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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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What's your opinion on Snap/Flatpak, and why? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I know snap is fairly unpopular in the Linux community, and I've seen mixed responses regarding Flatpak. I wanted to know, what's the general opinion of people in this community regarding this 2 package managers?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I'm not super familiar with the details of either (as I've gotten so used to the AUR having everything I might want), but I can say with some confidence that snap was rolled out in a way that doesn't do it any favors.

I have an old laptop that I occasionally boot into to do some stuff, but not super often. After an update, it appeared as though Firefox had forgotten everything; I wasn't logged in, default start page, all settings reset, etc. I was super confused and mildly annoyed, but I set everything back up anyways. Then a bit later I ran Firefox again and it opened to what it was before the update??? Then I realized there were two installs, one apt and the other snap, and the latter was installed without my permission (or knowledge, maybe apt said in one of its 10k lines it spits out that 'btw here's a snap package' that I was somehow supposed to notice).

I find containerized packages really nice for things that are very dependant on how the system is setup but are unlikely to get updated if that system changes (either by me not updating it or it just going unmaintained). Firefox is not that though.