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Snap updates happen without user consent

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canci
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Snap updates happen without user consent

#1 Post by canci »

"The update channel for Snap is independent from the KDE updater (on Kubuntu), and seemingly the Gnome updater (on Ubuntu). If you consent to applying updates from the general system tray “updates needed” notification, Snap updates are not included; they’re not even listed in the pending notifications from the system tray. Snap updates only happen when the Snap updater is running, either if the application is not running or after the period of time required to force updates has expired. Snap updates happen without consent."

https://www.osnews.com/story/135590/sna ... r-consent/
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Re: Snap updates happen without user consent

#2 Post by el_koraco »

I thought this was a "feature" of snaps. For what it's worth I nuked my fairly long Ubuntu install when they started pushing snaps. I think I ran it for five years previous to that.

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Re: Snap updates happen without user consent

#3 Post by donald »

I am a bit confused on this as well, isn't part of the consent the user agreeing to run snap in the first place? Regarding the consent part, perhaps the issue is the notification process? Snaps can be held to update when the user wants them to be run rather than when the updater processes the task.

https://snapcraft.io/blog/hold-your-hor ... s-you-need

Code: Select all

snap refresh --hold=72h vlc
General refreshes of "vlc" held until 2022-11-17T12:04:59Z
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Re: Snap updates happen without user consent

#4 Post by NFT5 »

I think of Snap like I think of PPAs..........

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Re: Snap updates happen without user consent

#5 Post by jmgibson1981 »

Agree they don't notify very well or inform you. For what it's worth while they do have a so called "hardcore user" area, the majority of Canonical's (creator of snapd) target market is people who just want it to work without having to think about it. The same people who call tech support when they forgot to turn on the power to the monitor or something. Auto updates are a nice feature for those who don't care to know every little detail.
Last edited by jmgibson1981 on 2022-12-08 21:28, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Snap updates happen without user consent

#6 Post by el_koraco »

NFT5 wrote: 2022-12-08 21:11 I think of Snap like I think of PPAs..........
The Mozilla PPA is one of the two remaining ways to run a non snap Firefox on Ubuntu now - meaning a Firefox which takes less than 10 seconds to start on an nvme drive.

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Re: Snap updates happen without user consent

#7 Post by canci »

Code: Select all

snap refresh --hold=72h vlc
This sounds like a nagging child that has been told: "Wait a second!" and it's just standing there in the corner of your eye as this annoying reminder that it'll go off in a few seconds again, because it doesn't get the nuance of "a second" :lol:

Anyway, I thought the article was interesting, being that I remember a time back in the 2000s when Ubuntu was this distro that wanted to be accessible like the mainstream, but do away with the annoyances of proprietary OSs such as forced upgrades, nag screens etc. And now this.
But I agree that today's target audience of Ubuntu -- all those devops that have 20 different Linux VMs on their Windows 11 laptop -- will like something like that being automatically enabled.

I'm more of an opt-in rather than constantly opt-out kind of person.
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Re: Snap updates happen without user consent

#8 Post by sunrat »

Snaps are a way to make Linux more familiar to Windows users for when Microsoft buys Canonical.
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Re: Snap updates happen without user consent

#9 Post by LE_746F6D617A7A69 »

NFT5 wrote: 2022-12-08 21:11 I think of Snap like I think of PPAs..........
You're optimist - snaps (but also flatpak and the like) are *much* worse as they have much higher potential for causing security breach. PPA's were just an unstable/untested builds of upstream code.
el_koraco wrote: 2022-12-08 21:18 The Mozilla PPA is one of the two remaining ways to run a non snap Firefox on Ubuntu now - meaning a Firefox which takes less than 10 seconds to start on an nvme drive.
??
Is it really *that* bad? (it's much slower than for 15-years old HDD, where it takes less than ~5s).
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Re: Snap updates happen without user consent

#10 Post by donald »

sunrat wrote: 2022-12-08 23:14 Snaps are a way to make Linux more familiar to Windows users for when Microsoft buys Canonical.
ActiVision 1st! :wink:
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Re: Snap updates happen without user consent

#11 Post by NFT5 »

el_koraco wrote: 2022-12-08 21:18 The Mozilla PPA is one of the two remaining ways to run a non snap Firefox on Ubuntu now - meaning a Firefox which takes less than 10 seconds to start on an nvme drive.
Firefox-esr from the Debian Stable repo. Takes 4 seconds on my desktop (which is much slower than it used to be). Understand you're talking about Ubuntu and that we Debian users sometimes take the speed we enjoy for granted.
LE_746F6D617A7A69 wrote: 2022-12-08 23:35 You're optimist
No doubt. And, yes, I have used PPAs in the past with only a few instances where they haven't caused me grief at some point. At least with PPAs I had the choice to make bad decisions on updates.

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Re: Snap updates happen without user consent

#12 Post by el_koraco »

LE_746F6D617A7A69 wrote: 2022-12-08 23:35 [
el_koraco wrote: 2022-12-08 21:18 The Mozilla PPA is one of the two remaining ways to run a non snap Firefox on Ubuntu now - meaning a Firefox which takes less than 10 seconds to start on an nvme drive.
??
Is it really *that* bad? (it's much slower than for 15-years old HDD, where it takes less than ~5s).
It is so bad that they have taken an explicit public effort to speed it up. For instance: https://snapcraft.io/blog/how-are-we-im ... nce-part-1
I can't tell you what it's like personally, as I nuked Ubuntu when I saw that Firefox was going to be a snap for the next LTS release - I had tried to run a snap Chromium which they introduced in 20.04 and just said hell no.
You can theoretically purge the snap Firefox version, but it is a whole lot of command line work, which I doubt many Ubuntu users will undertake. Cannonical has purposefully delivered a subpar product to their users, which in my mind breaks the distro: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2022/04/how ... untu-22-04

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Re: Snap updates happen without user consent

#13 Post by jmgibson1981 »

Cannonical has purposefully delivered a subpar product to their users
Different strokes for different folks. The people that have a vocal problem with it are a small group compared the many who don't know or care. Not everyone is worried about seconds to load something. I know I stopped caring for the most part. I used to be all about the fractions of a second and minimum space on the ssd. Now it's not worth the effort to shave 2 seconds off of something I open once when I turn on my machine and leave running forever.

At the moment I'm trying out Elementary OS. It's a bit slower than a straight Debian as it relies mostly on Flatpaks but I'm loving Pantheon. I think I mentioned in another thread that I gave up trying to build Pantheon for Debian. Out of my range so to speak. Running Elementary though is a small price to pay and I like it.. YMMV.

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Re: Snap updates happen without user consent

#14 Post by LE_746F6D617A7A69 »

Technically there's no need to use snap for Firefox (see Debian). For me it smells like an action targeted at promoting snaps, which are slowing down programs and require more disk space - without providing a single benefit for the users.
jmgibson1981 wrote: 2022-12-09 16:12 Not everyone is worried about seconds to load something.
For single application - sure, but few seconds here and few seconds there - and voila - You computer slows down to the point where it becomes unusable.

This is a well tested method used by Google, Apple, Microshit and now Canonical, which have decided to join that "wonderful" team.

"Dear users, our wonderful team offers the latest and greatest technology, which requires newest hardware ..." :lol:
Buy a new PC ...
buy a new laptop ...
buy a new phone ... buy ... buy ...

Who could take better care of Your money if not members of that wonderful team? :lol:

EDIT: The solution is surprisingly simple: just show a middle finger to the members of that "wonderful" team and install Debian ;)

Regards
Last edited by LE_746F6D617A7A69 on 2022-12-09 21:14, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Snap updates happen without user consent

#15 Post by canci »

>Not everyone is worried about seconds to load something.

I'm not worried about it, but I find it obviously idiotic when there are ways to just run Firefox without waiting for sometimes 10 seconds, even on an otherwise competitive machine. Even just having a script poll Mozilla's website and download the statically compiled version of Firefox is much better work than putting it into a snap.

It's the sort of lack of attentiveness to one's own work that just makes me lose respect for someone. Add to that the fact that Canonical are literally reinventing the wheel once again, just as they did with Mir or Upstart, just because they can't be bothered to use a technology like Flatpak or deb packages and collaborate with others instead of creating a half-proprietary and technically deficient product in order to compete in some market space.
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Re: Snap updates happen without user consent

#16 Post by LE_746F6D617A7A69 »

canci wrote: 2022-12-09 21:13 just because they can't be bothered to use a technology like Flatpak or deb packages
Canonical didn't invented anything - they're just copying Debian Testing and Sid - so they need *something* to prove that their market share value is above zero ;)

BTW: IMO Flatpak is technically not better than snap - but for sure it's less intrusive.
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Re: Snap updates happen without user consent

#17 Post by jmgibson1981 »

It's the sort of lack of attentiveness to one's own work that just makes me lose respect for someone. Add to that the fact that Canonical are literally reinventing the wheel once again, just as they did with Mir or Upstart, just because they can't be bothered to use a technology like Flatpak or deb packages and collaborate with others instead of creating a half-proprietary and technically deficient product in order to compete in some market space.
This I can heartily agree with. But then you come up against the whole "do it your own way" with open source. How can one tell them they are wrong when they have the freedom to do it? Every distro does something a bit different with the exception of 95% of the "based on ubuntu" ones.

No one is forced to use Snapd. They aren't forced to use Ubuntu. They can move away if they need to or have to. I guess the whole debate seems pointless to me because it sounds like everything else everyone hates. "You can do what you want only when I'm ok with it!" and so forth. Going again in the polar opposite of the whole open nature of this stuff.

As easy as it is to build software from ubuntu's repositories against debian I'm wondering if it's equally as simple to recompile debian packages > ubuntu. Problem solved. The people that can't do this probably aren't even aware they are running a snap vs native package.

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Re: Snap updates happen without user consent

#18 Post by el_koraco »

jmgibson1981 wrote: 2022-12-09 16:12 At the moment I'm trying out Elementary OS. It's a bit slower than a straight Debian as it relies mostly on Flatpaks but I'm loving Pantheon. I think I mentioned in another thread that I gave up trying to build Pantheon for Debian. Out of my range so to speak. Running Elementary though is a small price to pay and I like it.. YMMV.
I hate the Elementary gtk theming.

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Re: Snap updates happen without user consent

#19 Post by donald »

canci wrote: 2022-12-09 21:13 >Not everyone is worried about seconds to load something.

Even just having a script poll Mozilla's website and download the statically compiled version of Firefox is much better work than putting it into a snap.
I do exactly that with Firefox Nightly to avoid its shut down while working to update policy.
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Re: Snap updates happen without user consent

#20 Post by kent_dorfman766 »

Personally, I'd love to take this opportunity to go off on a rant against snaps, but I probly haven't been here long enough. :x

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