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Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages

Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Tuesday 14th of July 2020 07:17:42 PM Filed under
Ubuntu

The Linux Mint distribution is based on Debian and Ubuntu, providing over 30,000 packages from these projects. These packages are provided using the well-known APT packaging system used by both upstream distributions. Ubuntu, however, in 2014 started distributing software in parallel to APT using a technology called Snap.

Snap is a self-contained package-deployment system designed to make it easier to manage dependencies of an application in a Linux environment. Developed by Canonical, Snap is designed so that its packages contain all of the specific dependencies a software package needs to run, bundled into a single filesystem image. This allows a software package to run on a system that has otherwise incompatible versions of needed libraries, or even to have two different versions of a single software package with different dependencies easily coexist on a single machine. Essentially, it allows one package to be created per architecture that can run on any common Linux distribution.

The technology solves important package-management problems for Canonical and Ubuntu. It also has a strategic business value, as it allows Canonical-managed software to be installed on a competing distribution. The technology problem Canonical wants to solve is to simplify support for software packages, such as Chromium, across the multiple versions of Ubuntu. Relying strictly on APT requires independent packages to be maintained for each Ubuntu version, since various Ubuntu releases ship with different and potentially incompatible libraries. This represents a large workload that Canonical would rather not deal with, and to which Snap provides an elegant technical solution.

From a business perspective, widespread adoption of Snap as a universal package-distribution technology would put Canonical in a strong position to control Linux software distribution. This fact is not lost by Canonical's competition — Red Hat supports a similar Flatpak technology. Unlike Snap, however, the Flatpak project aims to be an independent community and a "true upstream open source project, dedicated to providing technology and services that can be used by all, with no vendor lock-in."

The problems with Linux Mint came to a head when Ubuntu moved Chromium to Snap distribution in Ubuntu 19.10. On the surface, that isn't a problem in and of itself — the Linux Mint project can always start providing its own Chromium APT packages. The problem was the decision to change the Ubuntu chromium-browser APT package itself upstream in Ubuntu. Previously, that package would simply install Chromium directly. With the change, it would instead install the Snap package-management tools first and then install the Snap equivalent of the Chromium package — without making it clear to the user what was happening.

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