[HN Gopher] Ubuntu Snap update spoiled my World Cup Final
___________________________________________________________________
Ubuntu Snap update spoiled my World Cup Final
Author : tomjuggler
Score : 141 points
Date : 2022-12-18 18:53 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.circusscientist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.circusscientist.com)
| hinata08 wrote:
| To the defence of Snap, I have the same issues on my Firefox
| installed with PPA
|
| (Firefox updates at random time, then kindly asks to reboot by
| replacing each webpage by a grey one with a restart button, and
| it doesn't restart tabs in private windows)
|
| It's a very Firefox problem, not snap
|
| (I use PPA and not Snap because snap outright doesn't work when
| your home isn't /home/uname , and mine is
| /home/company_domain/uname ) (I can't believe that ubuntu forces
| you to use a software that isn't production ready)
| Izkata wrote:
| From what I've heard (haven't done this myself yet) if you
| install Firefox manually instead of through a package manager,
| it has an internal update mechanism that doesn't trigger the
| "please restart" page. That page is for when a package manager
| swaps files out from under it, while the internal mechanism
| waits for you to restart.
| greatgib wrote:
| I hate Snap, but from what I experienced, I also don't think
| that the problem is related to it but some shitty logic in
| Firefox.
|
| Regarding the "excuse" that it is the package manager that
| updated the Firefox in background, I saw it repeated a lot of
| time to deflect the blame, but it is totally not true in my
| opinion. On my system, I don't allow automatic updates. I
| have the notification when updates are available, but the
| system/packages are never updated without me doing it. And
| still, I noticed multiple times that Firefox breaks suddenly,
| like that, when nothing was updated on my system for some
| weeks and everything was working fine.
| TillE wrote:
| I have never seen anyone mention this issue on macOS or
| Windows. It's definitely a Linux package manager thing, not
| part of Firefox's own update process.
| Izkata wrote:
| Ubuntu has an additional system called unattended-upgrades
| that does security updates in the background without any
| user interaction. At least in Ubuntu 18.04, pre-snap
| Firefox is included in it.
| rascul wrote:
| > From what I've heard (haven't done this myself yet) if you
| install Firefox manually instead of through a package
| manager, it has an internal update mechanism that doesn't
| trigger the "please restart" page.
|
| I install Firefox in such a manner and can confirm the
| behavior is what you have heard. I've never seen the "please
| restart" page.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| On Arch Linux the Firefox installed via the package manager
| has never auto-updated and never shown this "please restart"
| page. But probably the official packaging on Arch resembles a
| manual install on Ubuntu.
| demurgos wrote:
| You may have been lucky or have some specific config or
| workflow that made you avoid this issue.
|
| I'm using a regular Arch installation with Firefox and
| Pacman. The "please restart" page appears regularly; I just
| had it yesterday. This occurs when running `pacman -Syu` in
| some background terminal while Firefox is active.
| easygenes wrote:
| Isn't that expected behavior? Solution: don't update
| Firefox while you're running it. [1] 1: h
| ttps://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman#Skip_package_from_
| being_upgraded
| mhitza wrote:
| Not really, it's a relatively recent change in Firefox;
| I'd say for about a year, or maybe a bit longer? (time
| has been fuzzy these last few years). Before that I would
| always run updates in my distro in the background and
| wasn't forced to break my workflow in whatever
| application I was using.
|
| Used to be able to also run Fedora distro upgrades while
| the system is running, now we're back in Windows-like
| territory, where I have to restart the system and wait
| for it to re-install 2-3k packages pretty slowly.
| easygenes wrote:
| I don't think this is a Firefox specific thing. When you
| do a Pacman upgrade you're changing the files on disk.
| Any time those files need to be loaded in the future
| ought to trigger a warning from any program that doesn't
| want to mysteriously break on you because it's not
| loading what the previous version you still have in
| memory expected.
|
| The only real workaround for this is systems like NixOS
| where the previous version is left intact when you do
| updates.
| [deleted]
| demurgos wrote:
| Yes, it's 100% normal; and it doesn't really bother me
| personally. The "please restart" page only appears when
| opening a new tab (so the disruption is minimal). I never
| lost any work because of this so it's just a minor
| inconvenience.
|
| I was sharing my experience to illustrate that Arch does
| not have any protection against this problem _by
| default_. The post I was replying to was comparing Arch's
| package to a manual installation.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Also seems to work that way for the FlatPak version, for what
| it is worth. I also have never seen the please restart page.
| [deleted]
| d110af5ccf wrote:
| The weird thing is that the restart doesn't (usually?) seem
| to be necessary for it to function, only for you to receive
| the underlying security update. I learned this because
| there's a bug where if you have multiple profiles running
| simultaneously only the main one shows the restart screen.
|
| When I found this out it really pissed me off so I tried to
| figure out where the restart screen showed up in the source
| code so I could patch it out. But I'm not familiar with the
| code base and left off after a bit of digging because I
| really can't justify the time spent.
|
| In reality I end up holding back Firefox updates with my
| package manager until I'm ready to restart it. In the end I
| will thwart developers trying to dictate things to me. The
| software on my computer works for me, not the other way
| around. A lot of developers seem to be far too arrogant and
| forget this basic fact.
| ilyt wrote:
| Works fine under Debian although you have to load package from
| "unstable" (not really unstable 99.99% of the time) branch to
| get newest one
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| > (Firefox updates at random time, then kindly asks to reboot
| by replacing each webpage by a grey one with a restart button,
| and it doesn't restart tabs in private windows)
|
| I understand why they push so storngly to frequent updates and
| consider that idea mostly as good. However that implementation
| always makes me furious. I am in some workflow, doing some form
| of transactional thing and suddenly it decides to stop working
| without restart, where then half my work is gone. If they'd say
| "hey, new update ready update in next few hours" I'd be fine
| and could schedule it (well I would still not like it as I
| hoard too many open tabs thus restart takes time ... but could
| tolerate)
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| >(Firefox updates at random time, then kindly asks to reboot by
| replacing each webpage by a grey one with a restart button, and
| it doesn't restart tabs in private windows)
|
| that happened to me several years ago _despite_ automatic
| updates being explicitly turned off - I actually have a
| screenshot of the settings page next to that gray one
| capableweb wrote:
| I'm mostly using Firefox on Arch and it doesn't suffer from
| this problem. It updates when I want it to update, meaning when
| I do my daily update with my distros package manager.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Same with most distros.
|
| It really is a ubuntu problem.
| eikenberry wrote:
| If you're using a PPA then it shouldn't update on it's own and
| give you the restart screen. It should only update when you run
| an update with your package manager. How did you set it up so
| that it has this problem?
| asddubs wrote:
| i've had the same thing happen in both chromium and firefox.
| what i hate most about snap though is the constant popups
| telling me the close the application. but closing the
| application doesn't actually trigger it updating, it basically
| wants you to close the application and then wait several hours
| until their cron job to update or whatever runs again. so I
| just get these constant pop ups
| alkonaut wrote:
| Can someone explain what's going on here? Is there a design
| mistake here? Does the app update in-place rather than side by
| side so it simply launches the updated version on next launch?
|
| If it's side by side then why does it even affect the old version
| it force a restart? And if it's not side by side then who the
| hell designed it?
| [deleted]
| silisili wrote:
| At this point I have trouble feeling sympathy. All of us former
| and some current users have been outlining the problems with snap
| for years, this one included.
|
| Just find any HN thread (or probably Reddit and Twitter threads)
| about ubuntu or snaps from the last few years and you'll see.
|
| At this point it's akin to starting smoking today then acting
| shocked when you get lung cancer.
| [deleted]
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Yeah, Snap updates seem cursed for the newest Ubuntu.
|
| I'm on Fedora these days, can't see ever leaving it the way
| things are going. It's rock solid and seems to be driving the
| state of the art in Linux things...
| neilv wrote:
| Snap getting more invasive was the final straw, which led me to
| move a startup away from Ubuntu LTS, to Debian Stable.
|
| (Was already leaning towards moving, because a rough monitoring
| of security updates over several months showed Debian was
| strangely more trustworthy. Snap making things even worse for
| some of our systems made the decision easier.)
| napsterbr wrote:
| It was the last straw for me, as well. More specially, the
| annoying notifications telling me to update Firefox or "it will
| automatically update in 13 days". I don't know what was
| supposed to happen, but these notifications kept showing up for
| several months.
| amelius wrote:
| Heh, I just tried to fire up a Snap instance of FreeCad on a
| remote machine (because snap on the local machine was broken).
| Got an "X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication",
| even though xeyes started just fine. It seems to be yet another
| Snap limitation.
|
| Found this thread from more than 2 years ago:
|
| https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/x11-connection-rejected-because...
| thot_experiment wrote:
| Snap is awful, no arguments there. I think the more important
| thing here is that the very _idea_ that something should update
| _itself_ is so incredibly insanely broken and I cannot for the
| life of me understand why it 's the norm.
|
| The number of times I've been hacked and suffered a data loss is
| astronomically small compared to the number of times I've had
| something update and suffered a data loss, or more importantly
| the number of times I've had something update and cause a
| regression or break something. Then I have to spend my precious
| time bringing something that was PREVIOUSLY IN A WORKING STATE
| back to a working state, which is one of the most infuriating
| feelings.
| bobmaxup wrote:
| snap keeps the last three revisions, doesn't it?
| lmm wrote:
| Maybe. Good luck figuring out what the method to run them is
| this week.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Firefox on the release channel downloads updates automatically.
| And it applies the updates when you next restart the browser.
| This does not interrupt your browsing in any way. Which I think
| is fair decision for a browser with a large attack surface.
|
| Most other software should only update when specifically
| instructed to.
| aliraheem wrote:
| The biggest problem is that Firefox updates the next time you
| open the app, without warning.
|
| That's not a sane decision. Sane would be to update on
| closing.
|
| Same way Windows offers to "Update and Shutdown" (you don't
| need the PC anymore why don't I under after you walk away)
| and not "Update on next Start up" (I'll wait until you need
| me to get in your way).
| jrm4 wrote:
| 100%.
|
| Ubuntu doesn't seem to realize (or simply doesn't care that)
| enterprise servers and user desktops are entirely different
| beasts.
| bombolo wrote:
| Doesn't apt also update itself?
| f1refly wrote:
| Apt updates itself if you instruct it to, the updates also
| won't restart anything by themselves. I don't think
| unattended upgrades are enabled on debian or on ubuntu.
| bragr wrote:
| >also won't restart anything by themselves
|
| Is it very not true? Apt restarts processes and services
| all the time during upgrades.
| tssva wrote:
| Apt always prompts me as to which services I want to
| restart following an upgrade.
| [deleted]
| pmontra wrote:
| When Firefox is updated by apt on 20.04, it keeps working
| until I open a new tab. Then it shows a page asking me to
| restart the browser and won't do anything else until I
| comply. This is a choice of Mozilla.
|
| When Ubuntu prompts me to restart the system after an
| update I can dismiss the dialog even for weeks, but at a
| certain point the cumulative updates start making the
| system behave erratically and I have to restart. Probably
| kernel, drivers, libc, other vital stuff get too much
| disaligned.
| bombolo wrote:
| I think they might be in ubuntu server installations. I
| think they aren't enabled by default on debian... at least
| not on my installs.
| f1refly wrote:
| I have a bunch of ubuntu containers at work, none of them
| self update by default, I know that because I had to
| enable unattended upgrades manually in all of them. Maybe
| it's a lxc template thing?
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| > I think the more important thing here is that the very idea
| that something should update itself is so incredibly insanely
| broken and I cannot for the life of me understand why it's the
| norm.
|
| Eek hard disagree.
|
| Most things I want to auto-update. Preferably at 4am.
| Somethings I want to disable auto-update.
|
| What I never want is things to update when I'm in the middle of
| something.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >I cannot for the life of me understand why it's the norm.
|
| If updates were not automatic a large number of people would
| not upgrade and would not receive important security updates
| along with various fixes and new features. If a user keeps
| running into a bug that has already been patched in a newer
| version that user will just think your software is bad and they
| will not realize that this poor experience they are having is
| because they are on an old version.
|
| >The number of times I've been hacked and suffered a data loss
| is astronomically small
|
| Being hacked even once is a bad thing. It is something that the
| industry tries to minimize as much as possible.
|
| >the number of times I've had something update and suffered a
| data loss
|
| Personally I have not experienced this, but it sounds like this
| would still happen when you update later. This is why doing
| gradual updates of rollouts and collecting telemetry is
| important. It is very useful in being able to detect a bad
| update and stop it from going out. Unfortunately, the Linux
| ecosystem is still behind the rest of the industry which leads
| to people having a poor user experience.
| tttttt5ts wrote:
| Is this response generated by ChatGPT? Seriously, we are
| talking Linux here and this is a generic response that
| ignores audience.
| omg_ponies wrote:
| OP posted a since-the-dawn-of-time complaint about
| automatic updates that ignores why they are necessary, and
| clearly states that he's just refusing to engage with the
| usual reasons for them.
|
| The "generic" response is beacuse the complaint is simiarly
| generic.
| charcircuit wrote:
| No, this response was not generated by ChatGPT. I would
| like to point out that there is one part of the Linux
| ecosystem that does automatic updates well which is Android
| based operating systems. What this post is about, desktop
| Linux, is much further behind so a more generic response is
| deserved.
|
| Before we get the point where we are discussing aspects
| like under what conditions should updates be applied or the
| priority of which updates should be installed first,
| desktop Linux needs to show that it can handle the basics.
| tttttt5ts wrote:
| My phone hasn't gotten update in over a year as Google
| dropped support for my old pixel. My 10 year old Linux
| desktop updated yesterday... Oh, and I didn't have to
| reboot my machine (live patching for the win). Android
| update is not "better" it is different with different
| goals.
| charcircuit wrote:
| The support duration of an operating system is different
| from the quality of how it handles autoupdates.
| Unsupported Android devices can still receive updates to
| apps from the Play Store. We were talking about
| application updates specifically and not operating system
| updates which while similar, are typically handled
| differently.
|
| Upgrading Android apps does not need a reboot of the
| device either. Again live patching is a separate feature
| from automatic application updates. If you read the
| article it shows a case where a Roussel is fruterated
| with how live patching is broken on desktop Linux.
| Meanwhile on Android apps don't do that when they are
| updated.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Crazy game for sure. The best WC ever (or over the last 20
| anyway). This is a classic UX problem with automation: there are
| times when you don't know the operating condition. It's better to
| prompt with opt-out.
|
| Mac OS prompts, and that's better than anything else.
|
| Snaps are also abysmally slow. And while I'm complaining, they
| also occupy my `mount` output so that's annoying.
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| The last 20 WC covers pretty much all of living memory, and I
| doubt many of us on here are qualified to talk about more than
| 5-10 WCs.
|
| 2006 I remember Italy v France was very exciting.
|
| 1954 was supposedly pretty exciting with allegations of doping,
| blatent fouling, and a very dodgy offside call against Puskas.
|
| '58 was also supposedly pretty exciting (certainly a lot of
| goals)
|
| '66 was a great one for me as a Brit, but also interesting
| because of the stolen trophy, yet more doping. The match itself
| was also tense, with a last minute free-kick pushing the match
| to extra time, the first (and only) hat trick every scored in a
| WC final, the controversial third goal and the final goal
| scored while the pitch was being invaded.
|
| '90 was interesting because of the sheer dirtiness of play.
|
| '98 is interesting for me because it's the first World cup I
| really remember following closely, but not particularly
| noteworthy as these things go.
|
| That said, 2022 was a very exciting final and will go down in
| World Cup History.
|
| And definitely nothing should kill a browser without explicit
| user confirmation.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Was there ever a time when faking injuries like a toddler
| wasn't an integral, unpunished part of the game?
|
| I like watching the WC because soccer is interesting enough
| to see once per Olympiad on the world stage. The final today
| had some amazing shows of talent and teamwork, but it is
| primally revolting to me to watch grown men writhe in faux
| agony with one eye on the ref, when their opponent's foot
| whiffed some air past their shin.
| iso1631 wrote:
| It's odd because I have firefox snap on ubuntu 2204 on my
| laptop, an annoying popup crops up occasionally, but the only
| thing I've ever had kill firefox is oom-killer.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Over the last 20 _years_ hahaha not last 20 WCs. I 've only
| seen the last 20 y worth.
| aborsy wrote:
| I have a snap installation of nextcloud. It has self updated for
| years with no problem. The set up took almost no time. Canonical
| tests the package before releasing it in their OS.
|
| Compared to bare metal and docker installation that were broken
| every few months and required maintenance, I have been pretty
| happy with snap.
|
| Based on this, would say snap is not a bad idea. Sure snaps might
| be slow, but that's improving.
|
| I don't have time to tweak applications. Let canonical package
| and test all dependencies for their platform, secure and update
| the apps.
| tommica wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this comment, its nice to read about the
| positives of snap, and not just the negative. Helps in getting
| a better idea of it.
| bobmaxup wrote:
| You can set when snap refreshes take place:
|
| https://snapcraft.io/docs/keeping-snaps-up-to-date#:~:text=o...
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Snaps are certainly a cursed technology. I've had one update in
| production and break things outside of our regular release
| process.
| amelius wrote:
| I mean, providing executables is probably the main purpose of a
| Linux distro. Ubuntu is playing with their raison d'etre.
| voidfunc wrote:
| Snap is a pile or garbage and I really wish Ubuntu would just
| stop trying to be a little different all the time. They learned
| their lesson with Upstart but I guess it'll be a few releases
| until the abandon Snap.
| marcodiego wrote:
| > They learned their lesson with Upstart
|
| Upstart worked well for its purpose. It gave me zero problems
| and a faster boot until systemd came along. It was a good stop
| gap solution and was adopted by other distros including
| ChromeOS.
|
| People like to criticize the "different on the block" and
| although I think most of these complaints are for good reasons,
| so much is learned from these mistakes that we should not be so
| avert to them.
|
| I don't think snaps are better than flatpaks, but I'm glad
| there is an alternative to it under a different management and
| having a good influence over it (IIUC, "portals" were born in
| snaps, not in flatpaks).
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Hmm, it's good to try to be different, bit they certainly
| shouldn't push "different" stuff when it doesn't even work yet.
| I've not minded the transition to systemd, for example. Snap
| has been awful, I don't like it and every time it's pushed that
| bit more I feel like Canonical are behaving like Microsoft
| somewhat.
|
| Debian is looking attractive.
|
| Abandoning snap is not enough, it's more about respecting users
| ... but they are obviously under no obligations to me, I'm not
| paying.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Canonical is doing a great job replicating the BOFH. It's an
| integral part of the traditional *nix experience.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Ubuntu moving window control buttons to the left circa 10.x
| was that straw for me.
|
| Not because it necessarily made anything harder, but because
| it was an arrogant change for no goddamned reason.
|
| UX should start with humility -- if you change things that
| lots of people are used to then you'd better have some damn
| good reasons.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Keeping the clock and widgets in the upper right while
| unifying the header window and app window was the reason.
| You can dislike the reason, but you can't say there wasn't
| one.
|
| RIP Unity
| tmtvl wrote:
| What do you mean "RIP Unity"? Ubuntu Unity got accepted
| as an official flavour just recently.
| Tsiklon wrote:
| Mir would have been a better thing to point out as a poor
| technical decision. But Upstart came out before SystemD and was
| used by other distros, most notably RHEL5 + 6.
| voidfunc wrote:
| I totally forgot about Mir.
| pitched wrote:
| Site seems to be having trouble keeping up right now:
| https://archive.ph/Hnr8P
| tomjuggler wrote:
| Thanks - my $5 server is struggling, yes. Time to look at
| Cloudflare? Or maybe just a static blog like Jekyll..
| daguava wrote:
| Free tier of cloudflare and the cache everything setting +
| maybe a page rule or so will probably do most of what you
| want.
| bauruine wrote:
| You could also use e.g. nginx to cache the site you don't
| need Cloudflare for that.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Cloudflare is trivial to set up. You should definitely use
| it. If you use a mainstream static site generator, you can
| just deploy to Cloudflare Pages as well.
| j1elo wrote:
| They went to Arch, which is fine, although quite a steep change
| in the baseline system. New package manager, new update cadence,
| new "way to do things".
|
| Another alternative with much less change would have been Linux
| Mint: it still is a fine-tuned Ubuntu, but without the Snap
| Store.
| Broker0 wrote:
| I like the conclusion. Factor 'X' messed up my 'Y', going back to
| previous solution.
| guiambros wrote:
| Snap is a disaster, and full of problematic structural decisions
| that are now really hard to fix (e.g. [1]).
|
| I've decided to delay my upgrade to 22.04 given Canonical's
| increasingly aggressive push towards Snap, and now I'm
| considering moving to Arch or some other distribution.
|
| [1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snapd/+bug/1575053
| input_sh wrote:
| Funny thing is the biggest Ubuntu derivatives (elementary OS,
| Linux Mint, Pop! OS) are all going against Ubuntu on this one
| and shipping with flatpak support.
| Avamander wrote:
| I wish things like lubuntu, kubuntu, kde neon would also
| adopt the same or rebase themselves on top of Debian.
| Avamander wrote:
| > (e.g. [1])
|
| Canonical employees in that thread have repeatedly said they
| basically don't care about the opinion of the people affected.
| The latest reasoning provided being that they don't have the
| resources...
|
| But either they have so little resources they shouldn't be
| pushing snap in its current form at all or they're lying (and
| the former reason still applies).
|
| Either case it's disappointing and will slowly destroy all the
| goodwill they had.
| kybernetyk wrote:
| >I am going back to Arch. My computer is my computer, and I don't
| care anymore how much work it takes, I'm going to take charge so
| nothing like this ever happens again.
|
| From my experience the only real work load with Arch was the set
| up. Once I installed it and configured everything to my liking
| there has been nearly 0 work with maintaining the system. I've
| been running my installation of Arch since 2016 and the system
| didn't break even once.
| manchmalscott wrote:
| I recently switched back to arch, and when I updated my xorg a
| few days later, a few things started crashing (notably godot)
| with a "[xcb] Unknown sequence number while processing queue",
| so as much as I love arch I definitely wouldn't call it "nearly
| 0 work" unless you just never update.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| Same experience.
|
| Arch has been nearly maintenance free, and it's been the one
| distribution where when I did break something, I was able to
| fix it 100% without nuking and starting over.
|
| I still can't bring myself to run it on servers for some
| reason, and I go back to Debian stable for those, but honestly,
| I'm not sure why. I'm starting to feel that a rolling release
| would make for a lower maintenance server because it's always a
| PITA when the inevitable end-of-life comes into play and the
| upgrade inevitably fails and I have to reconfigure everything
| anyways.
|
| Ubuntu in contrast would ALWAYS find new and bizarre ways to
| break. ESPECIALLY when snap came into play.
| silisili wrote:
| Same. I love their archiso, you can build your own little
| custom live ISO. I put Gnome and networking on mine, then
| install via a terminal shell window.
|
| The only reason I reinstall is when I upgrade my box every 2 or
| 3 years. Years ago Arch was a bit more finicky, but today it's
| been perfectly stable for me, doing updates every Friday.
| mort96 wrote:
| I agree, Arch is amazing. I haven't been using it for a few
| years, I've been on Ubuntu in an attempt to be closer to how a
| "normal computer user" would experience Linux. But every single
| time Ubuntu Softwate messed something up, every single time I
| get a notification to close Firefox in <13 days to avoid
| disruptions, every time I click the "update all" button on
| Ubuntu Software and it tells me it can't because the Snap Store
| is running (as a background process which I can't close through
| the UI), I get the urge to go back. At this point, it's only
| inertia which keeps me on Ubuntu, I don't want to take the time
| to set stuff up anew. But at this rate, I'm sure I'll finally
| make the switch sooner rather than later.
|
| I'm not philosophically against Snap as an idea. But what I am
| against is all the absolutely terrible UX decisions and bugs
| which Canonical evidently considers "acceptable". It makes the
| whole Linux desktop look like a joke.
|
| Maybe it's time to realise it is a joke. That Linux will remain
| a programmer OS and an OS for locked-down consumer devices, but
| not a general consumer desktop-style OS. And maybe we should
| recognise that in such a world, there is no space for Ubuntu
| Desktop.
| emj wrote:
| I never have a problem with this, but I do shutdown my
| computer everyday. I do actually use arch as well but a lot
| less than Ubuntu and Debian, my feeling is that Arch is a lot
| more trouble than Ubuntu and Debian. I am very conservative
| with my desktop I always want to be able to work, I've had
| zero problems with that attitude running Ubuntu since it was
| just an idea. All problems I've had were self inflicted and
| there are many foot guns for sure.
| mort96 wrote:
| I also shut down my computer every night. If it works for
| you I'm happy for you, but it's more trouble than Arch was
| for me.
|
| The stability is nice while it lasts, but I've had way too
| many major things break when upgrading to a new release.
| The most extreme case was the time Ubuntu 19.10 broke GDM,
| so anyone with an nvidia card and auto-login enabled had
| their system bricked. This is even though I reported the
| issue a long time before the release, and there were very
| reasonable workarounds proposed in the issue discussion in
| good time to fix the issues before release. Ubuntu 21.04
| released with a nextcloud-desktop application which
| segfaulted on launch. I also reported this a long time
| before release, and it was ignored because they had already
| frozen the packages they import from Debian, so I had to
| deal with a desktop which couldn't sync my files.
|
| I haven't experienced similar huge issues in Arch, but more
| importantly, when an issue _does_ occur, I can expect a fix
| to be out in days, not weeks or months.
| pmontra wrote:
| This is why I stay on LTS versions. I'm about to install
| 22.04 on a new SSD. I'll dual boot 20.04 to work until
| I'm confident that I can setup 22.04 with all the GNOME
| extensions I need to have a sane desktop, plus all the
| software I need to do my job. Actually maybe I'll give a
| try to Debian 11, no snaps there.
| emj wrote:
| I only see problems with LTS. I do agree that there are
| some stability issues with Ubuntu that just don't get
| fixed, but this is mostly an issue with the other
| releases. This is the problem with staggered releases
| your fix might very well take 6 months.
|
| Arch has severe problems in my mind especially in
| stability, but as you say it is easier to fix stuff and
| that is a huge plus. It's just a trap I try to avoid for
| my desktop!
|
| Thanks for the explanation makes a lot more sense now!
| mort96 wrote:
| I do truly believe that Ubuntu will be a lot more stable
| if you stay away from the "interim" releases. When I
| bring these things up with people, I do get the
| impression that Canonical looks at the non-LTS releases
| as more of a sort of public beta test to ensure the
| eventual LTS is solid. For the sort of stuff I do on my
| computer, using libraries which are up to 2 years out of
| date is incredibly painful; even the 6 months between
| interim releases is a problem sometimes.
|
| So if you use the LTS, and the outdated packages isn't an
| issue for you, it makes sense that you'd be pretty happy
| with it. And maybe that's a use-case I'm underestimating.
| [deleted]
| DuckFeathers wrote:
| I always disable auto-updates on my PCs. The OS has no business
| installing anything on it's schedule, or in any schedule. I do it
| on mine as I go. I just have update notifications and I install
| them manually when I feel like it.
|
| Also, it is bizarre that they desinged a software delivery system
| with no option to disable auto-updates... and only adding the
| option now.
|
| And the fact that Firefox frooze during the update is also
| strange. Not sure if it's a snap problem or Firefox problem.
|
| As a long-time Firefox and Linux user (started using Firefox when
| it was alpha version and Linux around 2002), the best decision I
| made around 3 years ago was move to Windows and Edge.
| pmontra wrote:
| Latest time I checked it was impossible not to update Windows.
| The best I could do was to postpone the updates by 180 days.
| That was Windows 10.
| bfrog wrote:
| Snap is terrible. Trying to solve the problem the wrong way. See
| nix/guix for how it's done right.
| CSDude wrote:
| Snap is an abomination. See my previous comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33173762
|
| I fought with a guy in 2015 that believed snap was the future,
| and this cost me almost my job back then.
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| based
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I don't see snaps being phased out. I don't like them either,
| but there're plenty of abomination technologies being the
| future. The whole web might be one of them.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Sorry to hear this. If you managed not to get "spoilered" on the
| result, try to watch it (I'm sure there's several ways to watch a
| rerun)... it was a phenomenal game.
| orbit7 wrote:
| Automated update processes that run at the expense of securing
| access to information when it's needed or that do so with the
| risk of data loss are a complete failure in my view.
| Darmody wrote:
| That's why the first thing you do once Ubuntu is installed is
| remove snap completely.
|
| It's sad that now we have to fight against the OS like on
| Windows.
| mesebrec wrote:
| Snaps don't update when the app is running. I don't know what
| happened here, but it seems the problem might be somewhere else.
| Avamander wrote:
| That's a fairly recent addition, after a very long time without
| any notifications and abysmal handling of a running
| application. These issues were handled slow and dismissively,
| the current solution is still half-baked. It's yet another good
| example how bad Snap is.
| josephcsible wrote:
| If that goes on for 2 weeks, doesn't it kill the app and update
| anyway?
| mesebrec wrote:
| If you ignore the notifications for two weeks, yes. But you
| even get a notification at least four hours before updating
| saying you have little time left.
|
| That said, if you run `snap hold firefox`, it will wait
| indefinitely.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| The problem is that the dialog says to quit the application
| so snap can update, but snap doesn't do that. It checks a
| few times a day and bails if the application is running. It
| doesn't wait for the application to exit and then update,
| like the dialog indicates it would.
|
| Thus you quit the Firefox, wait a few minutes, assume it
| has been updated because why shouldn't it, and after two
| weeks it gets killed mid-session.
|
| Completely inexcusable UX...
| bauruine wrote:
| Not updating isn't a solution. What works for me is a
| systemd service that does a snap refresh on boot. At least
| I have some controll on when it updates.
| [deleted]
| bobmaxup wrote:
| I know it is simple to do, but care to share the unit
| file?
| bauruine wrote:
| It's the most basic file possible but it does it's job.
|
| cat /etc/systemd/system/upgrade-system.service
| [Unit] After=network-online.target
| [Service] ExecStart=/bin/bash -c '/usr/bin/snap
| refresh && apt update && apt upgrade -y'
| [Install] WantedBy=default.target
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| Are you the same people who bitched when Win10 just restarted
| to install updates?
|
| Yes this comment has a little malice in it.
| m463 wrote:
| it is extremely hard to disable or remove tracking or auto-
| update stuff on ubuntu.
|
| (snapd, unattended-upgrades, ubuntu-report, whoopsie, ubuntu-
| advantage-tools, motd and more)
| Avamander wrote:
| You shouldn't be disabling unattended-upgrades unless you're
| very diligent with security updates yourself.
| mesebrec wrote:
| You turn automatic snap updates off by running `snap hold`.
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