's real issues.

    Snap packages are compressed filesystems, similar to squashfs. When an application is started for the first time, the filesystem has to be decompressed and mounted to the root filesystem, which (depending on the computer) can take a long time. It also litters your mount points with loopback devices.

    Snap's sandboxing only works on systems running Systemd. No Devuan, no Artix, no Alpine; the packages will work, but without sandboxing.

    The worst part is Canonical's desperate attempts to make snaps happen.

    ...and I'm sure there's more that I'm forgetting about.

    [–] Morphit@feddit.uk 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

    They haven't modified apt; they abuse an extra version number that supercedes the major version number of a package. I think it's meant to be used for new packages that reuse the name of an abandoned project. Canonical publish packages for software like Firefox that depend on snapd and just run snap install firefox instead of actually installing anything. Since they bumped that extra version number, their packages always have a higher precedence than even the officially packaged debs from Mozilla.

    [–] rtxn@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

    Thanks, that's even more fucked up.

    What's even even more fucked up is that the package still installs an executable to /usr/bin/firefox, but it's just a wrapper script that launches the Snap application... and also replaces your desktop shortcuts, application launcher shortcuts, and favourites with its own Reforged Edition file if you're running GNOME, Unity, MATE, or KDE Plasma.

    Excerpt from /usr/bin/firefox Canonical Edition(TM)

    # [...]

# GNOME Shell
OLD="firefox.desktop"
NEW="firefox_firefox.desktop"
FAVS=$(gsettings get org.gnome.shell favorite-apps 2> /dev/null)
if echo "$FAVS" | grep -q "'$OLD'"; then
  NEWFAVS=$(echo $FAVS | sed -e "s#'$OLD'#'$NEW'#")
  gsettings set org.gnome.shell favorite-apps "$NEWFAVS"
fi

# MATE
OLD="/usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop"
NEW="/var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/firefox_firefox.desktop"
OBJECTS=$(gsettings get org.mate.panel object-id-list 2> /dev/null)
for object in $OBJECTS; do
  object=$(echo $object | cut -d\' -f2)
  launcher=$(gsettings get org.mate.panel.object:/org/mate/panel/objects/$object/ launcher-location)
  if [ "$launcher" = "'$OLD'" ]; then
    gsettings set org.mate.panel.object:/org/mate/panel/objects/$object/ launcher-location "'$NEW'"
  fi
done

# [...]

# TODO: handle other desktop environments

exec /snap/bin/firefox "$@"
    I'd classify that as malware.
    [–] Cevilia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 17 hours ago

    Holy shit, that's fucked up

    [–] rozodru@piefed.social 1 points 16 hours ago

    yup discovered this on my server yesterday. needed something on there so just did sudo apt install blahblahblah and then come to find the little ubuntu fucker installed a snap of it.

    I really should have gone with another distro for my server but meh i'm too lazy to fix it now.

    [–] BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 2 points 23 hours ago

    I'm not sure the pushing snap over established flatpak thing holds up, snap was in the wild before flatpak was announced.

    [–] flemtone@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago

    Bloated container format that has many issues running software, somehow ignores system settings when it wants to and has a propriatary backend controlled by Canonical. Flatpaks are much better imo.