KDE Neon Core: Fully Snap Based KDE Desktop??

[@szaszm_]

They should snap out of this fever dream. 5:17 You forgot to link the full talk

[@gilesstockman4913]

🤣

[@iceeice1234]

Snap back to reality, ope, there goes gravity

[@BrodieRobertson]

I clicked save on it 3 times, why do you do this to me KZbin

[@fuseteam]

Still missing :p

[@Max24871]

@@BrodieRobertson It's still not there, why not link it in a pinned comment?

[@neko6803]

i usually hate snapd but this time i have to play devils advocate: for this rare occasion it could actually work very well. A consistent problem of KDE Neon is that the libraries needed to run the latest Versions of the Plasma-Family usually require backporting to the latest Ubuntu LTS. This comes with the issue of leading to inconsistencies when non-KDE-Apps relying on much older versions of the same dependencylibraries get installed on Neon - you are not supposed to do that but some people do. These can then randomly break because certain functions included the backports might work slightly differently or might be deprecated or removed alltogether. A Fully modular System based on a containersolution like snap actually provides the one rare benefit of taking this issue out of the equation because the Deps get shipped on a Per-Snap-Container-Basis so you just put the deps into the container/package rather than messing with the backportingbullshi...

[@phonewithoutquestion80]

I feel about the same. I think Ubuntu Core Desktop and similar concepts such as KDE Neon Core is the most logical environment and conclusion for Snaps. Arch, Debian, Fedora, etc. with snaps pasted on top? Mm, not my cup of tea.

[@cameronbosch1213]

​@phonewithoutquestion80 I personally think they should do what Steam OS does; snapshot an Arch base and use Flatpaks for additional packages. I really don't like Snaps for several reasons, like Canonical's control over their propietary back-end and how behind they are compared to Flatpaks in 2024.

[@neko6803]

@@cameronbosch1213 the issue about choosing Arch as a base is... well, it is Arch. Neon is a showcasedistro and as such you want to show what plasma can do without the fxckery that is introduced by a rollingrelease: Arch works reasonably well but you are not exactly supposed to snapshot it, this comes especially to fruition for Neon because for such a snapshot to be viable as a showcase for Plasma it needs to be tested extensively each time (you dont want your own showcase distro to be a buggy mess). Valve has the possibility to do that, KDE has other more urgent tasks at hand that require more attention than testing the base of their showcasedistro. Using Fedora as a basis might be a more viable option, still reasonably recent in age of basedistro so not much backporting necessary and well... it isnt Ubuntu ;) Dont get me wrong, i use Arch as my primary distro for the better part of close to 5 years now but i do not see it a good fit to showcase something to potential investors.

[@cameronbosch1213]

@neko6803 The problem is that Fedora is in the process of removing the XOrg Server option from their Plasma session (has been done in Fedora 40) and their GNOME session (will be done in Fedora 41). That means KDE would have to make more changes to Fedora just to allow for their features. Don't get me wrong, Wayland is absolutely where focus should be on, and XWayland can run mostly everything X11 related fine, KDE needs to keep the XOrg session support for now because it is still support upstream. So that's more work than using a distro that still offers this.

[@max_im_um]

@@cameronbosch1213 The back end is not proprietary, snapd is free software. It's snapcraft's back end that's proprietary. This is not applicable to this distro.

[@alexanderdelguidice4660]

Ubuntu Core: The million loop device distro

[@cameronbosch1213]

_You spin me right round baby, right round, like a record, like a record baby!_ 😂

[@emacsking4310]

Yeah ikr, the worst distro

[@discocat2500]

Lol, duf

[@Kermit2k]

@@discocat2500 LOL it's insane how hung up people are in this total non issue.

[@Treviath]

I really hate using lsblk on ubuntu for that exact reason.

[@Hv7CQJxTwGLpy9kt]

27.104 Kelvin is the boiling point of neon. What did I win

[@JTCPingas]

You won Konsole as a snap 🙃

[@lifefromscratch2818]

As a Linux ignoramus I'd love to hear a cohesive explanation for what is wrong with snaps besides just the "it's bad" that's generally available. Also I guess what it is since I was lead to believe it's for applications and have no idea how a whole OS would be made that way.

[@FireCrack]

Well, for my own part whenever I check disk space with `df -h` and see a million loop devices cluttering the list it really annoys me, and makes the tool hard to use. And yes, I know you can alias it to grep out these devices, but I really don't want ot do that because then in the future there are all sorts of problems I can have from running my own special df alias rather than the real "df" program, and that definitely will bite me whenever I forget exactly what I did in the future, if not break outright on special cases. I have other issues with it too but this one is a clear and simple example. AppImage and Flatpack have their warts too, of course, but the very nature of those tools is far more isolated than the all-intrusive nature of snaps.

[@mgord9518]

They bug you about restarting apps Might sound like a nitpick, but it's beyond annoying.

[@baryemini4103]

Mainly the fact that it's hardcoded to a single central repository that is closed source, the direction of the project is solely governed by Canonical, and Canonical doesn't have a great reputation competing against everyone with standards (See his video "Death Of Mir And Rebirth As Wayland") so you don't want to relay on it. Flatpak solves all of these problems as it's completely open, supports custom repositories (and the most popular one, flathub, is also open) and backed by freedesktop. In the past there were some technical disadvantages for both of them and arguments based on that, but from what I know they're both in a pretty good state.

[@lifefromscratch2818]

@@mgord9518 you mean like windows? 😂

[@angeldirk00]

The snap backend is proprietary and only controlled by Canonical, and they are known to screw up the snap store a lot. Imagine an app store like Google Play, with how it both has outright removed good, privacy respecting/security apps, and how much garbage malware apps it has. now imagine that on Linux. And there you have it. At least flatpak can be distributed and controlled by other people outside of flathub

[@cameronbosch1213]

Canonical's Snaps: "You could make a religion out of this!" Me: "No, don't..."

[@Muhaddith]

bill wurtz

[@cameronbosch1213]

@@Muhaddith Correct! Looks like I found somebody else of good culture!

[@davidDN2318]

I already miss wayland news lol

[@Nebulorum]

I find the modularity on Nix and Nixos is really nice.

[@LautaroQ2812]

YES! Amazing! This is EXACTLY what I wanted and needed!! . .. . . . . . . . .. . . . .. . . . . Said no one ever.

[@Satook]

Snap is too slow (years after they said that was a solvable issue) and didn’t allow me to access my network shares, other drives or anything much at all. The speed was annoying the lack of drive/mount access made snaps literally unusable. I do all my docs/etc work on a redundant, backed up NAS. Remote file access is a must and the issue was marked “won’t fix” because apparently no-one needs access to anything outside $HOME :(

[@bluephreakr]

Perhaps, there is an alternative means of making the device available; a loopback to where it mounts across the network could help to fix that?

[@luisortega8085]

This is pretty cool, ngl.

[@emacsking4310]

Pretty stoopid tbh

[@xanderplayz3446]

Until you use NixOS.

[@luisortega8085]

@@xanderplayz3446 I've used nixos for 2 years and had to abandon it due to many issues, while I loved the concept and being able to configure the system declaratively, it's got a good number of issues :( on arch now

[@the-answer-is-42]

I like this from a technical perspective, not sure yet if I would want to use it, but I'm willing to try new things. Snaps have their place, don't hate or love them, the main reason I avoid them (unless I know it's an official snap or from a source I trust) is because Canonical to my understanding has a rather poor track record with vetting uploaded snaps. The idea behind them I'm on with, though, and this is an interesting use case.

[@SirScythe]

I legitimately got shivers when I read the title

[@adamchovanec5010]

It is great to see innovation in Linux Desktop and different approaches being tried.

[@FengLengshun]

Honestly, it might be a good step as I'd imagine a lot of vendor would be interested in a predictable whole system libraries for Linux. Plus, I saw the dialog box they have to ask for permission and man I want that. I won't go Ubuntu Core because I'm comfortable with my custom build Bazzite running everything via Flatpak, Nix home-manager, and Distrobox, but if I wasn't already too invested in my setup I'd be tempted to at least try it.

[@Poldovico]

If I may interject for a moment, what you're referring to as a snap based system, is in fact, a snap cringe system, or as I've recently taken to calling it, Linux plus cringe.

[@ThatLinuxDude]

Oops, all Snaps!

[@cameronbosch1213]

Oops, all Ubuntu! 😂

[@naturesarmy9]

I love beamer presentations ❤

[@sylvershadow1247]

I honestly like this concept and would love to see this become a reality. Would really be cool to see them and Kubuntu devs collaborate to serve Plasma channels where if someone prefers Kubuntu’s pace, they can use that channel. Why are most people here seriously just dismissing Snaps outright? They haven’t been slow for me in a while. Some of the concerns some have posted seems to be relevant over 5 years ago or something. I generally have positive experience with Snaps to the point I always set it up on my systems.

[@samsh0-q3a]

Well first you have to use Ubuntu but thats just silly.

[@sylvershadow1247]

@@samsh0-q3a I use Snaps in Arch as well, just to expand my software sources. Although, until AppArmor patches are upstreamed in 6.12 (potentially), I don’t use it as often. My Ubuntu servers’ services are also Snap-based.

[@emacsking4310]

Nice vid Eddy!

[@ThompYT]

A bit unrelated but I feel like flatpak and/or snap should support runtime permissions. It would make things way easier for users that don't understand/know how to edit a flatpak's permissions and more secure for the average user by blacklisting some permissions from being set at build-time (so the user has to explicitly confirm them). This is basically what android did years ago and it would be cool to see us catch up to that.

[@adam91303]

I hope that the current available versions of kde neon will continue to be available

[@dannyboy42223]

(looks at debmirror in relief) wouldn't hate snaps if they had a offline way to maintain a repo but there isn't. With that and huge size, and start-up speed I'll keep my debian and offline repo for my locall systems.

[@SirSomnolent]

It's nice to see teams inventing new problems rather than just the old boring solving existing ones.

[@nobodyimportant7804]

Some people are sadists who just want to watch the world burn.

[@phrtao]

Is this really the best way they can spend their time ? A solution looking for a problem

[@kras_mazov]

What Snap is doing right is adding permission requests. Can we expect similar functionality from Flatpak in the future?

[@AlexanderAhjolinna]

Personally, I'm much more interested in the Arch-based 'KDE OS' project than this. But if KDE can also manage to maintain KDE Neon and KDE Neon Core, that's fine by me. I'd prefer to see them focus on the 'KDE OS' initiative-but that's just me. I’m not a fan of Ubuntu/Debian distros and prefer Arch (or SUSE), especially if it’s an immutable version with KDE. So yeah, I’m a bit biased.

[@cameronbosch1213]

I agree. The Arch-based KDE OS would probably be my preferred idea, especially with Flatpak support. It's kind of hard to trust modern Canonical to not screw up the Snap store again...

[@PrenonNon0]

It's a great technical demo, but what's the point?

[@emacsking4310]

The point is being stupid

[@fuseteam]

YES YES YES YES YES YES LET'S GOOOOOOO

[@cholling1]

Are you wearing a "Sickos" T-shirt while you say that?

[@Wurstbrot03]

I'm sure it would have its use cases but a full snap based system it's definitely not for me, even when I'm really interested in immutable distros. A OpenSuse MicroOS variant with COSMIC through...

[@stephanhuebner4931]

So because nobody uses KDE Neon they need to create *another* version of it that nobody will use?

[@lightechoes]

Friends don’t let friends use snap.

[@dreamcat4]

hey brodie, in may jack dorsey switched from bluesky (twitter successor) to new "primal" open source protocol social media platform.... can you please do a video on primal net protocol, how it compares to mastodon etc? would be great thank you. lots of love brodie! hope you are doing well in australia 😋

[@macoud12]

Keep Snap away from my systems.

[@rjawiygvozd]

"and KDE Neon isn't going anywhere anyway" there is at least two ways to interpret this statement and my first was "... so we may as well ruin it, not a big deal"

[@samconnelly7630]

NixOS is Nix packages down the the core, so I get why Ubuntu Core would be Snap packages down to the core.

[@emacsking4310]

Nix is TRASH Ubuntu is TRASH Snap is TRASH

[@samconnelly7630]

@@emacsking4310 That's okay if you don't like Nix. I use NixOS, but it isn't for everyone. It may be trash for you, but it isn't trash for everyone.

[@bltzcstrnx]

@@emacsking4310 immutable OS have good points, hence why the industry is moving that way. On server side, containerization gain massive movements where almost all deployments are immutable. Modern OS like Android & iOS use immutable ideology such as contained apps and OS image.

[@ReedoTV]

I like snaps... conceptually

[@GeekIWG]

Sometime you should talk about how you can run KDE Neon inside of Docker

[@vaisakh_km]

Linux kernal has been rewritten in scratch... it can be done, butshould it be?

[@act.13.41]

I'm literally shaking right now. /sarcasm

[@emacsking4310]

Whats better $15 tip or membership for you, i will send one soon.

[@emacsking4310]

I think I did In the past maybe

[@MarkConstable]

In general for me, snaps = no... but I can imagine a case that being able to run Plasma6 on DEBIAN 12, if it were possible, would get my attention. Ie; Plasma 6 on a Proxmox host (because I can't get iGPU passthrough to work).

[@jongeduard]

Not for me. Such a big amount of unstable software which is intended to be very stable, shouldn't be done in my opinion. If I install Debian Stable, I will try to keep it as pure as possible, unless I have a special need for a specific thing. Otherwise I really just go for Arch Linux, when I run for my actual desktop systems.

[@Your_Degenerate]

When will we get Windows Core? Wouldn't that make Windows more... snappy?

[@Beryesa.]

Akademy will take a few vids to cover well :D

[@CXCubeHD]

I don't know why people keep saying snaps are so bad

[@vaisakh_km]

Cuz - backend is closed source (so there are no alternate stores) - canonical and dumb decisions - slow startup times (i have people who tried linux and gone back windows saying linux is slow, in reality they used ubuntu and everything it is snap, so it's slow) - hemce bad image for linux due to new users using ubuntu and thinking it's slow - breaks everything due to its dumb way of adding packages as block devices - no proper desktop integration ike flatpak

[@CXCubeHD]

@@vaisakh_km Store backend being closed is reasonable. Google Play for example also has closed source store and you still can sideload stuff, just like with snaps. From what I have seen they improved startup times, I don't see them as being that bad, maybe little inconvenient. Also what do u mean with no proper desktop integration?

[@ninefingers6306]

@@vaisakh_km Backend isn't closed source, that is a lie

[@xanderplayz3446]

Because Nix exists, and it is 100x better.

[@vaisakh_km]

@@ninefingers6306 i searched for hours, i couldn't find any implantation of snap back other than archived reverse engineered ones..

[@zatsando]

What about a flatpak desktop? I 'm serious...

[@ninefingers6306]

Flatpak can't do it

[@conjurermast]

After using Neon UE for a month, I cannot imagine EVER & I mean EVER EVER using this. Why are they doing this to themselves & the KDE project?

[@GeekIWG]

I love KDE Neon, but I dislike Snaps. I wouldn't use this.

[@guss77]

I would really like a classic operating system for Neon. I'm not a fan of all this immutable stuff. Just give me my Neon deb packages and I'll be on my way.

[@FengLengshun]

A lot of maintainers and developers are getting tired with classical operating systems and the issue it brings for them. I think immutable will be the way forward for anything new- most users don't care so long as they can install their GUI apps and for people who need more there's always Nix pkgs, brew, and distrobox among others (plus, there's usually a way to really get into the system in the case of SteamOS, Fedora/Universal Blue Atomic, and NixOS). So really, it's just going to be a minority of vocal people vs a majority that doesn't care, and coupled with devs who really just don't want to deal with it...

[@knghtbrd]

Absolutely I want nothing to do with snap, so this is a hard nope for me. But the idea of containerization to a high degree MIGHT, MIGHT provide a lot of security. Maybe. Just if you're doing it with snap, it means you don't own your computer, Canonical does. And I'm not interested in that.

[@PredatoryQQmber]

10:15 Actually, this is exactly where Cosmic bloat belongs.

[@BrodieRobertson]

What bloat?

[@PredatoryQQmber]

@@BrodieRobertson Rust.

[@BrodieRobertson]

@@PredatoryQQmber I repeat my question

[@PredatoryQQmber]

@@BrodieRobertson Repent from heresy, return to purity of C.

[@SSquirrel1976]

So what you’re telling us is it’s a snap to install :)

[@someguy9175]

I will be nailed on a cross before I install a snap package.

[@InfinityN]

I'm about to snap.

[@jongeduard]

It's good from the perspective that it competes with all the immutable GNOME distros that are popping up, such as the well known ostree + flatpak combinations. It's favourable that KDE keeps up with that, even when it's using snaps. However, I don't believe system immutability is a good idea for rolling release distributions.

[@bluephreakr]

Tell that to Google and Valve!

[@stalker6617]

Just alias lsbk as lsbk | grep -v loop

[@BrodieRobertson]

I don't like to hide things on my system and pretend the problem isn't there

[@stalker6617]

@@BrodieRobertson 😂😂😂

[@UbuntuPersonNoMint]

Canonical needs to shut down ppa and create another alternative built around snaps

[@cholling1]

You could have stopped after five words.

[@emacsking4310]

@@cholling1 LOL!

[@UbuntuPersonNoMint]

@@cholling1 that too then we can back to having linux be used by computer scientists only..sounds fun

[@zeebpc]

why are snaps bad but flatpaks good?

[@Henrik26176]

Snaps: - Slower startup times - Buggy theming and system integration - Controlled by Canonical - Use more RAM and disk space due to redundant dependencies - Centralized store (Snap Store only) - Heavier resource usage Flatpaks: - Faster startup times - Better system integration (theming, fonts) - Decentralized (multiple repositories like Flathub) - Shared runtimes reduce disk space usage - More community-driven - Widely supported across different Linux distributions

[@KoopstaKlicca]

snaps have cool functionality that flatpaks can't do, namely clis, which is useful for servers

[@atemoc]

@@KoopstaKlicca Flatpak programs can be CLI programs, some are, even right there on Flathub. Snaps are still better for them, though. Flatpaks are better for GUI apps, and also, sandboxing outside of Ubuntu for snaps is a joke and I can't get why people think the same level of containerization and security present on Ubuntu for snaps is also present on other distros, when it is, in the vast majority of cases, not.

[@Autodidact_Polymath]

Why not take all the lacking features, that are present in Snaps, like IoT, CLI and Server, and add them to Flatpak?

[@KoopstaKlicca]

@@Autodidact_Polymath Probably because it's hard to implement, idk. Apparently they offer support for CLI programs now, although it's arguably not good support based on the reception I heard from friends

[@thelanavishnuorchestra]

I'm quite happy with my snaps -- mostly my browsers, but also some puzzle games. Updates are checked for every 4 hours. They're sandboxed with no access to my home directory. I wish I could implement something like this for my windows clients.

[@Karn0010]

I see snap, and immediately want to see it snapped in half.

[@ademlabsi]

Security, Stability, Reproducibility

[@vaisakh_km]

and Developers👏 Developers👏 Developers👏 Developers👏 Developers👏 Developers👏 Developers👏 Developers👏

[@jedipadawan7023]

OK, this is weird to me at multiple levels. Firstly, originally KDE Neon was only to show cae Plasma. The KDE team even denied Neon was a distro. It clearly was but it was never presented as such. So now Neon is now being presented as a full on distro?! That's a major shift. And so much so that the KDE team want to make Neon a snap based immutable distro? And exclusively snaps? But Neon was great for allowing anything and everything. In my Neon days - before Ubuntu screwed up printing AGAIN and I found MX Linux - one of the joys what you run could anything - snap, flatpak, integrated Appimage, deb, whatever! KDE are completely inverting Neon in terms of objectives. What problem is KDE trying to solve here? Are they gunning for servers here?

[@vaisakh_km]

Finally! Satan can sleep peacefully...

[@kansnex]

I brought this idea up to a friend months ago of a fully Snap-based Linux distro I called "Click OS", we both agreed it was a horrible idea. what I'm trying to say is: Give me my money KDE.

[@taroven]

I vowed to never touch a snap again when the Ubuntu Firefox snap snapped my profile into the ether. Just no.

[@bokocchop]

Well, now that it has gotten better try again. Change your mind when you see better evidence ❤️

[@gabbieblue]

@@bokocchop you are right, however when finding that evidence requires risking your own data its a lot less fun

[@TheCurtisnixon]

oh god...that's a disaster waiting to happen... snaps are why I stopped using 'buntu's

[@someone01233]

Oh, snap!

[@cameronbosch1213]

Aw snap, something went wrong with this idea! To continue, reload, or go to another video! If you're seeing this frequently, try these suggestions: 1. Stop using Snaps. 2. Uninstall all of the Snap packages you have. 3. Purge snapd from your system. 4. Install Flatpak and add flathub. Congratulations, you obliterated Canonical bloatware from your system! 😂

[@emacsking4310]

Lol that's funny

[@shantilkhadatkar1195]

Uhm.. this is a bad idea

[@cameronbosch1213]

While I do like the idea of a mostly image-based / immutable flagship KDE distro, I think they should go with thejr original plan and use an snapshotted Arch base for system packages and command-line utilities and flatpaks for graphical apps not included in the base system. If you probably can't tell, I'm really not a fan of snaps for several reasons...

[@FengLengshun]

I personally think a Fedora based distro would be a better middle-ground between Ubuntu and Arch. They have all the tools for it either- just take what Aurora has been doing, and make something official out of it.

[@charliekahn4205]

I just don't like the separation that this requires between "system" and "graphics" when most programs aren't used to that. If everything from the ground up is formatted the same way and interfaced in the same secure way, then the system can be as scalable as traditional Unix requires.

[@NullPointer]

I'd rather use Windows

[@emacsking4310]

Windows is Sindows. TRASH.

[@RicardoByron-u9f]

Oren View

[@Slitnical]

First.

[@emacsking4310]

Forty-first!

[@senpaiiiiiiiiiiiii950]

nah i am sticking to Linux Mint ... I hate snaps

[@atemoc]

beep bop

[@vaisakh_km]

Either you die as Nix user, or see yourself using snap on server

[@emacsking4310]

Linux Mint is garbage

[@atemoc]

@@emacsking4310 Thank you for your insightful and constructive comment. Not.

[@emacsking4310]

@@atemoc k

[@SlinkyD]

Sooo, shaps are assbackwards chroot applications with no end user control or customization. Gotit.

[@no_name4796]

We should thanos snap the snap package manager (We should do it twice, to delete all of it lol)

[@Dark9204]

Snapping it twice would remove 50%of the remaining 50% though, you will never get rid of it :P

[@kuhluhOG]

if you only ever remove half of what's currently existing, there will always be something left sure, it becomes less and less, but it will never be 0

[@cameronbosch1213]

​@@kuhluhOGHalf of one is 0.5. 0.5 rounds to 1. So snapping half of 1 will eliminate it.

[@emacsking4310]

Factual information

[@NiffirgkcaJ]

@@cameronbosch1213 if you have snapped the half of 1, it doesn't exist technically. So, if you snap it again, it's just the half of the original 1; if you're following Thanos, then you could only snap the half of the half of 1.

[@James2210]

So... Just a worse, half-closed-source NixOS?

[@vaisakh_km]

How can you even compare both...

[@Cyco_Nix]

Gross

[@emacsking4310]

I hate snap