Linux

I can't believe they fumbled their reputation so bad lol

TL;DR: Canonical doubling down on snaps. Further down the line, if you refuse snaps, audio won't work since pipewire is to become a snap. He also uses Apple and Play Services as a "good example".

This is a pretty frustrating interview to me. He doesn't really seem to engage at all with the fact that building a core system component in a way that isn't fully open completely looses all of the resiliency to enshittification or conflict of interest between corporation and users that makes linux a good thing in the first place.

I don't personally really like that fedora chooses to repackage and serve their own versions of flatpaks. But that its possible is mandatory, because otherwise if flatpaks are successful and they end up making choices that are user hostile, there is no escape hatch.

Its a completely unnecessary choice, and is to me, entirely disqualifying. If snaps were to become successful it would be a bad thing for this ecosystem that I care about.

I also find it frankly bewildering that he talks about everything being their own software stack as a flex, when this whole space is built on collaboration building together, and then goes on to describe it as vertical integration, a form of anticompetitive behavior that countries make laws aimed at preventing. Vertical integration is not a good thing.

Its fine if your stack is all yours, but thinking vertical integration is a flex feels really slimy and out of touch to me

I think there is something to be said for the model with the Apple App Store and the Google Play store: they're being kind of the obvious place that your software comes from, from a vendor who is committed.

This is a terrible example... FDroid is far more "committed" to transparency and security. As the creator of the distro you have full ability to decide which repositories are included.

if you think about just the notion that there is a store full of content that has been somewhat vetted by the distributor of the platform, I think it is difficult to argue that that is a straight bad thing.

It's absolutely "a bad thing" if the distributor of the platform is the only one who gets to decide what software and repositories can be installed.

You can still download a Snap file off the internet and do snap install -- dangerous.

We also don't need platform distributors declaring anything they haven't personally verified as "dangerous"...

This is why I've always said Ubuntu is the only distro I will dissuade users from using.

Canonical, leading the charge towards enshittification of Linux. Who would've guessed this 20 years ago?

Isn’t base Ubuntu losing marketshare?

I know it’s not comprehensive, but the Steam survey shows Mint skyrocketing and Ubuntu dropping like a rock. And I feel like Snap doesn’t matter in server deployments or business machines. So… who’s this for?

In reality, every time you add another store, you are essentially giving those people root on your machine.

That's not true. Not even I have root when using flatpak, how should anyone else have root using my flatpak.

I guess he just means that you give them a lot of power but root is not the same

Zorin OS is Ubuntu based. I wonder if, like Mint, they prioritize apt and flatpaks over snaps when using apt.

In reality, every time you add another store, you are essentially giving those people root on your machine.

Shuttleworth made the exact claim like 10 or so years ago about Ubuntu not being a democracy and Canonical being root on all Ubuntu machines.

Is it a line in their internal 10 commandments?

I don’t in anyway support where Canonical is going with this but I also understand why they’re doing it.