Snaps: The beginning of Linux Cr@pware

Story: Snaps - A Good Way to Test the Latest AppsTotal Replies: 21
Author Content
dotmatrix

Jun 19, 2016
9:19 AM EDT
Snaps seems posed to turn Linux into a trillion 'free app' platform.... 999,999,999,999 of those will be completely useless cr@pware.

Proprietary-wares must be every where... Oh my!
mbaehrlxer

Jun 20, 2016
9:45 AM EDT
my biggest grief with app platforms is the lack of licensing information. it's basically impossible to find out if an application is Free Software or Open Source.

and it provides a sad argument for why the term "Open Source" is better than "Free Software". searching for "Open Source" will at least turn up something, occasionally. not as much as it could be, but there is a gem occasionally. searching for "Free Software" is a lost cause. :-(

greetings, eMBee.
Fettoosh

Jun 20, 2016
11:40 AM EDT
In one article it says
Quoting:"Mark Shuttleworth made a big revolution on Linux environment by implementing Snap package manager as a Universal package manager. I had a surprise when reading about it on Ubuntu insight blog, wow what a fantastic improvement on the Linux environment."


That is no revolution by Shuttleworth, its an old idea became new. It was called Klix

Read comments here

It disappeared and came back as appimage and Linus Torvalds said: "This is just very cool."



vainrveenr

Jun 21, 2016
10:39 AM EDT
Quoting:my biggest grief with app platforms is the lack of licensing information. it's basically impossible to find out if an application is Free Software or Open Source.

and it provides a sad argument for why the term "Open Source" is better than "Free Software". searching for "Open Source" will at least turn up something, occasionally. not as much as it could be, but there is a gem occasionally. searching for "Free Software" is a lost cause. :-(


Perhaps a somewhat similar and vivid example of such future "grief" is Microsoft's porting of [Ubuntu's] Bash for Windows 10, as reported and commented-upon in at least these pieces linked to via LXer:

- Bash on Windows. Repeat, Microsoft demos Bash on Windows

- Canonical Announces Ubuntu on Windows 10, an Ubuntu Userspace for Windows Devs

- Ubuntu (not Linux) on Windows: How it works

- First Windows 10 preview with bash support is out now

- How to get started with Ubuntu and Bash on Windows 10

- The truth comes out: Microsoft needs Linux

- Windows 10: How well does it run Ubuntu Bash?



mbaehrlxer

Jun 21, 2016
12:43 PM EDT
i don't see the connection. bash on windows is actually a full subset of ubuntu running native linux apps on windows much like wine on linux, complete with apt-get and packages being installed directly from ubuntu repos.

other than "why not just get a real linux system?" i see no grief coming from that. we know how apt-get works, and we can trust the apt sources.

snap on the linux-on-windows subsystem on the other hand...

greetings, eMBee.
vainrveenr

Jun 21, 2016
12:50 PM EDT
Quoting:snap on the linux-on-windows subsystem on the other hand...


Concerning the related themes of Ubuntu's possible "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish tactics" as applied to Snaps, as well as Microsoft's and Ubuntu's licensing ambiguities, the author of the piece Bash on Windows is incredibly exciting – but we should be wary writes:
Quoting:Almost every large company is guilty of some form of ’embrace, extend and extinguish’ tactics, and I’m hopeful under Nadella the company is working toward the greater good, rather than later turning around and crushing them later.

If you’d have told me Linux would’ve worked perfectly within the desktop of Windows in 1998, I’d have laughed at you – but now it’s a reality and it makes developer’s lives easier.

Nadella sells Microsoft’s renewed interest in open-source with passion and enthusiasm that is easily believed. As developers we can all get excited about Bash and Ubuntu finding a home within Windows – but while we’re doing it, we mustn’t forget where we came from.


As they further develop, brand further away from "free and open-source" licenses, and promote their unique .snap packaging system, shouldn't Canonical Ltd. also avoid forgetting "where [they] came from" ??



jdixon

Jun 21, 2016
12:55 PM EDT
> other than "why not just get a real linux system?" i see no grief coming from that. we know how apt-get works, and we can trust the apt sources.

You are aware that the Microsoft implementation requires that bash run as root, aren't you?
Fettoosh

Jun 21, 2016
1:13 PM EDT
What is most disturbing is for the media, which is so biased for Ubuntu/Canonical, rushing and declaring snap as the revolutionary new standard to solve the problems of all other packaging systems & to replace them all since major Distros are adopting it.

Well Apt, Yum, Yast, and others, are proven to be pretty easy, reliable, and do a pretty good job in checking for dependencies. In regards to universal packaging for all Linux Distros, there is no reason to replace them just yet since snap hasn't proven itself and more importantly, other packaging applications, which by the way preceded and invented the concept before snap, like Appimage, Zero Install and Listaller, etc. can co-exist with the current packaging apps.

In regards to "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish tactics", Canonical have been doing that for a while now. GNOME 3 => Unity, KDE NetBook Interface => Unity, KDE Plasma Mobile/Tablet => Convergence. Wayland => Mir. I guess in the world of Free Open Source Software it is called Forking but Canonical is applying it to ideas not code, as far as I know.

mbaehrlxer

Jun 22, 2016
3:09 PM EDT
Quoting:You are aware that the Microsoft implementation requires that bash run as root, aren't you?


good point, but hardly any worse than needing to log in as admin in order to get work done. so i don't think running bash on windows as root will have much of an impact.

greetings, eMBee.
vainrveenr

Jun 25, 2016
10:09 AM EDT
Quoting:You are aware that the Microsoft implementation requires that bash run as root, aren't you?


Apparently, past versions of Puppy Linux have also been accused of running bash as root by default. Less than ten years ago, there were even online threats as described here at LXer directed against a long-time LXer contributor who (among other chief concerns) highly disapproved of Puppy's running as root by default. Further information and links on this incident are at the LXer contributor's blog piece 'Some People Don't Know When To Leave Well Enough Alone ' found at http://ever-increasing-entropy.blogspot.com/2009/11/some-people-dont-know-when-to-leave.html.

One might even wonder whether unwary sysadmins' constantly running as root Microsoft's porting of [Ubuntu's] Bash for Windows 10 might lead to less or worse danger than Puppy Linux's root login default?





penguinist

Jun 25, 2016
12:22 PM EDT
Well vainrveenr, I would say that two wrongs don't make a right.

Shame on Puppy Linux for promoting a bad practice.

Shame on Microsoft for Extending their deployment of Linux in such a way as to create unnecessary risk.

Having been a Microsoft observer for decades, it is quite apparent to me that their time-honored marketing technique is to hold back features and then feed them out to users in tiny pieces. Who knows, maybe Windows 11 will offer user level accounts and even permissions! Wow that would be a feature worth waiting for! <taking tongue out of cheek>
DrGeoffrey

Jun 25, 2016
8:06 PM EDT
Quoting:Who knows, maybe Windows 11 will offer user level accounts and even permissions!


Thanks for the laugh, but I won't be holding my breath. At MS, security is an after-thought, if not completely ignored.
seatex

Jun 26, 2016
4:14 AM EDT
> Who knows, maybe Windows 11 will offer user level accounts and even permissions!

Well, the NSA is pretty happy with Windows 10, for now. They might offer those features in 11 though (with NSA approval and backdoor keys) just to make the little people feel safer.
jdixon

Jun 26, 2016
9:53 AM EDT
> Who knows, maybe Windows 11 will offer user level accounts and even permissions!

But they do. You (the owner and user) have a limited user account and limited permissions to your system. Microsoft (and the government) have a full admin account and unlimited permissions on your system.
mbaehrlxer

Jun 26, 2016
4:47 PM EDT
NTFS already supports ACL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS#Security

greetings, eMBee.
jdixon

Jun 26, 2016
7:23 PM EDT
> NTFS already supports ACL

I think they knew that, eMBee. :)
CFWhitman

Jun 27, 2016
9:04 AM EDT
To be a little bit fair to Microsoft, they did start trying to get people to use user level accounts after they shifted to an NT base. Their biggest push probably came around the time of XP Service Pack 3. However, when that didn't work (thanks to all the software that expected to be run with administrative access), they shifted to UAC, which I suppose is better than nothing.
jdixon

Jun 27, 2016
10:47 AM EDT
> However, when that didn't work (thanks to all the software that expected to be run with administrative access), they shifted to UAC, which I suppose is better than nothing.

If anyone would leave it turned on. It raises so many alerts most people I've known simply turn it off.
CFWhitman

Jun 28, 2016
1:23 PM EDT
Well, at first it was much worse and pretty annoying. Now I don't find it to be a problem (this is in Windows 7-10). Of course, I don't spend much time in Windows, I just support it and use it for a few things at work.
Koriel

Jul 08, 2016
4:14 PM EDT
UAC is not so bad anymore certainly on Win 7, can't speak for Win 10 as I ditched it after the umpteenth time it fecking replaced my chosen video driver with its own one after being explicitly told not to, in my view Win 10 is not an OS it's an advertising platform so it was straight back to Win 7 for me.

Im not sure when UAC became less intrusive as I distinctly remember it being horrific in the early days and I usually turned it off back then, now I leave it at its defaults.

If I didn't have to develop for Windows I wouldn't even be using it but Win 7 in itself is a reasonable OS and I would probably say it was the pinnacle for MS and its only downhill for them now, just look at Win 8,10 I arrest my case.
CFWhitman

Jul 11, 2016
11:49 AM EDT
To be honest, I've thought for quite a while that Windows 2000 was the pinnacle version as far as Microsoft's approach to its development went. There are certainly worthwhile developments up to Windows 7, but Windows 2000 seemed to be the best compared to its time frame. Actually there are worthwhile improvements in Windows 8 and 10, but the new problems make it tough to enjoy them. Windows has had a habit of assuming it knows better than you (the user) for quite some time now, but that part seems to only get worse.
jdixon

Jul 11, 2016
3:03 PM EDT
> To be honest, I've thought for quite a while that Windows 2000 was the pinnacle version as far as Microsoft's approach to its development went.

It was also the last version not to use activation.

Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]

Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!