Plex for Linux Now Available as a Snap (betanews.com) 61
An anonymous reader shares a report: Today, a very popular app, Plex Media Server, gets the Snap treatment. In other words, you can install the media server program without any headaches -- right from the Snap store. "In adopting the universal Linux app packaging format, Plex will make its multimedia platform available to an ever-growing community of Linux users, including those on KDE Neon, Debian, Fedora, Manjaro, OpenSUSE, Zorin and Ubuntu. Automatic updates and rollback capabilities are staples of Snap software, meaning Plex users will always have the best and latest version running," says Canonical.
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works for me
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But.. but... dpkg -i plex is so hard without SNAP!
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You think that's bad, try loading the SNAP on non-SNAP platforms.
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Right, I'm sure there is a big use-case for enterprise usage of Plex.
Only LUDDITES use snaps. (Score:1)
Modern app appers use apps that app other apps, not LUDDITE snaps!
Apps!
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-Also, alcohol + night swimming is a winning combination.
Indeed, it's a good way to win the Darwin award.
App... (Score:2)
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In my day, we called them "programs".
"Software Application" sounds like marketing fluff.
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Wait. Are you a... USER?
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Get off my lawn.
We use apps.
Australians have truckies.
It's English. Get over it. Changes.
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In English, we have programmes. Stop the bloody yankee spelling mate.
Or applications, or app's if you must. But don't forget the apostrophe.
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Linux packaging standards (Score:3)
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I like Plex.tar.gz as a standard package format.
To install, you'd type:
tar -xzvf Plex.tar.gz
cd Plex
make config
make
make install
Re: Linux packaging standards (Score:2)
I said something about a standardized package. Not a dilettante package.
Re:Linux packaging standards (Score:4, Interesting)
TAR.gz RPM Deb PPA flatpak Snap AUR ebuild tar.bz2. configure make make install. It's all fun in the Linux packaging factory.
Meh.
Windows: .zip, .exe, .msi, DLL hell, .ini files, registry, user profiles, "would you like that installed in this bizarrely named program pseudo-directory, or that one?", etc.
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license costs, sometimes confusing license requirements, adware, malware, ride-alongs, hijacking settings, leaving trial versions and nagware, etc.
I'll deal with apt and adding the occasional 3rd party repo or working with a tarball... seems much more sane.
Sheesh (Score:2)
TAR.gz RPM Deb PPA flatpak Snap AUR ebuild tar.bz2. configure make make install. It's all fun in the Linux packaging factory.
There are other actual package formats you didn't mention.
You included tar.gz and tar.bz2 and those aren't packaging formats, although they could be used for that (as well as zip). And compiling from source is not a packaging format. Sheesh.
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They're separate so you can be sure to forget to fix the security bugs in at least one of them.
Is Plex open source - why Snap? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know what Plex is, but I have a general question. Would anybody want an open source project to be distributed as a snap? I installed Skype on my kubuntu 18.04 system, and it insisted on it. But Skype isn't open source, so okay - it's easier for them to package it once and have it work everywhere. But in the meantime, I see that the snap has set up a loopback filesystem. In fact that conflicted with an encrypted filesystem I used to map using /dev/loop0, until I changed that. But do I really want extra filesystems showing up in the 'df' command just because I've installed a bunch of apps that come as Snaps.
Okay. Plex seems to be a server app, so maybe. But Skype - easy for them, pain in the ass for me.
I recently went to install the Atom text editor to give it a whirl. That also wanted to install as a snap. Luckily there was a regular deb available and I installed that instead. But seriously - any open source project ought to be included in the distro's repository and kept up to date there. I guess snaps could be handy for things you can't afford to keep up to date - to prevent breakage. But there are ways to prevent taking repo updates for individual apps. I guess snaps can protect you from library updates breaking things too, but seriously - open source desktop apps ought to be either less mission critical or more backward-compatible than the kinds of things that snaps are useful for. Wishful thinking?
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When dealing with installing software somewhere you have many ways to install it, from building from the sources to running a full blown VM.
The "standard" way being installing from a package made for your distro (or from marketplaces on proprietary OSes). When it comes to server software, the preference is now the container which abstracts a lot of the hassles leaving basically nothing but the port management to the admin. This is very convenient, and easy to
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Switch to KDE Debian 9. That's what I did a year or so ago and I've never been happier. Most things that work on Ubuntu 18.xx work on deb 9 with little to no work. And the rest is Linux. Ubuntu is turning into Windows 10. Fast. Ditch it while you can!
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It seems to be known about but is not going to be fixed, which seems odd.
"firejail skypeforlinux" ? (Score:2)
At least that's what I do.
I have read here and there more frowny users that'll firejail *also the installer*, IIRC there is a detailed how-to for Steam, for instance, but at this time I cannot track it back...
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Well ... (Score:4, Insightful)
In adopting the universal Linux app packaging format, ...
That may be the Canonical [wikipedia.org] definition of "universal", but not really the canonical [dictionary.com] definition. Just sayin'.
Used to be good (Score:1)
Plex and SNAP.... nah. (Score:2)
I've tried plex and I just don't like it. I have been using serviio [serviio.org] as my home media server for many years, and it works great.
I don't quite get SNAP.
snap is complete garbage (Score:2)
it's written by clueless idiots for clueless idiots. It violates just about every single packaging rule, even the ones easiest to follow.