I’ve gathered that a lot of people in the nix space seem to dislike snaps but otherwise like Flatpaks, what seems to be the difference here?

Are Snaps just a lot slower than flatpaks or something? They’re both a bit bloaty as far as I know but makes Canonicals attempt worse?

Personally I think for home users or niche there should be a snap less variant of this distribution with all the bells and whistles.

Sure it might be pointless, but you could argue that for dozens of other distros that take Debian, Fedora or Arch stuff and make it as their own variant, I.e MX Linux or Manjaro.

What are your thoughts?

  • Shareni@programming.dev
    2·
    7 months ago

    They’re really great for server setups

    Please don’t go anywhere near servers with either of those, that’s what docker and alternatives are for.

    the reasons they exist on desktops for the end-user are less compelling and often result in user frustration.

    Try running a stable distro without them. If you want a program not to be years out of date, and don’t want to compile everything manually, the only options are to use an alternative package manager (flatpak/snap/nix/etc.), distrobox, or appimage + some pm for updates.

    However, for your casual end-user, it can quickly become a confusing nightmare

    They’re a lifesaver for casual users, especially when they’re integrated into a gui (software centre and discovery for example). None of the other options are nearly as user friendly.

    Permission issues are really rare and distro specific from my experience. Also there are tools like flatseal to make fixing them easier.