Hi,
I have been switching between Ubuntu and Fedora for the last few months. I am still strugling to understand why is Fedora better than Ubuntu? While Fedora has 0 telemetry and Ubuntu has VERY tiny telemetry that is irrelevant, snaps are very good security wise. For example i don’t trust Brave 100% and when it is installed as a snap i can limit its permission very well. On Fedora however there is no official flatpak version, so i am forced to use rpm, which has full access to everything. So my question is why is Ubuntu bad again? I tried to find some old discussions about this topic, but since this is the new forum, i could not find this topic.
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Hello, first you can use the Brave browser from the official flatpak repository:
Some or most of them are maintained directly by the developers of the appl so you get the latest updates, like in Firefox. You can install Firefox as RPM, Fedora flatpak OR official flatpak. The official flatpak is updated as soon as they release a new version so, FOR ME, it is a better option.
And Ubuntu is not bad at all, Canonical is. No one complains about Ubuntu as distro, ppl hates Canonical.
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Honestly I only have Brave in a VM just in the remote case I want to test a very specific… whatever. I use Firefox. But, Flatpak.org is a well know and trusted repository, I have used it for a very long time now and I have never had a problem.
Could someone inject some malicious software there? maybe, but just like in Google play or others…
You also can check the flatpak permissions with Flatseal, just in case there is something odd but again, I never had a problem with flapak and I use it A LOT.
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It’s just a case of perfect being the enemy of good, it’s not Ubuntu being bad.
All the major Linux distributions are “good enough” for 99.99% of Linux user, who don’t need to worry about sophisticated attacks from government agencies.
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Both Fedora and Ubuntu are maintained by corporations that seeks to profit from providing paid support to Ubuntu server and workstations deployments (for Canonical) and Fedora/Centos/RHEL server and desktop deployments (for RedHat). Both companies provide a great benefit to the greater open source community by providing jobs and improving the codebase for their respective OSes that will pretty much benefit everyone.
But the thing is, while RedHat mostly get things right, Canonical has been caught doing shenanigans that frequently earns the ire of the purists of the open source community and they are very vocal. Regardless, the concerns raised against Canonical usually have merits and the frequency of the incidence of these concerns does little to endear them to the open source community. Though recently, things seem quiet and their last notable shenanigans was forcing people to use snaps, notably the Firefox browser.
I like Ubuntu for my work environments, Fedora at home.
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Personally i prefer Fedora because it has better security then Ubuntu and is more up to date and in my exp much more stable. Ubuntu has also done some shady things like forcing Firefox to be a snap even when installed via apt. Ultimately its personal preference so its up to you what you deem as good features and whatnot.
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Don’t know if shady is the right word.
They wanted to use snap for security reasons, it’s not like there is some nefarious motive. The typical Ubuntu user isn’t a super user with decades of Linux experience, it does make some sense for force the change.
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Fair point but it was also poorly implemented imo and i understand the security benefits but i also wish they would improve the startup performance otherwise i wouldn’t really care. Personally i don’t use Ubuntu anymore and i prefer flatpaks but that’s not relevant to this lol
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Gonna do a side rant after I nuked my Windows machine (to be reimaged/rebuilt as a VM).
I tried to do my preferred build (that internally makes sense in my mind) but it seems that Ubuntu is making it hard for me, or rather making me do extra steps to get the outcome that I want.
With the latest 23.10, I’ve just realized how constricting they’ve made snapd. It seems that removing it, I will not be able to do a lot of things:
- Installing steam cannot be done via the usual
sudo apt install steamas it will spit out errors with claims that there is no way to do this (with the implication that it has to be done via Snap). I was able to get the .deb file from steam as well and installed it via dpkg and it installs normally. Granted, it pulled a lot of i386 dependencies - Removing snapd pretty much cripples the system as apparently some things are integrated into it that doesnt seem to make sense. It is as if that Canonical wants to make snapd like systemd is,
- Installing
gnome-softwareas a replacement to the now uninstalled Snap store crashes too often. To be fair, this is not the “supported use case” but still, one expects the functionality to be fully intact as it is part of the base GNOME, and not the crashing mess that it is.
So I renuked the install and decided to try other candidates like (Linux Mint Cinnamon “Edge” and Pop_OS) but I decided to keep trying this is Ubuntu 23.10 install for now (because I want my SecureBoot, Wayland and LUKS) and try to keep it as my daily driver desktop gaming for as long as I can.
Taking Canonical’s history for guidance, they wanted to use snaps because they prefer to use their own technologies instead of using what everyone else is planning to adopt or already using. Their motivation was their bottom line. Im sure opinions will vary on whether thats nefarious or not.
Or you can just use snap. Theres nothing preventing you from using snap on Fedora or flatpak on Ubuntu.
Btw, Brave reccommends against using the snap version as it is buggy, something I can personally attest to as the browser has more than once reset to defaults after an update (snap’s nasty auto updates being its own problem), that issue being one of many that the snap version has.
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We had a very long discussion about Ubuntu vs Fedora, in particular their usability. See Fedora is not a user friendly Linux Distro
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Like finding and using a loophole in the GPL?
Snap is the older technology though and it was originally developed for the Ubuntu Phone and IoT. Flatpak came a bit later. Snap can also package core components of the system - so it can theoretically replace traditional packages completely - while Flatpak can only package normal GUI apps and you still need RPMs or DEBs for the core system.
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Exactly, its desktop usage does not precede flatpak, which was desktop first
That’s not really a fair criticism if you consider the context, and doesn’t really support your original assertion that:
they wanted to use snaps because they prefer to use their own technologies instead of using what everyone else is planning to adopt or already using.
At the time Ubuntu developed snap, there was no alternative, even a desktop only alternative like flatpak. And flatpak still today has a significantly different scope of use. You can’t criticize someone for not choosing an alternative that didn’t even exist when they made the choice, and that was never intended to solve the same scope of problems. By the time the community started to warm to flatpak (flatpak faced considerable resistance in the beginning as well), Canonical was heavily invested in snap, and was already using snap to address a much wider set of problems than Flatpak’s developers intend to address.
From your perspective as solely a Desktop user Flatpak and Snap seem comparable to you. From their perspective as a distro developer who maintains (1) a desktop distro (2) a server distro (3) a distro for embedded systems, and various others distros, snap and flatpak aren’t comparable at all. Flatpak is only applicable to 1 of the 3 distro you release (the smallest of the 3 most likely). Canonical desired a containerized package format that they can lean into across their whole lineup of distros, so a new desktop/GUI only alternative coming about doesn’t really change the equation.
It is completely reasonable that a developer would want one format that meets their needs and their customers needs across all their products. It is logical to not want to duplicate the development and support work that would be required to use one system on every distro apart from desktop and and a completely separate redundant system for desktop only. Seen through their eyes, I think it is quite reasonable why they chose snap over flatpak (and I say this despite my personal preference for flatpak on desktop).
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I run Ubuntu Core on a server, this topic is about desktop usage though…
I didnt criticize anyone, but its worth pointing out that flatpak was a thing when they decided to use snaps on desktop, which is whats pertinent to this topic. You yourself end up agreeing that it was a business decision:
Please do not mistake simple statement of fact with opinion, I myself made it clear that I was not judging their decisions:
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I didn’t see this as a point of contention. But I don’t see Ubuntu’s decision to focus limited resources on a single containerized package format, as fundamentally any different than the decision of Arch for example to focus limited resources on only systemd or only X86. All Desktop Linux distros, even those backed by a business are faced with the same unfortunate reality: insufficient resources to do everything they wish they could, or everything we would like them to.
There are some points of fact we don’t agree on (see below). But you are right, I did interpret some of your statements as value-judgements that you may not have meant that way, if so, I apologize for my mistaking your intent. The core point of disagreement I have is this:
they wanted to use snaps because they prefer to use their own technologies instead of using what everyone else is planning to adopt or already using.
My understanding of Ubuntu’s preference for Snap rests on it being a single format that will work across their full range of products (and any other systemd based distro that wishes to support it), and they began down this path both before flatpak existed and with a broader set of goals than flatpak aspires to solve, so in my eyes, its more than a little unfair to reduce Ubuntu’s decision to just having a bias for doing things in house. One format across the full range of distros is advantageous from:
- Ubuntu’s point of view: Having just one system to develop, maintain, test, write docs for, and support.
- 3rd party developer point of view: If Ubuntu used flatpak only on desktop and snap only on everything else, developers that want to support Ubuntu would have to learn and publish to both snap and flatpak, which undermines one of the primary goals of both snap and flatpak (which is increasing software availability in Linux by making it easier and simpler for developers to publish Linux software).
- End user point of view: Particularly for institutional/enterprise customers or anyone managing many systems, I think there is value in having just one additional package management system and format to learn, learn the quirks of, and value in knowledge that will transfer between them.
With respect to the timeline:
- Snap was announced December 2014,
- As early as april 2015 (4 months after snap was announced and 5 months before Flatpak’s first release) Ubuntu Desktop developers, including the head of engineering for Ubuntu Desktop Will Cooke, were publicly discussing plans for an experimental snap based desktop. (see below)
- Snap has been installed by default on Ubuntu desktop since 2016,
- And the same month that Ubuntu Core 16 was released (April 2016), Mozilla was already announcing plans to package Firefox as a snap. So while snap was first debuted in Ubuntu Core (then called Snappy), the groundwork for snap on desktop began to be laid almost from the beginning.
quote from Will Cooke on Ubuntu Desktop Next and Snap, April 2015
Edit: This is referring to the Desktop Next image only. The ‘normal’ image will still be debs for a long time yet. If you don’t know what the ‘desktop next’ image is then this won’t effect you.
As you’ve probably noticed, we’re about to release 15.04 Vivid Vervet and so begin work on 15.10. Our plan for 15.10 is to have a build based on Snappy Personal and so the current .deb based Desktop Next image will be going away and will be replaced with the new Snappy version."
We’ll preserve the most recent Desktop Next deb based ISO on
The future is Snappy and you’ll have an image to play with Real Soon Now.
The new Ubuntu desktop starts here, and there will be loads of interesting things to work on so keep an eye on the UOS schedule and sign up to any sessions you’re interested in.
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Me neither
My belief is that snap was developed for servers and then shoehorned into desktops. Thats my understanding based on what Martin Wimpress and others have suggested here and there (dont expect me to go through hundreds of hours of videos to find direct quotes). It makes sense, snaps have clearly not been designed with desktop in mind. You wouldnt develop a packaging format for desktop where programs can take dozens of seconds to launch, for example. Not a problem on server though.
If you prefer to fully believe in Canonical’s marketing speak I guess you can keep waiting to have Ubuntu runnining Unity, powered by mir on your TV and phone 
.
Desktop might be an afterthought when developing Snap. But I think it’s not too far fetch to assume that Ubuntu/Snap dev should see the potential of Snap packaging for their desktop counterpart as well. IIRC, the very first thing they talked about Snap was when they packaged Chromium using Snap to reduce the maintenance cost across their point releases.
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I actually wish that had come to pass. I think it would’ve been cool to see how that played out. I was hopeful at the time. If Ubuntu or Mozilla had been successful in their forays into mobile. I think we would likely be in a better position today. But that was always going to be an extremely difficult market to break into. I don’t fault them for having the courage to try.
But, I find it kind of unfair/mildly offensive that you characterize my perspective as “believing Canonical’s marketing speak” when the person I quoted was the Ubuntu Desktop Engineering Manager and later the Director of Ubuntu Desktop (same position that was later held by Martin Whimpress, who you referenced). In any case, my purpose in sharing that statement was to show that Ubuntu had in fact been publicly talking about plans for snap integration on desktop as early as 2015 before flatpak had been released.
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Agreed. I just dont know if it was courage, necessity or both
Engineers parroting marketing talking points is something we have no shortage of. Just go watch an Apple event for proof. Normally, some of it is genuine, some of it is spin. I accordingly believe parts of it and not others. That doesnt of course mean that I have a 100% accurate bs detector and everyone else is wrong for believing something I dismiss as bs or vice versa. In this case, I prefer to believe Wimpress after he has left Canonical as opposed to someone who is an employee trying to promote a product