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Music Open Source Operating Systems Software Linux

PSA: Spotify Now Available As a Snap For Linux (betanews.com) 66

Posted by BeauHD from the come-and-get-it dept.
BrianFagioli shares a report from BetaNews: Speaking of Spotify, the most popular streaming music service in the world has long supported Linux-based operating systems. Installing the official app was not an easy affair, however. Today this changes, as installation gets much simpler. You see, Spotify is now officially available as a Snap for easy installation on any Snap-supporting operating systems such as Ubuntu and Linux Mint. Canonical, the creator of both Ubuntu and Snaps, explains, "Snaps are containerized software packages designed to work perfectly and securely in any Linux environment. As well as supporting all major Linux systems from a single build, snaps can be also updated or rolled back automatically to ensure that users are always benefiting from the latest version of the application. Since their launch last year, close to 2,500 snaps have been released by developers as they adopt the format for its reliability and security."

Jamie Bennett, VP of Engineering, Devices & IoT, Canonical says, "In launching their own snap, Spotify has ensured that their users in the Linux ecosystem are now able to enjoy the latest version of their leading music streaming application as soon as it's released regardless of which distribution they are using. We're glad to welcome Spotify to the snaps ecosystem and look forward to unveiling more leading snaps in 2018."
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PSA: Spotify Now Available As a Snap For Linux More

PSA: Spotify Now Available As a Snap For Linux

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  • Guess it's pretty hot :p

  • PSA: Stop calling stories PSAs (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Stop calling stories PSAs. It wastes headline space and looks silly. Just use the normal headline.

  • Static Binaries (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Etcetera ( 14711 ) on Wednesday December 20, 2017 @04:46PM (#55779127) Homepage

    Congratulations, guys, you've re-invented static binaries. I'm glad you're happy. I look forward to what we have in the smartphone ecosystem now, with vulnerabilities out the yin-yang, and 25 apps getting updated when some weird library has a flaw in it, and your other 75 not getting updated at all and remaining vulnerable even though you don't realize it.

    Everything old is new again. Woot.

    • Re:Static Binaries (Score:5, Informative)

      by Volanin ( 935080 ) on Wednesday December 20, 2017 @05:21PM (#55779397)

      While I get your (sarcastic?) point of view. Snaps can be considered static binaries 2.0 in a way, and since technology is supposed to advance, this is very welcome indeed (ELF binaries got a bad reputation in some circles, reinventing a.out back in the day)...

      Moving beyond the limitation of static binaries, Snaps can better hold non-executable data in directory structures, instead of embedding everything in a huge executable. They are similar to Apple's App packages, but are also mounted and executed in a chroot environment *by default*, improving security. And are much easier to distribute and manage; heck, many "n00b" friends of mine quit linux because it didn't have easy program installers...

      Everything old is new again, indeed.
      But with a solid promise of improvement!
      Those who want more information, https://docs.snapcraft.io/snap... [snapcraft.io]

      • The point is, we don't want static binaries 2.0. Just like Linus was saying "there's no way to do CVS the right way" (or something like that), the same way, there's no way to do static blobs the right way either.

        By the way, why on earth isn't Spotify simply providing a source tarball, and let distributions pick it up and package it? The value of Spotify is in the service they do, not on the source code they write.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Luthair ( 847766 )
          Experience suggests that shared libraries don't work either, I can't count the number of times dependencies have been updated breaking applications or resulting in flaky behaviour.

        • >there's no way to do static blobs the right way either.

          Just compile with the -S flag.

          A static program pops out. You can then load it onto a computer and run it, regardless of the installed libraries. I use it all the time for test code, because of the stripped down linuxes we run on new silicon.

      • While I get your (sarcastic?) point of view. Snaps can be considered static binaries 2.0 in a way, and since technology is supposed to advance, this is very welcome indeed (ELF binaries got a bad reputation in some circles, reinventing a.out back in the day)...

        Moving beyond the limitation of static binaries, Snaps can better hold non-executable data in directory structures, instead of embedding everything in a huge executable.

        Hi! Welcome to 1998. It's really nice here. Britpop is on the rise, 56k modems are

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by ewhac ( 5844 )

        ...heck, many "n00b" friends of mine quit linux because it didn't have easy program installers... [emphasis mine]

        Are you kidding me?

        apt-get install kdenlive

        How fscking easy did they want it?!?!!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sad_ ( 7868 )

          i guess much more prefer chasing applications all from different sites with sources of questionable trust instead.

  • Yay! Exactly what nobody wanted! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This reads like an ad for whatever the fuck a "snap" is and whoever is behind that.

    If you can't give us a source tarball, then we don't want it.

  • ...so what exactly is a "snap"?

  • I have been using Spotify with just their web-based stuff, under Linux (Mageia) and Firefox for a very long time now (years) and it works great. Maybe there are some advanced things it can't do, but it does everything I need and I have been impressed. Pretty easy to use, excellent sound quality, and has never crapped out on me.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zenbi ( 3530707 )

      I have been using Spotify with their official Ubuntu/Debian package [spotify.com] for years. Native "apt-get install spotify-client" seems far cleaner than a Snap for .deb based distros.

      The Linux interface looks pretty much identical to the Windows interface (minus a bit of high DPI support) and lets you download the songs for offline listening. Desktop notifications (for new song, etc) even work in my XFCE environment.

  • 3 clicks and a failure (Score:4, Interesting)

    by petes_PoV ( 912422 ) on Wednesday December 20, 2017 @05:44PM (#55779571)

    Installing the official app was not an easy affair, however. Today this changes, as installation gets much simpler.

    So I tried this. I followed the link which took me to some place that explained what "snaps" are. That contained a link that told me to click on it to grab the snap.

    But that only took me to another page (form Canonical) which, again, explained what a "snap" was and told me to click another link to download the snap.

    But no! That just took me to another link on snapcraft with (yet another) link to install it. When I clicked on that link Firefox croaked up an error message to say it didn't understand and that I might have to install some other software.

    So I went back to a terminal and typed apt install spotify-client, created an account (disposable, of course) logged in and now I have music playing.

    Can someone please explain how snaps make the installation process "simpler"?

  • It's nice to see Linux getting some new support, but...music streaming? Take the legal route and hit flea markets and second hand music stores and score all the good music you want. Or hoist the Jolly Roger and scoop up anything that catches your eye. That way, the music sits on my hard drive, and I can listen to it how I want (optional goal, educate all the neighbors about the joys of my taste in music.)
  • "Installing the official app was not an easy affair, however" Really? This is not way easier?: https://www.spotify.com/nl/dow... [spotify.com] Any and all updates are automatic...

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