One aspect is that the server side is not free software. So only Canonical can reasonably host a repo of snaps.
That was enough for me not to look into the technical merits of the clientside implementation. The few experiences I had with snap was that programs were starting slowly (Firefox) and e.g. GPU acceleration did not work (vlc). Not sure how good the sandboxing is. But I run my Firefox sandboxed by firejail and the overhead can not be felt in daily usage.
Ubuntu has replaced the deb version of Firefox with Snaps a few times on my computer.
On at least 3 occasions, I became aware of this when I would open Firefox and nothing would happen, except a message that "Firefox is already running". The only resolution was to install the deb Firefox package.
A couple months ago, I needed to do a fresh install since my system got borked during the upgrade to 24.04 LTS. As usual, the Firefox snap package was installed, so I decided to give it a try.
To its credit, it actually works this time. However, it will not save images on right click or open Zoom meeting links in the desktop client. I am fairly certain this problem would disappear if I switched back to the deb package, but it's not a big enough hassle for me to bother. I can live with some workarounds for now.
Overall, I don't mind snaps, but the Firefox snap has been far more trouble than it's worth.
usr1106|1 year ago
That was enough for me not to look into the technical merits of the clientside implementation. The few experiences I had with snap was that programs were starting slowly (Firefox) and e.g. GPU acceleration did not work (vlc). Not sure how good the sandboxing is. But I run my Firefox sandboxed by firejail and the overhead can not be felt in daily usage.
arcanemachiner|1 year ago
On at least 3 occasions, I became aware of this when I would open Firefox and nothing would happen, except a message that "Firefox is already running". The only resolution was to install the deb Firefox package.
A couple months ago, I needed to do a fresh install since my system got borked during the upgrade to 24.04 LTS. As usual, the Firefox snap package was installed, so I decided to give it a try.
To its credit, it actually works this time. However, it will not save images on right click or open Zoom meeting links in the desktop client. I am fairly certain this problem would disappear if I switched back to the deb package, but it's not a big enough hassle for me to bother. I can live with some workarounds for now.
Overall, I don't mind snaps, but the Firefox snap has been far more trouble than it's worth.