Outdated snap packages and phased updates

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Sep 17, 2023

• Alan Pope: Outdated snap packages

  Canonical is planning an ‘All Snap’ desktop next year. It will likely be available side-by-side with the traditional deb-based installation we’ve been used to since 2004.

  If the “All Snap” or “immutable” platform is to be a success, Canonical needs to get a grip on the broken, uninstallable, insecure, and outdated snaps provided in the snap store.

  This is a long post, so feel free to skip to the ‘Solutions’ section for my positive thoughts.

  Featured snaps

  The snap store has an “Editor’s Picks” section which is used to promote applications. Featured applications generally get a ton of eyeballs, and thus installs. Many people may be surprised to hear that ’normies’ often use the graphical software storefront to install applications on Ubuntu (and other distros). Not everyone uses apt or synaptic as their software store frontend.

  Some of those featured lists aren’t kept up to date much anymore, though. Meaning that some high-profile applications are missing out on promotion. Worse, outdated applications are being promoted.

• [Old] About `apt upgrade` and phased updates

  Phased updates are software updates that are rolled out in stages, rather than being provided to everyone at the same time. Initially, the update is provided only to a small subset of Ubuntu machines. As the update proves to be stable, it is provided to an ever-increasing number of users until everyone has received it (i.e., when the update is “fully phased”).

  The good news is, you don’t need to do anything about the “packages kept back” message – you can safely ignore it. Once the update has been deemed safe for release, you will receive the update automatically.