Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it

Re:Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it by m463 on Saturday May 02, 2020 @08:40PM (#23056020)

I have to use Ubuntu 18.04 for some things and even with a minimal installation, I found some things phoned home or pushed changes.

I could remove some packages, like ubuntu-report or unattended-upgrades, but some seemed to be intertwined with other packages in a (purposeful?) labyrinth of nested dependencies.

They made themselves critical and uninstalling would break or cripple other fundamental system components.

Some I disabled in the config files, like apport, motd_news and kerneloops. Some I disabled and masked in systemd and others like snapd and whoopsie/whoopsie-preferences, I had to do:

  dpkg -L snapd |
  while read f
  do
    cat /dev/null > "$f"
  done

I wonder how this kind of nonsense percolates through a company?

Is it developers from commercial software vendors changing jobs and solving the problems the same way they solved them for other corporate customers? Or is it marketing carefully plotting a release by release path to dominance? Or is it people who truly believe that having a viable market for linux software will be good?

I mean, there might be some truths - people lag with their updates, people don't defend their privacy, and people would like to pay for software but have no avenue to do so.

But accepting those truths and unilaterally forcing "solutions" might find linux is a different sort of animal.

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Re:Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it by dcow on Saturday May 02, 2020 @09:36PM (#23056214)

I think there’s a proliferation of well meaning but ultimately _uncultured_ developers (perhaps some are lazy, but I don‘t think that’s the main problem). It’s almost inevitable as software, and internet culture, has itself proliferated. Seeing how businesses make decisions with such abysmal disregard for anything that puts users in control probably only serves to normalize the mentality further. But at the end if the day the problem really is that people don’t speak with their feet. I find it darkly humorous when someone complains about online privacy yet in the next sentence verbs _google_ or is still using their gmail from 15 years ago or hasn't switched to a privacy respecting browser or would never consider a librem device because it has previous gen specs. Software that gives users freedom and respects their privacy is not the default. Good software is hard to find. Too often software is measured solely on how good it looks as an electron app. So how about the next time you hear someone raking the GPL through the mud you help educate them. If you encounter a business leader deciding to cookie everyone because it lets them target the CISO of Oracle with personalized crafted ads, refuse to acquiesce. Not only donate to the EFF but actually participle. When asked what to do about the widening software culture gap at BSides SF, John Perry Barlow reminded everyone that education is the only real solution.

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Re:Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it by guug on Saturday May 02, 2020 @09:18PM (#23056155)

I was aware of `motd_news` and disable it on each new install, but I somehow completely missed `apport` and `kerneloops`. Trying to keep up with Canonical's attempts is why I switched all my new systems to Debian. Far more stable and predictable.

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Re:Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it by Jonnax on Sunday May 03, 2020 @05:40PM (#23062068)

What's the benefit in all this effort for you?

It's not like you're paying them for support.

And it seems like you're modifying the OS in such a way that might break compatibility.

Also commercial software? Linux is commercial software. Red hat and Canonical.

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