Linux reviews notes that
The popular Linux Mint operating system has decided to purge the snap package manager from its repositories and forbid installation of it. The motivation for this drastic move is that the upstream Ubuntu Linux distribution Linux Mint is based on will stealthily install snapd and use that to install Chromium from the Canonical-controlled SnapCraft instead of installing a regular Chromium package like most users expect.
The Linux Mint blog has this to say about Ubuntu's use of snap to use their chromium package to subvert apt:
You've as much empowerment with this as if you were using proprietary software, i.e. none. This is in effect similar to a commercial proprietary solution, but with two major differences: It runs as root, and it installs itself without asking you.
Is Ubuntu turning evil?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2020, @06:28PM (25 children)
Not every goddamn application needs to be mounted as a filesystem.
(Score: 4, Touché) by RamiK on Thursday July 09 2020, @06:52PM (5 children)
The people who invented Unix disagree [wikipedia.org]...
compiling...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SDRefugee on Thursday July 09 2020, @08:02PM (4 children)
The "people who invented Unix" meant for everything to be a FILE, NOT every application being mounted as a fileSYSTEM.. Ramik is absolutely
CORRECT!!! Damn snaps pollute a "df" with a /dev/loopx fileSYSTEM for each and every snap you are tricked into installing or choose to install..
Seriously considering moving from Ubuntu to Devuan (Don't get me started on systemd... smh)...
America should be proud of Edward Snowden, the hero, whether they know it or not..
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2020, @08:34PM
You've piqued my curiosity. What is this systemd of which you speak?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Subsentient on Thursday July 09 2020, @11:55PM (1 child)
I agree, that always bothered the hell out of me. Fuck snaps. Just make a regular RPM or something. Or hell, just make a tarball with all the shared libraries in the same folder as the executable, and e.g. export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`.
Lots of developers used to do that, I wish they'd do it again. I had no issues with little tarballs of binaries like that. It was kinda convenient, just keep it in ~/ and open the executable when you want to use it.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @01:36AM
"Or hell, just make a tarball" - Welcome to Slackware! This is how we do it.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RamiK on Friday July 10 2020, @02:18AM
Actually in Plan 9 applications did in fact expose much of their interfaces via the 9p protocol for the explicit purpose of being mounted in the filesystem for both IPC, network transparency and user interactivity. e.g. Your text editor would have its file menu and window content (buffers/tabs) as files nested in directories and (union) mounted in the namespace so you could write scripts using whatever you want to program new commands (buttons) so there was no need for macro or extension languages. Another example was how this was applied to the windowing system so you could dispense with header files and specialized protocols and just walk the filesystem and modify a few files to manipulate window positioning and the likes...
So, while linux containers and namespaces are bastardizing plan9, the way plan9port was made, how many Bell Labs veterans use OSX and how Go compiles statically are clear indication the Labs veterans aren't too shy from deviating from Unix, POSIX or Plan9 when they want to get something done.
Bib:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140906153815/http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/names.html [archive.org]
compiling...
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2020, @07:00PM (12 children)
Snap never worked right. And the way 'buntu was heading with its gay looking Metro UI, I switched to a real mans Linux... Fedora.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Thursday July 09 2020, @07:26PM (10 children)
Real men use Slackware.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2020, @08:37PM (3 children)
Real transvestites use Ubuntu.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2020, @11:26PM (1 child)
>Real transvestites use Ubuntu.
No, they use any Linux but change the appearance to Redmond or Aqua.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @12:21AM
It's a typo should be call Ubuttu
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @03:36PM
Real Ubuntu uses transvestites.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2020, @09:47PM (4 children)
Slackware is always out of date. So "real men" are pretty much universally rootkitted.
People who know, use Void.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Thursday July 09 2020, @10:59PM (3 children)
Slackware current is actively maintained and comes with kernel 5.4.50. Its pretty much a rolling release at this point.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday July 09 2020, @11:55PM (2 children)
IIUC, though, Slackware doesn't have a package manager, so you don't get told when something needs to be updated. OTOH, I've never used it, so I could easily be wrong.
A package manager sure isn't a cure for things on it's own, as shown by the current article, but there are lots of reasons why it's a good idea.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @12:18AM
There's things like slackpkg that do a good job of checking the Slackware mirrors for new files and upgrading to them. In fact, modern Slackware is surprisingly easy to get up and running, no Ubuntu or Mint, but weirdly not far off, so long as you're okay with using the terminal. Was amazed when I installed 14.2 and got X running in Xinerama without having to tweak a single config file (shows good work from the whole Linux community)
The slackware-current branch has made a few big changes from the 14.2 release, PAM support being the prime example. Looking forward to (what I assume will be) 15.0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @01:39AM
Slackware DOES have a package manager... It WILL tell you what updates are available.
There are also multiple 3rd party Slackware package managers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2020, @02:40PM
What do Real Women use?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Subsentient on Thursday July 09 2020, @11:58PM
I do love Fedora, despite it being pozzed with systemd. It's a clean, secure, fairly vanilla distro, which is exactly what I like. It doesn't patch all its packages and stick custom logos and shit in everything like Debian does, and rpm/dnf nowadays is actually much *more* reliable than dpkg/apt, speaking from lots of experience.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 5, Interesting) by rigrig on Thursday July 09 2020, @08:12PM (5 children)
This isn't about that though: Linux Mint happily offers a whole bunch of applications as Flatpak alongside apt-based installs.
For browsers this actually makes some sense:
They are an extremely fast-moving target, so it takes a lot of effort[1] to keep up as a distro: either to backport changes so they work with the library versions you ship, or to update all those dependencies as well.
But you do need to keep up, because this isn't about the latest shiny features in some editor, but a huge internet-exposed attack vector for all desktop users.
Their issue is with Snap specifically [readthedocs.io]:
Also, the way that Canonical made it so that apt install chromium-browser would install Chromium using snapd was deemed a sneaky way to start replacing APT with the Ubuntu Store.
No one remembers the singer.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday July 09 2020, @09:45PM (3 children)
I really liked Ubuntu 18.04 and upgraded to 20.04 without really thinking much about it, but after trying manage snaps for a couple of weeks I ditched it in favour of Pop!_OS, which despite the silly name is Ubuntu without the snaps.
I can't really see how snaps could be worse for the end user. For example, opening a file from /home/username/video using the snap version of Openshot video editor is a whole bunch of unwanted clicks.
I'm sure there are lots of other reasons to hate snaps, but as its Linux I have choices and so I exercised them.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday July 09 2020, @10:13PM (2 children)
Ubuntu without the snaps ... Will it have chromium? And will that *not* be a snap in disguise?
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday July 09 2020, @10:25PM
It might have Chromium, I don't know as I don't have a need for it on a laptop but if it does it will either be Flatpak or Deb, based on every other thing I've installed.
The Pop Store gives the choice at install time, which is nice.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday July 10 2020, @03:40PM
Ubuntu without snaps - you have a choice of buttons, or a zipper. You may have chrome buttons, a chrome zipper, or just chrome plate the whole thing - your preference.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by shortscreen on Thursday July 09 2020, @10:20PM
Web browsers are the purest manifestation ever of "latest shiny". That is why they (always and forever more) present such a vast attack surface.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday July 09 2020, @06:33PM (24 children)
That sounds like a good reason to avoid Ubuntu or any derivative. Linux Mint is taking the better path here. Still, makes me glad the only version of Linux I've been using recently is MXLinux.
I have to admit that Snap sounded interesting, but doing something like is mentioned here, is not acceptable.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by epitaxial on Thursday July 09 2020, @07:06PM (13 children)
I remember when Linux folks used to mention DLL hell and feel superior. Now you can't even compile something outside of one specific developers machine. So instead of cleaning up the mess and fixing why that happens they just put everything in a container. You trust the container security to keep bad things from happening to your machine. Sure I'll take this gigabyte of code and libraries from some random internet person and run it. You find a piece of software you need. It needs some random obscure libraries. One of those libraries needs some more libraries and the one repo where its hosted is down. You're knee deep in library bullshit at this point.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2020, @07:53PM (2 children)
They've basically reinvented statically-compiled executables, but badly.
(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday July 09 2020, @08:35PM (1 child)
You could be referring to AppImage.
I've also heard a POV which said that Docker is static linking for millennials.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1) by organgtool on Friday July 10 2020, @09:00PM
I know this is a joke but since this is a story about Snap and Docker and I see so many comparisons of the two, I think it's worth pointing out a distinction: one of the main advantages of a Docker image is being able to execute multiple instances of a container based on a single image without the need for maintaining a separate set of config files for each instance. For example, most web-based technologies need to connect to a database and therefore need to provide the connect string to the database in one or more config files. If I ran these apps natively, I would have to maintain separate configs on the file system for each web app instance to point to its companion database instance. However, with Docker I can create a stack and call the database "mydb" in the stack and then refer to the database hostname as "mydb" in all of the web app config and each instance of the web app will be able to communicate with its own db instance with absolutely no additional manipulation of the config. This use case doesn't really present itself for most desktop apps which is why people question the need for containerized desktop apps. In any event, the way that Docker is packaged is fairly independent of the advantages it provides. I just thought I'd take your joke way too seriously to make that distinction.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2020, @09:18PM
Good luck fixing it. Every previous attempt made the monstrosity even more monstrous.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2020, @09:50PM
This was never not so. I remember Linux dependency hell going all the way back to kernel 0.98
Yep people use different build environments. The bigger the application the more proprietary the build environments tend to get. Every team has a different approach to code development and optimization.
Even GNU doesn't use config tools universally.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by hendrikboom on Thursday July 09 2020, @10:16PM (5 children)
There's guix, which claims to be able to handle multiple versions of the same package to handle depedency hell. Every package gets its own set of (shared) versions of packages it depends on.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Saturday July 11 2020, @02:10PM (4 children)
There's also Nix, which did it first and gave Guix the idea. Guix just copied the it, but using GNU-approved Guile Scheme for the package description and configuration language instead of a custom language like Nix uses. This would be a great thing, since you can use a nice, fully-featured, and powerful language instead of someone's in-house custom PL. But unfortunately they also went full GNU, which means odds are it will be less useful than Nix for use on a real system due to having fewer packages (14k for Guix, 60k for Nix) and no access to things like non-free firmware. So you're back to dealing with Nix and its weird not-quite-Haskell language.
Guix is a great idea but in the real world, if you want an actually useful system, you should never go full GNU.
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Saturday July 11 2020, @02:46PM (1 child)
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 2) by Marand on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:38PM
:D
That was what I was going for but I decided not to go with a direct quote. Glad it didn't get missed despite that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @05:34PM
i installed guix and it didn't work out of the box. end of test.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday July 13 2020, @04:51PM
I suppose it would still be possible for a distro to use guix but choose to have guix access its own guix-compatible repositories.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @10:30PM (1 child)
When on Earth was this?
I've been using Linux for decades, and I remember a mess worse than "DLL Hell" dating back to the mid-90s. Often, if you wanted a binary, if you weren't running a specific distro (and then, often only a specific version), any binary you obtained would be useless. Your only option would be to recompile, assuming that you could get the code, and the library, and possibly the source code for the library (and any other dependencies), and get compatible versions, and (cherry on top!) the whole thing worked without compiler error or producing an executable that promptly crashed.
The repos managed to help with this to some extent, but only if the software you wanted was in the repo, making them a "soft walled garden" long before Apple or Google came up with them. I don't think most Linux fans realize that this is the case, since they recoil from walled gardens (as they should). And keep in mind, I like Linux a great deal, and it frustrates me that this is the case, when it didn't need to be and it shouldn't be. They marvel at the simplicity of the repo, and don't realize what really makes it tick and what its implications are. I don't even think the initial distros were made with this in mind, either, but that's the end result, essentially accidentally bringing them to a relatively large audience in a palatable form, since you didn't have to recompile if the distro already compiled it for you. But if the program wasn't in there, or - horror of horrors! - was proprietary, you were in for suffering.
Since that time the distros seem to have gone out of their way to crap on Linus' attempts at making binary backwards compatibility a reliable thing, and have more than made up with it with library incompatibility by the ton.
Ultimately containers are the best way to get around the library and distro mess. The people who are scratching their heads and wondering why people want containers likely include the ones that precipitated these ridiculous conditions in the first place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @12:20AM
Distros that make packaging easy tend to have many packages. Arch is a good example - the PKGBUILD file is just a shell script that sets a few variables and supplies the build and package functions (CRUX has even simpler Pkgfiles, but no dependency management). BSDs have fewer packages and a higher barrier to entry - Makefile-based ports with a complicated set of procedures to properly build and sign.
Somehow Gentoo ebuilds are strange and over-complicated, but they have a huge repo? Elitist ricer overcompensation?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2020, @07:43PM (7 children)
so you can still use Mint even if you reject Ubuntu. They keep it maintained against the day Ubuntu turns evil or disappears.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2020, @07:56PM (2 children)
There's an ever increasing concensus that Mint should drop their standard distro based on Ubuntu and concentrate all their efforts on LMDE only. I happen to be part of that concensus. LMDE 4 is my daily driver and I couldn't be happier.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2020, @11:23PM (1 child)
...if an LMDE tracking Debian testing existed, I'd marry it and bear it's huge-headed children.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday July 10 2020, @03:44PM
The huge heads are a result of the systemd mutation. Just so you know.
(Score: 2) by SDRefugee on Thursday July 09 2020, @08:05PM (3 children)
And even if (when) Ubuntu truly jumps the shark, Mint also tracks Debian with their LMDE version. Mint definitely looks to be the way to go... Not to mention
I think it looks nicer than Ubuntu (using the Cinnamon DE)
America should be proud of Edward Snowden, the hero, whether they know it or not..
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday July 09 2020, @10:16PM (2 children)
Is systemd optional in mint?
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Friday July 10 2020, @03:26AM
Not to my knowledge, but, if you like Cinnamon (which is a big thing in Mint), you can install Cinnamon in Devuan. In version 2, it's one of the options you have when installing Devuan. Devuan just came out with version 3 and I assume Cinnamon is in version 3, but I haven't checked it out yet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @01:11PM
It's optional in Debian too. However, Debian allows all its other components to place hard dependencies on systemd components, thereby making it de-facto compulsory.
But happily, the elogind package from AntiX ships with an API-compatible libsystemd.so, thereby allowing pretty much anything from Debian (even Wayland) to run smoothly without systemd. But by then it's called AntiX.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by driverless on Friday July 10 2020, @10:35AM (1 child)
OTOH it's not "Ubuntu turning evil", they're trying to fix a genuine problem related to out-of-date libs in LTS versions. Their solution seems OK until you look in a bit more detail and realise it results in unepected behaviour for some users. Hopefully they'll realise this is a problem and address it. But in any case it's not the "evil corporation slips in unwanted malware" that the summary makes it out to be.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @05:38PM
they're slipping in vendor lockin and unacceptable access restriction though and that's not OK.
(Score: 4, Informative) by fustakrakich on Thursday July 09 2020, @06:34PM (20 children)
They use systemd, don't they?
I think that answers your question.
To avoid these issues and more, use Slackware or Gentoo.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Touché) by loonycyborg on Thursday July 09 2020, @07:52PM (4 children)
I'm using Gentoo with systemd atm :P
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday July 09 2020, @08:31PM (3 children)
You had a choice with gentoo, didn't you?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2020, @08:38PM (2 children)
Of course: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Init_system [gentoo.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Thursday July 09 2020, @10:18PM (1 child)
That's OK. People who want systemd should be able to have it. People who don't shouldn't have it forced on them.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @03:23PM
People who want systemd should be committed to an asylum for their own safety.
FTFY
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Thursday July 09 2020, @08:02PM (6 children)
or better yet, FreeBSD
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday July 09 2020, @09:31PM (5 children)
Free/Net/Open
Too many choices!
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Touché) by zoward on Thursday July 09 2020, @11:23PM (4 children)
You can never have too many choices.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by TheReaperD on Friday July 10 2020, @12:00AM (2 children)
Developers would strongly disagree! Too much variety in the code-base makes any compile environment absolute hell. It's one of the major reasons why Linux has always had a problem with wide stream adoption: Too many fucking forks!
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday July 10 2020, @12:59PM
Ironically, higher level languages don't care much about libc, and all three of the big BSDs OpenFreeNet all use the same BSD-libc, just like macos.
Also ironically there was SUPER heavy drama about a decade ago in Linux-Land about GNU libc and its numerous forks and competitors but that seems to have settled down over the last decade. I assume given where linux is headed, they'll soon be a mandatory systemd-libc to embrace extend and extinguish linux in general.
I would agree in theory that variety can make life exciting but for better or worse at least WRT compiled C there's not much variety right now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @03:01PM
> Too many fucking forks!
That also applies to the Dining Philosophers problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dining_philosophers_problem [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday July 10 2020, @03:16AM
But the coin only has two sides
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday July 09 2020, @08:38PM (3 children)
The Night of systemd! -- Coming Soon on VHS !
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2020, @09:54PM (2 children)
So that would be a porno of Debian maintainers blowing Pottering then?
(Score: 2) by TheReaperD on Friday July 10 2020, @12:02AM (1 child)
With an elephant, a kazoo, and a tuning fork in Linus' office.
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Saturday July 11 2020, @02:52PM
I love the part where Poettering lets loose a gallon of wet diarrhea, with the kazoo squeaking and warbling while lodged in his asshole the whole time.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 5, Informative) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday July 09 2020, @11:57PM (3 children)
and Devuan [devuan.org] which is based on Debian sans systemd
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 3, Informative) by Freeman on Friday July 10 2020, @02:34PM (2 children)
Also, MXLinux, I'm currently using that on my resurrected Laptop/Tablet that a friend gave me. It's "ancient", but it was able to fill some gaps when my wife's computer died. (Not actually ancient. I have at least one functional IBM Thinkpad A21m, now that's ancient. It's also the only device I have that has a functional 3.5" Floppy Drive.)
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Saturday July 11 2020, @01:07AM (1 child)
That's hardly ancient. I've got one of those kicking about too, though I haven't booted it in some time. It can boot from CD, has USB ports, and has built in networking. Ancient has none of those things.
I'd venture it'd probably run a current Linux distro like Slackware, though perhaps a bit sluggishly.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday July 13 2020, @03:49PM
'eh, over 20 years in the computer industry is ancient. At least at this point. I keep it around, because it's actually useful. I didn't keep any of the old 5 1/4" devices I had or any of my older desktops that had 3.5" floppy drives. They just weren't practical. I might even have a USB Floppy Drive somewhere, which I haven't used in over 10 years. It's infinitely better to fire up a Virtual Machine, use the all-in-one package of my old IBM Thinkpad, or use something even more powerful, like a Raspberry Pi. The VM is much more convenient and the Raspberry Pi is more practical while saving me $$ on electricity.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2020, @06:49PM
No, the pink-hairs in HR would never allow that, because being evil might trigger someone.
(Score: 4, Informative) by pTamok on Thursday July 09 2020, @07:01PM (7 children)
If people want a different choice to Snaps and Flatpaks, there is also the lesser known Appimage [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Informative) by fustakrakich on Thursday July 09 2020, @09:39PM (5 children)
Heh, I remember when Mac programs came that way, all self contained. It was back in the System 7 days. Sure beats the hell out of scattering bits and pieces all over your drive during "installation"
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Thursday July 09 2020, @10:50PM (4 children)
They still come that way. Basically it's a package with subfolders containing the various bits and pieces. From the developer POV, you can stuff all the relevant stuff in there to make sure that bitrot and OS mutation don't break your stuff nearly as much. It's a great system.
It differs from a Snap, though, in that you can actually edit and modify the application contents with the appropriate permissions, so if you get stuck with something really borken (RocketChat-snap, I'm looking at you), you might actually have a chance to address it. Snaps are utterly toxic. I despise them.
--
I'm trying to give up sexual innuendo.
But it's hard.
So hard.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by TheReaperD on Friday July 10 2020, @12:10AM
Did Ubuntu go full fellatio to the copyright cartels and allow completely unreadable, uneditable binaries be installed on their systems? And, if so, in the case of Chrome, made it the only install option to the point of backdooring it when you tried to install it with apt-get? I haven't used Ubuntu in a while so I'm actually curious if I need to avoid it in the future.
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Friday July 10 2020, @01:04PM (2 children)
I miss the old days when the groupthink was dynamic linking made your apps better and more secure, not the opposite like now.
Someday I think we'll reach the other extreme where /bin/ls is a symlink to a sandboxed static linked docker image, and when yet another security bug is fixed in strcpy you'll have to essentially download and reinstall the entire box instead of one library.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday July 10 2020, @05:57PM (1 child)
The problem is, it rarely did, unless you were incompetent in the first place.
It meant you were using other people's code, OPC that despite the accessibility (sometimes) for others to look it over and verify it, rarely actually was looked over, and even if it was, it wasn't done carefully or completely or even well. And like most OPC (and final applications and OS implementations, frankly) out in the wild, was rarely documented well or even at all.
Code that you usually had to wait for bugfixes for; bugfixes that often never arrived.
Code that wasn't written to do exactly what you wanted, nor just what you wanted, and so contained anything from a little to enormous amounts of cruft, some of which might be peripherally involved with, and subtly affecting, the functionality, the security, and the fit of the overall project. And which, consequently, you could not document completely even if you wanted to, because it ends up being incomprehensible in its multi-layered dependence upon random stuff you never even get to see, much less have the good fortune to encounter detailed documentation for, or come with test suites to solidly validate.
Code that carried with it various legal hurdles and roadblocks as to what you could, and could not, do with it.
Code that might, or might not, be portable across platforms.
Code that might, or might not, use a development environment that you actually have set up.
Code that would break when bitrot and/or mutation set in on the dynamically linked, but now dynamically different, binary.
Code that turned out to have been 16-bit when you needed 32- or 64-bit.
Code that didn't take into account big- and/or little-endianness.
Code that brought in dependencies on framework after framework in an ever-deepening heap of unknown, eventually unknowable, weaknesses, vulnerabilities, as well as outright bugs and/or memory stomping and/or memory leaks.
Sure, if you can't take time to write what you need, you can always lean on the wide world of "maybe it'll do", but if you can, and you're willing to put in the work, a lot of that — even most of it — can be avoided.
The only real exception — for large systems, anyway — is the host OS. For small systems, you can write the whole shooting match.
Well, some of us can, anyway. :)
--
Months of development work saves hours of up-front design.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday July 11 2020, @02:32PM
I hear what you're saying that code is rarely perfect, but it rapidly turns into a race between an individual or small team vs perhaps the entire gnu-libc effort, and usually the glibc people won.
Now I'd agree that for some obscure glue library with only two users in the real world, yeah you can almost certainly do better than they did even with the usual NIH problems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @05:41PM
appimage is gay. if i wanted to download executables from all over the internet and not have them properly integrated, i could run windows.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2020, @09:14PM (9 children)
Why would anyone install Chromium shitware?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2020, @10:02PM (2 children)
Believe it or not, there are many thousands of students who are compelled to use it by their schools. Edu-ware is so fucked up at most schools that they can't even come close to meeting ISO or W3C or IETF standards. Students must use the most broken software, configured in the most fuck-you-in-the-ass insecure way because that is the only thing that will run on book vendors shithole websites.
Not that it matters since every browser vendors has a army of minions flogging how secure their shit is, all while they pimp out their whole user base. Mozilla's recent alliance with Comcast not withstanding. They are all that bad. Made so mostly by the W3C, who has supported loose integration and zero security architectures since its inception. Personally I think they are false flag op.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by TheReaperD on Friday July 10 2020, @12:19AM (1 child)
The copyright cartels have been trying to force hard-coded DRM that you can't bypass on a system that is tied to the hardware (TPM) with a unique serial number for each computer (yes, both Intel and AMD capitulated on this). Now, it's just getting the browser vendors to completely play ball as it is hard-coded into Windows bound to the TPM hardware. Then, the last step is to remove all other consumer choices, leaving the broken DRM the only option. (If only they could find some way to make downloading a torrent an automatic death penalty without trial; at least life in prison. [Yes, a few copyright lawyers {that mostly worked for Disney} have called for torrents to be a life-sentence by cartel tribunal without a trial or ability to appeal.])
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit
(Score: 3, Interesting) by pdfernhout on Friday July 10 2020, @03:17AM
https://pdfernhout.net/microslaw.html [pdfernhout.net]
=====
This was originally posted to Slashdot on May 25 2002:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=33107&cid=3582999 [slashdot.org]
It was in relation to an article: "MPAA to Senate: Plug the Analog Hole!" about the MPAA wanting copyright protection built into all computer hardware. I sent a copy to Richard Stallman back then and he said it made him laugh. :-) My comments to the Department of Justice request for comments were in the form of this satire:
Transcript of April 1, 2016 MicroSlaw Presidential Speech (Before final editing prior to release under standard U.S. Government for-fee licensing under 2011 Fee Requirements Law)
My fellow Americans. There has been some recent talk of free law by the General Public Lawyers (the GPL) who we all know hold un-American views. I speak to you today from the Oval Office in the White House to assure you how much better off you are now that all law is proprietary. The value of proprietary law should be obvious. Software is essentially just a form of law governing how computers operate, and all software and media content has long been privatized to great economic success. Economic analysts have proven conclusively that if we hadn't passed laws banning all free software like GNU/Linux and OpenOffice after our economy began its current recession, which started, how many times must I remind everyone, only coincidentally with the shutdown of Napster, that we would be in far worse shape then we are today. RIAA has confidently assured me that if independent artists were allowed to release works without using their compensation system and royalty rates, music CD sales would be even lower than their recent inexplicably low levels. The MPAA has also detailed how historically the movie industry was nearly destroyed in the 1980s by the VCR until that too was banned and all so called fair use exemptions eliminated. So clearly, these successes with software, content, and hardware indicate the value of a similar approach to law.
There are many reasons for the value of proprietary law. You all know them since you have been taught them in school since kindergarten as part of your standardized education. They are reflected in our most fundamental beliefs, such as sharing denies the delight of payment and cookies can only be brought into the classroom if you bring enough to sell to everyone. But you are always free to eat them all yourself of course! [audience chuckles knowingly]. But I think it important to repeat such fundamental truths now as they form the core of all we hold dear in this great land.
First off, we all know our current set of laws requires a micropayment each time a U.S. law is discussed, referenced, or applied by any person anywhere in the world. This financial incentive has produced a large amount of new law over the last decade. This body of law is all based on a core legal code owned by that fine example of American corporate capitalism at its best, the MicroSlaw Corporation.
MicroSlaw's core code defines a legal operating standard or OS we can all rely on. While I know some GPL supporters may be painting a rosy view of free law to the general public, it is obvious that any so called free alternative to MicroSlaw's legal code fails at the start because it would require great costs for learning about new so-called free laws, plus additional costs to switch all legal forms and court procedures to the new so called free standard. So free laws are really more expensive, especially as we are talking here about free as in cost, not free as in freedom.
...
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday July 09 2020, @10:24PM (3 children)
In order to be able to use Zoom without installing the native Zoom app, which might do who knows what.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Friday July 10 2020, @12:02AM
and the Chromium from the Canonical controlled source might also be doing who knows what.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @08:17AM (1 child)
Running Zoom app which does who knows what, vs. running Chromium which does who knows what...
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday July 10 2020, @02:42PM
Flip the coin, you're probably just as bad off either way, but if you're going to be using Zoom anyway. You might as well use their app as opposed to introducing a proven bad actor. Since, Google is syphoning every shred of data they can.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday July 09 2020, @10:27PM
In order to be able to use roll20 without installing the native roll20 app, which does not appear to exist.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Thursday July 09 2020, @11:02PM
To preview what Firefox is going to copy next.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday July 10 2020, @12:42AM (2 children)
Ubuntu *has been* evil since it started the coffee-shop motif. The word "ubuntu" itself has been badly misappropriated by the project, as the idea behind it ("Linux for human beings," meaning pretty much *everyone*) has long since been left in the dust. It's sickening to watch.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @02:39AM
I don't agree with the troll mod here. Ubuntu changed their whole desktop in a minor version update. I ran it then and it totally fucked my machine up with no warning, and there was no rollback mechanism. I wouldn't spare a squirt of piss if they burst into flames.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday July 10 2020, @01:10PM
I'm please to see we're both professional enough to occasionally agree on things.
The real Ubuntu problem fundamentally is their definition of "human beings" is defined and controlled by marketing people who've never actually used a computer or sysadmin'd anything and don't intend to in the future. They love signalling about how great they are at demonstrating an amazing amount of effort to own markets that don't exist to satisfy people who don't exist. If only they were actually focused on real users ...
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @08:20AM (1 child)
That's like African for "Can't install Devuan", right?
(Score: 1, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Friday July 10 2020, @04:02PM
It depends on which syllable is emphasized most. When all three are emphasized at the same time, it means "I don't know a damned thing and I want someone to hold my hand and do it for me!" In which case, the user could have stayed with Apple or Microsoft, but chose to do some virtue signaling instead.