Yesterday I tried to install an Inkscape plugin I have been using for a long time. I upgraded my system and the plug-in went away. So I download the zip, open Inkscape, open the plugin manager, go to add the new plugin by file manager… and the opened file manager is unable to see my home directory (weird because when opening Inkscape files it can see home, but when installing extensions it cannot). It took some time to figure out how to get the downloaded file in to a folder the Inkscape snap could see. Somehow though I still could not get it installed. Eventually I uninstalled the snap and installed the .deb version. That worked!
Recently I downloaded an AppImage for digiKam. It immediately crashed when trying to open it, because I believe glibc did not work with my system version (a recent stable Ubuntu).
Last week I needed to install a gnome extension. The standard and seemingly only supported way of doing this is to open a web page, install a Firefox extension, and then click a button on the web page to install it. The page told me to install the Firefox extension and that worked properly. Then it said Firefox didn’t have access to the necessary parts of my file system. It turns out FF is a snap and file system access is limited, so the official way of installing the gnome extension doesn’t work. I ended up having to download and install chrome and install the gnome extension from there.
Gnome's insistence on using web pages for local configuration settings is the dumbest shit ever. It's built on top of a cross platform GUI library but instead of leveraging that they came up with a janky system using a browser extension where you're never 100% sure you're safe from an exploit.
Instead of fixing fundamental problem, flatpaks/snaps bring the whole new layer of crap and hacks. They try to solve real problem, but the way they do it is like reanimating dead body cells via cancer. But that's not even the worst part.
They can lead eventually to "Microsoft Linux Store". Canonical pushes snaps for a reason and they are partnered with MS. Flatpacks essentially follow the same route and can be embraced, extended and extinguished, and we'll be left with bare kernel+glibc distros and the rest available for 20$ in Steam/MS/you name it store
Yesterday I tried to install an Inkscape plugin I have been using for a long time. I upgraded my system and the plug-in went away. So I download the zip, open Inkscape, open the plugin manager, go to add the new plugin by file manager… and the opened file manager is unable to see my home directory (weird because when opening Inkscape files it can see home, but when installing extensions it cannot). It took some time to figure out how to get the downloaded file in to a folder the Inkscape snap could see. Somehow though I still could not get it installed. Eventually I uninstalled the snap and installed the .deb version. That worked!
Recently I downloaded an AppImage for digiKam. It immediately crashed when trying to open it, because I believe glibc did not work with my system version (a recent stable Ubuntu).
Last week I needed to install a gnome extension. The standard and seemingly only supported way of doing this is to open a web page, install a Firefox extension, and then click a button on the web page to install it. The page told me to install the Firefox extension and that worked properly. Then it said Firefox didn’t have access to the necessary parts of my file system. It turns out FF is a snap and file system access is limited, so the official way of installing the gnome extension doesn’t work. I ended up having to download and install chrome and install the gnome extension from there.
These new “solutions” have their own problems.
Gnome's insistence on using web pages for local configuration settings is the dumbest shit ever. It's built on top of a cross platform GUI library but instead of leveraging that they came up with a janky system using a browser extension where you're never 100% sure you're safe from an exploit.
Gnome and making bad choices, name a better combo
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If snaps or flatpaks are the only future for Linux desktop software distribution then I'm switching to windows+wsl
Snaps are universally hated by the Linux community as they have many problems, but what's wrong with Flatpak?
Instead of fixing fundamental problem, flatpaks/snaps bring the whole new layer of crap and hacks. They try to solve real problem, but the way they do it is like reanimating dead body cells via cancer. But that's not even the worst part.
They can lead eventually to "Microsoft Linux Store". Canonical pushes snaps for a reason and they are partnered with MS. Flatpacks essentially follow the same route and can be embraced, extended and extinguished, and we'll be left with bare kernel+glibc distros and the rest available for 20$ in Steam/MS/you name it store
Yeah. Now people just statically link the dynamic libraries.