Does Linux Change? Canon's Mark Shuttleworth announced in June that Snaps, a new method for packing packaging, will be adopted by other distributions.
A brief story about Linux's messy mess
Σε αντίθεση με τις εφαρμογές των Windows ή του Mac, οι εφαρμογές του Linux μοιράζονται τις ίδιες βιβλιοθήκες σε όλο το σύστημα και η κύρια δουλειά ενός διαχειριστή πακέτων είναι να βρει τις εξαρτήσεις (βιβλιοθήκες) που απαιτούνται από την application for can be installed.
Linux distributions mainly use two formats of packaging: rpm and deb. Distributions such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise, openSUSE, Fedora and CentOS use rpm packages, while the Debian family, including all Ubuntoids, Linux Mint, and others. OSs use deb packets. Of course there are many other distributions that have their own packaging styles.
This causes three major problems for developers and Linux users:
1: Developers cannot use the latest libraries that offer more possibilities, if the distribution they have is still using older libraries.
2: Developers have to write and maintain applications for different distributions as well as different versions of each single distribution because all distributions use different library versions.
3: Mixing in libraries leads to damaged systems, so Linux users often experience various problems.
Here comes Snaps. Is the answer the community of open-minded is looking for?
Snaps started initially as Click, a new package for Ubuntu Mobile. It grouped all the kits and libraries so that developers did not have to worry about analyzing a dependency.
Later, Clicks developed into Snaps, which are targeted at servers, Internet of Things (IoT) devices and computers. This April, Canonical first released Snaps with the release of Ubuntu 16.04 for the first time.
The arrival of Snaps on a desktop system immediately drew the attention of different communities and developers who began asking Canonical whether they can make it a port in their distribution.
So although Snaps was built and released for Ubuntu, Canonical in collaboration with developers από τις διανομές Gentoo, Fedora και Arch Linux αρχίζει να δημιουργεί hooks για διαφορετικές διανομές. Έτσι το Snaps λειτουργεί τώρα εγγενώς στις διανομές Arch, Debian, Fedora, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Unity, και Xubuntu.
Meanwhile, Canonical is working with other developers to validate Snaps in CentOS, Elementary, Gentoo, Mint, OpenSUSE, OpenWrt and RHEL.
What brings the future?
Imagine that with Snaps the Linux desktop will become a huge platform similar to that of MacOS and Windows. Application developers should write their application only once and run on each distribution.
The new feature in addition to the above also brings the necessary better safety on the Linux desktop as Snaps can be considered a test environment, because the package libraries do not "come into contact" with the system.
Another advantage of Snaps is the easier and faster distribution of applications. Developers will no longer worry about which libraries each system uses, and new versions of their applications will be released as soon as possible.
But to see what happens. To live the future we describe above, the entire Linux community should leave .deb and .rpm and adopt Snaps as the default package format.
