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What the hell is a snap?
Canonical (Ubuntu)'s attempt at a software package format. Basically Flatpak but worse.
I’ve been using Ubuntu for years and I literally had no idea. Admittedly, I don’t deal with servers or anything, so I guess some of the stuff coming from their package respositories could be “snap” format and I wouldn’t really notice.
Actually yes, this is exactly the case. And they’ve done it in a really shady way if you ask me (or Clem, the main guy over at Linux Mint).
I’ve been using Fedora on a little tablet I’ve got, and it uses either .rpm packages or flatpaks. The GUI package manager lets you select which repository it pulls from (either .rpm, or Flapaks can come from Flathub or their own repo, and clearly displays this). If invoked from the terminal, the DNF package manager gets you .rpms, and Flatpak gets you, well, flatpaks.
Ubuntu uses the APT package manager with .deb packages, and Snap with snap packages. But sometimes if you do an apt-get install, it installs a snap instead. That’s some Microsoft level bullshit.
I know we all like to hate on canonical for literally any reason, but this happens with every single software repository that is not a closed garden and some that are.
And yeah, it’s sandboxed, so the damage is far, far less than it could be.
Sandboxing does nothing for social-engineering attacks, which is what many of the malicious snaps were designed for.
And the thing that makes the Snap Store uniquely bad is that there’s no human review. Anyone can throw up a malicious snap, and there are very good odds that it’ll get served there. Even the Flathub, a community-run project, has human reviews before new apps get published. Canonical, despite having money and resources that community projects don’t, can’t seem to be bothered to take basic steps to protect their users.
Yeah, what’s important to note is snap just requires a web based submission process.
https://snapcraft.io/docs/using-the-snap-store
Flathub requires a PR in GitHub, visible to the community. Spammers know they will get caught opening PRs
Given that the snap store is a closed source proprietary component, I’d argue that snaps are a walled garden
That was supposed to be their one thing.
