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A new tool 'unsnap' helps you move from Snaps to Flatpaks

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Want to migrate over from Snaps to Flatpaks on your Linux machine? Well, unsnap is a new tool in the early stages that will help you do just that. Developed by Alan Pope, who previously worked for Canonical and was an advocate for Snap packages, it's certainly an eyebrow raising move.

The idea is simple: to allow you to quickly and easily migrate from Snap to Flatpak applications. Done over a two-stage process, it allows you to "view and/or edit the scripts prior to execution to validate or tweak them".

Right now, it's considered to be in the "Pre-alpha" stage, so not for production machines but eventually it could prove to be quite useful.

An example shot from Pope on the GitHub page:

Considering how popular Flatpak has become (especially with it used on the Steam Deck), it's not a big surprise to see something like this come along.

There's a lot more info on the GitHub.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Misc, Open Source
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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11 comments
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starpollo Apr 5, 2022
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Bold move from the old snap advocate! He must have gotten real sick of the cool-aid I guess?
Boldos Apr 5, 2022
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Ummmm, not really.
Thanks, but no.
tuubi Apr 5, 2022
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Quoting: starpolloBold move from the old snap advocate! He must have gotten real sick of the cool-aid I guess?
Or maybe he was just doing his job as a Canonical employee.
randyl Apr 5, 2022
Quoting: tuubi
Quoting: starpolloBold move from the old snap advocate! He must have gotten real sick of the cool-aid I guess?
Or maybe he was just doing his job as a Canonical employee.
Does Canonical have their employees host official/paid company projects on their personal github repos? That seems strange doesn't it?

I noticed it is using the permissive MIT license. Does Canonical use MIT a lot or just in a few cases? I would have expected GPL or LGPL from this.


Last edited by randyl on 5 April 2022 at 4:34 pm UTC
CatKiller Apr 5, 2022
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Quoting: randylDoes Canonical have their employees host official/paid company projects on their personal github repos? That seems strange doesn't it?
He no longer works for Canonical.
damarrin Apr 6, 2022
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Yesterday I was upgrading Ubuntu on an old Core 2 Duo machine with a mechanical laptop drive.

I wasn't surprised that it took 2 mins to boot, though suspend is rock-stable there so it'll rarely be a problem. But FF takes almost 40 seconds to start. Because it's a snap. I didn't have time to switch to FF from the repos, but do you know what I think about snaps and Canonical's decision to make FF one? I think you do.
CatKiller Apr 6, 2022
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Quoting: damarrindo you know what I think about snaps and Canonical's decision to make FF one?
Mozilla's decision.
damarrin Apr 6, 2022
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Quoting: CatKiller
Quoting: damarrindo you know what I think about snaps and Canonical's decision to make FF one?
Mozilla's decision.

From what I read, Mozilla asked for it, but Canonical made the decision to do it (as they would, since they're trying to promote snaps). Thank fsck there's choice and I'm on Fedora now.
Luke_Nukem Apr 6, 2022
Quoting: starpolloBold move from the old snap advocate! He must have gotten real sick of the cool-aid I guess?

Yeah he actually did. Much of that being to do with poor management and leadership.
randyl Apr 7, 2022
Quoting: CatKiller
Quoting: randylDoes Canonical have their employees host official/paid company projects on their personal github repos? That seems strange doesn't it?
He no longer works for Canonical.
Thanks, appreciate you pointing that out. I didn't know. The more I read through the Github repo the more it seemed like a friendly personal project to give people options. They even state at the bottom of the repo the project isn't a statement or comment on either app system.
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