Blog posts tagged
"snapd"

14 posts

Igor Ljubuncic
4 November 2022

Snaps & better refresh notifications

Article Desktop

Automatic updates grant snap users an ability to receive timely patches to their software, both in aspects of security and functionality. This can be rather useful and convenient, especially for applications that have online access. On the other hand, automatic updates can potentially disrupt users’ workflows if they...

Igor Ljubuncic
4 November 2022

Igor Ljubuncic
14 April 2022

Private shared memory support for snaps

Article Ubuntu

At first glance, the title of this article may sound like an oxymoron. However, what it highlights is the introduction of a rather useful feature that will enable a far more robust and elegant handling of the /dev/shm implementation inside the snap sandbox. This will make snap development easier, more secure, and reduce...

Igor Ljubuncic
14 April 2022

Igor Ljubuncic
11 June 2021

What has snapd ever done for other distros?

Article Ubuntu

Snaps are self-contained applications designed with ease of use, security and portability in mind. They bundle their necessary dependencies, so they can work and run without modifications across numerous Linux distributions. How many? More than 40. Yet, often when technology is strongly associated with a particular...

Igor Ljubuncic
11 June 2021

Igor Ljubuncic
4 June 2021

The magic behind snap interfaces

Article Ubuntu

Snaps are confined, self-contained applications, designed with portability and security in mind. By default, strictly confined snaps run in isolation, with minimal access to system resources. For instance, they cannot access home, network, audio, or display. To make their snaps usable, developers and publishers can...

Igor Ljubuncic
4 June 2021

Ian Johnson
23 December 2020

Why LZO was chosen as the new compression method

Article Desktop

Everyone wants fast applications. Recently, we provided a mechanism to make snap applications launch faster by using the LZO format. We introduced this change because users reported desktop snaps starting more slowly than the same applications distributed via traditional, native Linux packaging formats like Deb or RPM....

Ian Johnson
23 December 2020

Alan Pope
10 September 2020

Snap! Collaborate and listen!

Article Desktop

You’d think we would be running out of terrible/great (delete as applicable) 80s songs to try and shoehorn into the titles of these blog posts. Turns out, not quite yet! “How can I help?” is a phrase often used in Open Source projects by enthusiastic users and developers. There are a lot of moving parts

Alan Pope
10 September 2020

Igor Ljubuncic
9 July 2020

How to manage snap updates

Article Cloud and server

Updates are an integral part of the software lifecycle. Quite often, they bring improvements, vital security patches – and sometimes, unfortunately, bugs, too. In mission-critical environments, it is important to assert a high degree of oversight and precision over updates. Snaps come with a built-in automatic update...

Igor Ljubuncic
9 July 2020

Igor Ljubuncic
20 February 2020

Parallel installs for classic snaps

Article Ubuntu

For a while now, snapd has supported the ability to install and use multiple instances of the same snap in parallel. This allows users to test features in new software releases side by side with the stable, production versions. Similarly, users can distribute their work or perhaps use custom settings across several...

Igor Ljubuncic
20 February 2020

Igor Ljubuncic
20 June 2019

Parallel installs – test and run multiple instances of snaps

Article Desktop

In Linux, testing software is both easy and difficult at the same time. While the repository channels offer great availability to software, you can typically only install a single instance of an application. If you want to test multiple instances, you will most likely need to configure the remainder yourself. With...

Igor Ljubuncic
20 June 2019

David Callé
11 April 2017

Snap support lands in Fedora 24, 25 and 26

Article Desktop

As part as our mission to get snaps running everywhere, we are pleased to announce that support for snaps has now officially landed in Fedora, starting with Fedora 24 and up. Big thanks to Neal Gompa who has been instrumental in landing snapd packages in the Fedora archive! Install your first snap on Fedora 1)

David Callé
11 April 2017

Stéphane Graber
22 February 2017

LXD on Debian (using snapd)

Article Cloud and server

Introduction So far all my blog posts about LXD have been assuming an Ubuntu host with LXD installed from packages, as a snap or from source. But LXD is perfectly happy to run on any Linux distribution which has the … Continue reading →

Stéphane Graber
22 February 2017

David Callé
9 January 2017

How to snap: introducing classic confinement

Article Desktop

Last Thursday, January 5, the snapd team was delighted to announce a new release of snapd (2.20), the daemon that enables systems to work with snaps and provides the snap command. It’s time we take a look at the most prominent feature of this release: classic confinement. A new relaxed security policy for snaps, aimed at

David Callé
9 January 2017

David Callé
12 December 2016

snapd 2.18: the snap command strikes back

Article Internet of Things

Last Thursday, December 8, the snapd team was happy to announce a new release of snapd (2.18), the daemon that enables systems to work with snaps and provides the snap command. It’s time we take a look at what makes this release stand out. A brief tour of new snap commands (and the improved snap find) On

David Callé
12 December 2016

Gustavo Niemeyer
16 June 2016

Leveling up snapd integration tests

Article Cloud and server

Over the last several months there has been noticeable and growing pain associated with the evolving integration tests around snapd, and given the project goal of being a cross-distribution platform, we are very keen on solving this problem appropriately so that stability is guaranteed everywhere.With that mindset a...

Gustavo Niemeyer
16 June 2016