I understand their reasoning.
However their implementation is flawed.
If I am distributing a Deb then it should not be a wrapper for a snap,flatpak,npm,pacman.
Installing a package manager in background and then installing another package is how malware distributes.
This is not acceptable behaviour of a reputable company.
Anyway, you do you.
As a linux mint user and I am very satisfied with how linux mint team acted.
The difference is not that if YOU are distributing a deb, the issue is (especially with chromium) that Canonical was developing the deb. The issue became severe when they had several LTS versions of Chromium to maintain, with SEVERAL versions of Ubuntu being in life dating back to 14.04. Not counting everything, 7 releases of Ubuntu in SOME FORM, or another supported. 6 not counting 14.04 where its EOS (end of support) was last year, although EOL is up to next year, 4 not counting the two unnamed releases (21.04 "HH" and 21.10 "II"), and 3, if you don't count 20.10 even though it is in development and available, (with distribution devs like me needing to get packaging for groovy, and many devs doing the same.
This in general puts at bare-bones MINIMUM 3 editions of Chromium to maintain, if they only package the latest LTS editions. 4 counting groovy. it gets worse if you take in all 4 editions for chromium (stable, beta, dev, canary) on each of the 4 systems, making 16 packages to maintain for one browser. Firefox packages themselves, so we will ignore any Firefox or other browser versions. Technically there is no canary version for Chromium supported, so it's 12. 12 editions Canonical has to maintain on their own.
So imagine having to maintain 3 packages on 4 editions of Ubuntu, while developing the rest of Ubuntu, while building many other tools. It strains a company. Canonical runs the Chromium packages and built Snap so the hell of packaging chromium and other apps like it are a lot less stressful for developers.
I agree Snap isn't perfect. But Linux Mint could have dealt with it better, or at least have not made it a snark fest. I know Linux Mint is a protest distro (like Devuan) but that doesn't give them the right to be as snarky as they were in the blog post. I hope they at least make the installation of snaps through apt optional by adding a thing where you get notified, even if you did sudo apt install chromium -y it still popped up with "This package is a Snap wrapper, meaning it isn't coming from the repositories but a different application. This will install an extra layer of software, causing... explain why Snap sucks here ... which isn't ideal for most. To continue with the installation, you must consent to include the installation of Snapd. [Y/n]"
This is the solution Linux Mint should use, because
If you HATE Snap, you can run with your day without it
If you LOVE Snap, you can run it on Linux Mint without extra steps
If you don't care and you just want Chromium (as many new Linux users are in that mindset), then you still have the option.
This will kill Linux Mint as the "Absolute beginner-friendly distribution". If they did it similar to how I described, maybe get a LOT MORE users than if they did nothing, as it gives further choice and transparency, without overall removing usability and new-user-friendliness.
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Chromium installs Snapd because it installs via Snap. It is a wrapper, it doesn't just randomly install Snap. Here is the official reasoning.
I understand their reasoning.
However their implementation is flawed.
If I am distributing a Deb then it should not be a wrapper for a snap,flatpak,npm,pacman.
Installing a package manager in background and then installing another package is how malware distributes.
This is not acceptable behaviour of a reputable company.
Anyway, you do you.
As a linux mint user and I am very satisfied with how linux mint team acted.
The difference is not that if YOU are distributing a deb, the issue is (especially with chromium) that Canonical was developing the deb. The issue became severe when they had several LTS versions of Chromium to maintain, with SEVERAL versions of Ubuntu being in life dating back to 14.04. Not counting everything, 7 releases of Ubuntu in SOME FORM, or another supported. 6 not counting 14.04 where its EOS (end of support) was last year, although EOL is up to next year, 4 not counting the two unnamed releases (21.04 "HH" and 21.10 "II"), and 3, if you don't count 20.10 even though it is in development and available, (with distribution devs like me needing to get packaging for groovy, and many devs doing the same.
This in general puts at bare-bones MINIMUM 3 editions of Chromium to maintain, if they only package the latest LTS editions. 4 counting groovy. it gets worse if you take in all 4 editions for chromium (stable, beta, dev, canary) on each of the 4 systems, making 16 packages to maintain for one browser. Firefox packages themselves, so we will ignore any Firefox or other browser versions. Technically there is no canary version for Chromium supported, so it's 12. 12 editions Canonical has to maintain on their own.
So imagine having to maintain 3 packages on 4 editions of Ubuntu, while developing the rest of Ubuntu, while building many other tools. It strains a company. Canonical runs the Chromium packages and built Snap so the hell of packaging chromium and other apps like it are a lot less stressful for developers.
I agree Snap isn't perfect. But Linux Mint could have dealt with it better, or at least have not made it a snark fest. I know Linux Mint is a protest distro (like Devuan) but that doesn't give them the right to be as snarky as they were in the blog post. I hope they at least make the installation of snaps through apt optional by adding a thing where you get notified, even if you did
sudo apt install chromium -yit still popped up with "This package is a Snap wrapper, meaning it isn't coming from the repositories but a different application. This will install an extra layer of software, causing... explain why Snap sucks here ... which isn't ideal for most. To continue with the installation, you must consent to include the installation of Snapd. [Y/n]"This is the solution Linux Mint should use, because
This will kill Linux Mint as the "Absolute beginner-friendly distribution". If they did it similar to how I described, maybe get a LOT MORE users than if they did nothing, as it gives further choice and transparency, without overall removing usability and new-user-friendliness.