LIke I have used since the first time it went beta, years back ? My primary distros are all pure Debian. I fool around with the Kaitlyn Jenner versions, ubooontooo. debian, but not Debian
Are the packages older in Debian? Have you noticed packages that aren’t in the debian repo or packages that are available for ubuntu but not debian?
OOBoonToo has lots of packages that dont go well with Debian…because it’s not REAL Debian;.ppa and crap. However,near everything in .deb format will run in OOBoonToo also because the non corrupted is still in it’s core.
I’m having a closer look at these .app-images right now…kinda interesting concept. I’m a lil slow these years 
So, a few years ago, (Back when Mint 16 was out) I found a photo collage app in the repos that I used to make awesome wallpapers or DVD title screens… then it either stopped being maintained or something because it disappeared from the repo. It was still around on github, but I did not know that I could build it myself. I just figured that it was a dead-end project. My solution consisted of simply sitting tight on Mint 16 because it still worked.
Fast Forward a few years into Linux-dome. Now, I can simply download the app image of Fotowall from Downloads | Fotowall and I’m off to the races no matter which distro I’m using. (at least, ubuntu-baised, anyway. I haven’t tried this app image on Suse or anything else) It just opens and runs.
AppImages work on any distro as far as I know.
I’m not quite sure you’re grasping this concept… Unfamiliar users are not going to be attentive to this in the first place. They’re not being switched to a new software ecosystem, they’re pulling a package from the Snap source. New users expect to a) install an app and b) be able to use the app installed. They’re not worried about app ecosystems or repository sources.
2 Likes
By “new software eco system” I mean Snaps provide software from a proprietary repo isolated to Canonical that’s designed solely for snaps and the software is run in a very different way compared to a traditional apt install.
By “switched” I mean if a user begins an apt installation and it ends with the installation of an entirely different way to obtain and run software not previously installed they’ve been switched from their intent (installation via apt) to what i’m describing above.
You have a very good point that new users often don’t know or care about the difference, they just need a solid foundation to learn from. Perhaps Linux Mint should have an option (maybe on by default) after install called “ I’m new, just make it work” or a Y/N prompt that better informed the user that they’d be replacing apt with snaps for Chromium along with what that means.
Thankfully Mint has since corrected the problem by producing their own build of Chromium though it’s hard to find someone who doesn’t think they could have handled it better.
2 Likes