Is a good practice or is safe use snap in Fedora?

Ask Fedora
1

I had this situation:

There were many valuable suggestions.

Even when I installed VLC through Software application, I did realize is possible install VLC through snap too - simply by sudo snap install vlc.

Was confirmed that snap can be installed in peace in Fedora too. It according with:

Therefore, according with your expertise and experience

  • Is a good practice or is safe use snap in Fedora? Pls indicate the reason(s)

So far in Ubuntu I am fine with apt, dpkg and snap and in Fedora I am fine with dnf but not sure if is wise use snap here too.

2

There is no reason you can’t use snap in Fedora. That being said, Fedora ships with flatpak support out of the box.

It isn’t “bad practice” to use snap.

It is a matter of personal preference.

There are a couple of things to be aware of with snap:

  • Boot time is often slower when you use snaps
  • All your snap usage is collected by Canonical and shared
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3

I would prefer Flatpak rather than Snap. Recently I uninstalled Snap and installed Flatpak. With the Snap, your df command shows many /dev/loopN lines. I didn’t like it.

Here are my working logs:

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4

Thanks for the valuable replies

Dalto

  • Boot time is often slower when you use snaps

I am assuming according the software installed right? It based on their own services - or applies to everything installed?

  • All your snap usage is collected by Canonical and shared

I am assuming stats of the software installed and their use - or some private data is shared?

Jun

With the Snap, your df command shows many /dev/loopN lines. I didn’t like it

Why didn’t you like it?

Huge Thanks for the links!

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5

It basically gets slightly slower with each snap installed. Probably because it mounts each snap.

Yes, last I looked at it, it was reporting what you have installed and a record of each time you launched the software.

6

Because I wanted to see the partitions such as /, /home/ and /boot and etc except the /dev/loopN file system partitions by the df command. The /dev/loopN partitions made me hard to see these partitions. I was always removing the loop file systems like this.

$ df | grep -v loop
7

Again thanks for the both replies. I decided use for the moment Flatpak and add the FlatHub as repository. I already did do a research about the relation of them, and about comparisons a good post is:

Now I am going to re-read Why is not possible install VLC through the Software application? to understand if I should consider or not rpmfusion

Extra Questions

  • Do you have some thoughts about rpmfusion?
  • What I should use rpmfusion or flatpak? or both?

Thanks in advance for your polite support.

8

For me, it is a requirement for running a usable desktop on Fedora. I can’t imagine using Fedora without it. Fedora’s policies on software licensing are unbelievably strict. rpmfusion the easiest way to avoid that issue.

Personally, I use rpmfusion first and flatpak second. They aren’t mutually exclusive.

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9

For me rpmfusion is first. Flatpak is a second.

There often are conflicts in function if the same app is installed from both sites. For sanity and reliability always ensure each package installed is taken from only one source and not installed twice on your system…

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10

Same as above, my preference is: 1) rpmfusion, 2) flatpak.

Typically these are my considerations:

  • is the application open source, if so, prefer rpmfusion
  • is it preferred to run the application in an isolated environment? prefer flatpak.
    Conditions when that is the case:
    • it’s proprietary and relies on outdated dependencies (e.g. old version, 32 bit, etc; steam is an example)
    • I don’t “trust” the code, as in, collects user analytics that cannot be turned off (e.g. Zoom, Teams, Slack, and other applications common in work environments)
  • am I just trying out an application? I’m 50:50 on that, using flatpak here has the advantage of cleanly undoing an install. A recent example for me was when I wanted to try out different Matrix clients because Elements doesn’t support multiple accounts cleanly.

Things to be aware of:

  • since flatpak is an isolated environment, it does not have access to all files in $HOME. Typically only xdg-user-dir DOWNLOAD. So for things like sharing a file on Teams, I have to copy the file to my DOWNLOAD directory before I can open it.
  • your $HOME should have sufficient disk space if you use apps that store a lot of local data. E.g. this is how it is for me on my desktop at home:
$ du -hs .var/app/*
500M    .var/app/com.discordapp.Discord
486M    .var/app/com.github.micahflee.torbrowser-launcher
1.6G    .var/app/com.mojang.Minecraft
202M    .var/app/com.slack.Slack
684G    .var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam
19M     .var/app/im.riot.Riot
37M     .var/app/io.github.NhekoReborn.Nheko
3.5M    .var/app/io.podman_desktop.PodmanDesktop
509M    .var/app/net.lutris.Lutris
1.8M    .var/app/org.libretro.RetroArch
11

Again huge thanks for your feedbacks - and thanks to you fatka too, a valuable addition of information in this post.

12

This is the most complete guide to installing snap on Fedora. Only one I’ve found that includes installing a couple of small extras to prevent issues.
.

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Step 2: Install Initial Required Packages For Snap CLI

Snap relies on specific packages to function correctly. These packages are necessary for Snap’s operation and should be installed before proceeding. To install these required packages, use the command:

sudo dnf install fuse squashfuse -y

fuse and squashfuse are vital for Snap’s file system operations, ensuring that Snap applications run smoothly.

That’s curious. snapd.spec contains:

# snapd will use squashfuse in the event that squashfs.ko isn't available (cloud instances, containers, etc.)
Requires:       ((squashfuse and fuse) or kmod(squashfs.ko))

So, those packages are installed automatically when squashfs is unavailable, and manual installation shouldn’t be necessary. If it is, someone should file a bug.

14

The lawyers made them do it. To Americans, that is totally normal.

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