One of the most interesting novelties that came from the hand of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS in April were the snap packages, a new package management system that will allow users to install any software as soon as its developers have it available. Logically, there is still a long way to go for snap packages to be the trend, but with the arrival of Ubuntu 16.10 Canonical has informed the community that they are already available more than 500 of these packages.
The most interesting novelty that has come along with the Yakkety Yak brand is a kernel 4.8 which fixes some incompatibility issues with more hardware, meaning it can (and does prevent) issues like Wi-Fi connections that I've been experiencing since I bought my laptop. Moreover, Ubuntu 16.10 has also come with updated Snap technologies, which includes Snapd 2.16 and Snapcraft 2.19, which will allow us to install various applications distributed using the Snap universal binary package, and package the applications as Snaps for cross-platform distribution.
VLC is already among the available snap packages
At the moment we already have the aforementioned more than 500 snap packages in the Snappy Store, among which the last build VLC Media Player 3.0.0 "Veterinari" media player, Krita 3.0.1 drawing software, LibreOffice 5.2 or Kikad 4.0.4 Electronics Design Automation (EDA).
If you want to do a test, you can install the latest version of the VLC media player using the command sudo Snap Install VLC, at which point it will start to download the package and then install it. The installation is not very different from how we do it via "apt" beyond changing the order to "snap" and what we see in the terminal, but it will allow us to receive the updates as soon as we open the application, which will also provide us greater security.
In any case, although they are still very few, snap packages are already making a dent in the Linux world.
I don't understand snap packages well. As far as I know, each app is "packaged" with all its dependencies, so that operation is guaranteed whatever Ubuntu version it is (if it is compatible with snap packages).
But, I do not understand the following sentence: «it will allow us to receive the updates as soon as we open the application». That is, is this update system identical to that of MacOS? Is apt-get upgrade & update finished? Is it over having all the apps updated with a single command?
Hola!
In this case, the snap are made by the companies themselves, so by including the dependencies themselves and updating the package, the program is automatically updated, so it would always be in its latest stable version.
And what comes packaged is not only for Ubuntu, but for any Linux system that can install snap, such as Gentoo or Fedora 🙂
You don't need to have Ubuntu 16.10 to enjoy those 500 snaps. With Ubuntu 16.04 it also works. Snaps are independent of the kernel and ubuntu version. Also the vlc package is a bit green, it is not translated. Snaps packages are updated with sudo snap refresh. It is not true that they update themselves.
But if you want to update all the snap at once? to have all the apps updated? something like apt-get upgrade & update?
Would sudo snap refresh suffice?
Hello,
I have downloaded the snap versions of VLC and Telegram. Everything works perfectly but Ubuntu does not manage them the same as if you use the traditional version. For example you cannot open a video file by right-clicking on the file and choosing VLC. You have to open VLC and find the file from there. Also the application is in English. Is it possible to add another language to the snap package?