Slack Now Available As a Snap For Linux (betanews.com) 140
BrianFagioli writes: Today, yet another wildly popular program gets the Snap treatment, and quite frankly, it is arguably more significant than Spotify. What is it? Slack! Yes, Canonical announces that the ubiquitous communication app can be installed as a Snap. True, Slack was already available on the Linux desktop, but this makes installing it and keeping it updated much easier. "In adopting the universal Linux app packaging format, Slack will open its digital workplace up to an-ever growing community of Linux users, including those using Linux Mint, Manjaro, Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Solus, and Ubuntu. Designed to connect us to the people and tools we work with every day, the Slack snap will help Linux users be more efficient and streamlined in their work. And an intuitive user experience remains central to the snaps' appeal, with automatic updates and rollback features giving developers greater control in the delivery of each offering," says Canonical.
Title sounds like a breakfast cereal (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Title sounds like a breakfast cereal (Score:5, Funny)
oh come on! Everybody knows Slack == Slackware Linux
http://slackware.com/ [slackware.com]
Re:Title sounds like a breakfast cereal (Score:5, Informative)
Slack is a bloated monstrosity that provides IRC and a few other things, using a combination of Node.js and Chromium to produce one of the largest and most memory-hungry desktop applications that you might ever need to run. Snap is Ubuntu's version of the old PC-BSD PBI installer, where each application comes with all of its dependencies and installs them in a directory so that the package maintainers don't have to worry about incompatible upgrades. The combination of the two allows Slack to consume even more resources, by not even sharing memory mappings for common libraries.
The goal of Slack is to minimise productivity, by consuming all available computing resources and all available attention. This combination allows it to consume even more resources, but unfortunately does nothing to increase the amount of time that people waste on Slack.
Is this progress? I don't know. (Score:1)
We're going to get to the point where a chat program can't fit on a 650MB CD-ROM. I remember when I could only allocate 64kB chunks at a time in my programs.
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On macOS, Slack is 75MB on disk. A far cry from 650.
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We're going to
That's future tense, if you didn't know. Also it's a rhetorical device and not a literal statement of fact, because I don't have the ability to flawlessly predict the future.
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Hence the expression, stop slacking off!
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Slack is a bloated monstrosity that provides IRC and a few other things, using a combination of Node.js and Chromium to produce one of the largest and most memory-hungry desktop applications that you might ever need to run. Snap is Ubuntu's version of the old PC-BSD PBI installer, where each application comes with all of its dependencies and installs them in a directory so that the package maintainers don't have to worry about incompatible upgrades. The combination of the two allows Slack to consume even more resources, by not even sharing memory mappings for common libraries.
The goal of Slack is to minimise productivity, by consuming all available computing resources and all available attention. This combination allows it to consume even more resources, but unfortunately does nothing to increase the amount of time that people waste on Slack.
Wow, so now I have software that I can download and justify my purchase of a pair of 6 terrabyte drives. I just love to be able to run any software that actually brings along it's dynamic link libraries.
Only 147 MB (Score:5, Informative)
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But... Emojis.
Aside from some bug fixes and new useless features we've been reinventing IRC and Usenet since them.
Re:Only 147 MB (Score:4, Informative)
Everyone seems to forget the reason why Slack is what it is... There is no self-hosting for Slack. Everything you do in Slack is in the cloud and the reason companies do it is so they don't have to hire someone to maintain an IRC server in their company.
But yeah, Slack is just a bloated, slow, insecure, unoriginal, pile of horse dung IRC client. We all have to remember that the new hotness in IT is not having an IT department.
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We could all sign onto FreeNode. If companies want to donate money to FN instead of paying Slack, then they are free to do so, and really at whatever amount they are comfortable paying.
If you had a company of 1000 employees, I believe you're looking at paying Slack about $8k/month. This is right around the break even point for hiring someone to maintain an IRC server full time. You probably get a better deal with Slack because they would include hardware and services and 24 hour support.
If you were a larger
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about $8k/month
I never bothered to look into pricing but.... there aren't even words.
WTF. Most of the discussion I see on ircd requirements mention computers in the hundreds of MHz.
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The cost of the computer is meaningless, because it's only a small fraction of what you're paying. The real cost is the cost of hiring someone capable of administrating it.
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yup, for $2k - $10k in equipment you can handle multiple sites for an entire corporation. You'll be able to use at least half of this equipment for 2 years, and the other half of it for 5 years (like any switches or routers). We're talking about a rather low NRE (non-reoccurring expense) for the hardware.
Full time sysadmin, let's say you pay her $75k/yr. With management overhead, facilities overheads and employee benefits a company probably works this out as a cool $100k/yr cost. (taking a wild guess there)
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IRC does one tiny part of what Slack does. It's not a replacement any more than a U-Haul is a replacement for a cargo train.
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There is no self-hosting for Slack.
Aside from learning, when was the last time you setup an IRC server?
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I not so long ago accidentally destroyed a production IRC server VM, so recently!
Note to self: When doing ^R in bash, read the entire command before hitting return.
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Does IRC support code formatting, snippets, utf8, images, and random attachments? To name a few things I use all the time with Slack.
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When did configure ; make ; make install become too difficult?
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It would still be faster than starting the Slack itself.
Re:Only 147 MB (Score:4, Insightful)
When did configure ; make ; make install become too difficult?
the first 3 times it failed during configure.
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I was using computers before 1984 and I've never had to do "configure, make, make install" before.
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147mb? thats nothing. On windows, the cache files for slack can run well into the gigabytes after only a year.
have a multi user machine with a small ssd and several users, now you are consuming tens of gigs... not cool!
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Only 147 MB for a glorified IRC client! Get yours now!
So what kind of peanuts do you work for if that's an issue? I don't recall how many GB the work computer uses but it has Windows, Visual Studio, SQL Server so it's at least 50 GB+. And if it was 50.2 GB... nobody would give a shit. The computer could have IRC, ICQ, AIM, Skype, Discord, Lync, Slack, Jabber and a dozen more "collaboration" apps running just fine. But I'd like just one that works really well, the resources it takes are negligible. As long as the bloat doesn't translate to being slow...
Re: Only 147 MB (Score:2)
Standard PCs cannot have more than 32GB of RAM.
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A device of persistant solid state memory, Why it is called a "disk" is a mystery lost to the depths of time, as it is not at all disk-shaped.
Re: Only 147 MB (Score:2)
How is hdd space relevant to your ability of running applications?
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Re: Only 147 MB (Score:2)
The original message in the chain was generic and complained of the general memory footprint.
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MS Word or Powerpoint on a new machine takes many tens of seconds to load and render some pages whereas the version of that software from abo
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Bloat always translates into being slow
Large install size != bloat != slow
MS Word or Powerpoint on a new machine takes many tens of seconds to load and render some pages whereas the version of that software from about 10 years back has most of the same functionality but screams on even low-end hardware you can buy today. Why? Laziness. Laziness that wastes my time when I'm trying to work.
Of course, it coudln't be anything else like increased demand of other functionality from both the program and the OS, having to deal with more and more use cases than the one a decade ago, or any number of other reasons.
It's also not a good idea to assume that the PC your crapware is being run on is the same 4k top-of-the-line workstation you're testing it on. I don't know if you've heard, but mobile device are all the rage these days. The thing that distinguishes mobile from laptop from workstation is power consumption. On a desktop workstation, you can throw around gigabytes and gigahertz like you don't care. On mobile devices you count milliwatts.
Good thing there is a separate [apple.com] app [google.com] for those mobile devices.
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Bloat always translates into being slow
You don't know how computer operating systems work, do you? Re-read my comment and these articles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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If the executable also comes with its own libraries instead of using installed system libraries (the whole idea behind snaps and docker and whatever), then all of those will also need to be mapped in to memory instead of reusing the ones already mapped in fo
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Because of static linked libraries and resources (Score:2)
That means you need to rely on the snap package maintainer to keep all components patched and up to date, rather than updating each component yourself through your normal package manager. I'm not sure how timely those updastes are. I would only use snaps to try bleeding edge releases and not for normal use.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Bullshit Bingo? (Score:4, Funny)
Snap? (Score:1)
What is a Snap, a new Docker competitor or something?
Re:Snap? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes, but didn't you read. This one is the *universal* Linux app packaging format.
Re:Snap? (Score:4, Funny)
Since no one else has..... [xkcd.com]
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It's the Linux equivalent of a OS X .app.
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So another container format? I thought everyone loved Linux and how you could compile everything dynamically and end "dll hell". Looks like they ran into the same problems since containers are all the rage these days.
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that's inconvenient for those who want to sell proprietary shitware, or distribute proprietary spying shitware for free.
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Not to be confused with Flatpak ...
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What is a Snap, a new Docker competitor or something?
Snap (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snappy_(package_manager)) is one of several "universal" formats. It requires a specialized daemon (snapd) to run the Snap Apps. It kind of won out because Ubuntu created it (Ubuntu's famous NIH syndrome) and pushed it out in Ubuntu 16.04 IIRC thus giving it a larger market than any of the other solutions. The other big one was Flatpak (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatpak) which is very similar. Both deliver apps very much like Mac OS X does - all bound together in a big
Not confusing at all... nosiree. (Score:4, Informative)
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Only if you mean "Linux nerds" when you write "technical people". Or ignoramuses.
So I keep hearing about Slack (Score:4, Interesting)
I work with a few people who swear Slack boosts their productivity significantly. But whenever I'm in their office and they look away due to a Slack message, it's never a work thing - it's their husband or some friend telling them something non-work-related.
Looking back a few years, I noticed my own productivity went up significantly after I started ignoring my then-boss's directive to stay keep a group chat window open all the time.
Does anyone here have actual evidence - even a specific anecdote - that using Slack or another chat program helps them work better? Excepting those of you whose job it is to do online tech support, of course...
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Alas, I usually see the opposite: it's like being in a room full of people, all exclaiming "Ooh! Shiney!" all day.
Only once was a chat useful: a small group of us communicated with team members at a particular customer while trying to debug a problem. And it was a free and trivial chat program, just a reflector for telnet.
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Does anyone here have actual evidence - even a specific anecdote - that using Slack or another chat program helps them work better?
FOSS projects like FreeBSD seem to get developed through mailing lists and IRC.
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Slack boosts their productivity significantly.
That's hilarious. Slack is old IRC slang for excessively hanging out on IRC instead of getting work done. I assume the name is a reference to that.
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Yeah, sure, IRC slang...
I'll just leave that here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Does anyone here have actual evidence - even a specific anecdote - that using Slack or another chat program helps them work better?
I have two positive experiences with other chat programs.
1. I worked at a startup back in 2005, and while we were all in the same office, we had our own IRC. It was the go-to place for the development team. We had to also deploy to production once a week in the evening. That is how we all communicated during those activities.
2. In 2009 I was at a very large bank, and we were just starting up agile development there. The team was dispersed in different cities, and we had an offshore team as well. We u
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persistent chat. .. e.g. "current build installed in QA is 1.2.3.4"
So if I logged in today, and the chat had been going on for a week, I could scroll/search that entire conversation.
I forgot another feature, which again wasn't anything new, but you could have banner messages
Just handy stuff. It also integrated with your network users, which helped administrators I am sure. Microsoft didn't mess it up too badly after they bought it. :)
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Slack is a tool for people who want to get work done with other people. IRC is where you go to slack off. The difference may be hard to discern for people who prefer ignorance, but Slack does a shitload more than IRC, and it doesn't require a nerd education to use effectively.
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I use Slack all the time. I was using it a short while ago, to communicate with a coworker who is also at home (it's 11:00 PM as I write this). It's also quite useful in the office, as an open floor plan precludes constant conversation.
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Does anyone here have actual evidence - even a specific anecdote - that using Slack or another chat program helps them work better?
I only have some analogies: using chat programs for work is
When will Slack be availabe for my (Score:3)
Slack box. I need it in a Snap because my BLT drive on my other computer just went AWOL
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The last thing you need is Mr. Kawasaki asking you to commit hari kari.
Is the World coming to an end?! (Score:2, Funny)
Phew!! [slackware.com]
Snap ,slack, get back.......just gimme a command line.
I don't mean to whine, but I'm a hack.
I like my computing to be simple.
No candy because of the pimple.
None of this GUI for the dandy.
I mean to compute and calculate.
Because this fancy shit is to masturbate.
That is it.
Recently had Slack Advertisement in my Snail Mail (Score:2)
Spotify snap crashes my user session (Score:2)
Hooray (Score:2)
not helpful... (Score:2)
Eh? (Score:1)
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Many of my coworkers use Linux on their work laptops. We all use Slack.
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