Screenshot doesn’t even show half.
There are many reasons one could choose to hate Snap packages, and this not one of them. It’s like hating a webbrowser because it spawns 20 processes that (the horror) you would all see when you run
ps
. It’s just a part of how container technologies work.This is truly why I also hate snaps though. The
snapd
people and themount
people need to work out how to hide these by default.
Why I hate snaps/flatpak:
- 1
- package/appimage ~80mb
- snap/flatpak >500mb
- 2
- p/a - app + dependencies
- s/f - app + minimal linux distribution
- 3
- p/a - can be easily run from terminal
- s/f - flatpak run com.very.easy.to.remember.and.type.name
- 1
Try it in enterprise where you have automated systems that deploy alert sensors and they instantly go off because each mount is 100% full.
Pretty much every alerting system I know also has a filter option to only apply automated discovery rules to certain filesystem types.
But yes, most don’t first squashfs or mounted read-only snapshots by default and it sucks.
I think Snap has the potential to be better than Flatpak. It’s a real sandbox instead of the half-assed shit Flatpak has going on. The problem I have with Snap is that Canonical keeps the Server closed-source. I don’t want a centralized app store where Canonical can just choose to remove apps they don’t like. So as long as the Server is closed-source, I will stay on Flatpak
How is Snap’s sandbox better than Flatpak’s?
Snaps can integrate with system like native packages, unlike Flatpaks that stay at user level like Appimages.
On the plus side, snaps also crap your system log full of petty little AppArmor events. And when snap gets its permissions wrong, you can easily fix it with SnapSeal.
(If Flatpak would just fucking stop rewriting every file path as /var/run/1000/blah, it would be the unquestionably superior package tech)
Friction between Snap and AppArmor is to be expected. The corporate sponsor of Snap, Canonical, is well known for their icy relationship with the corporate sponsor of AppArmor, Canonical.