Comment 216 for bug 1575053

I discovered this today when the ubuntu 19.10 upgrade replaced my chromium package with a snap, thereby creating this alien directory in my home dir. I believe my exact words were, "are you fucking kidding me?"

> at the end it's pure aesthetics.

Wrong. It obstructs tab completion in command lines and keyboard navigation in file managers, which is something that I do thousands of times per day. This makes it a rather significant attack on usability.

Even for people who don't use keyboards, the additional clutter adds cognitive load every time someone looks for a file or navigates to another directory. It also contributes to pushing other files off the edge of file manager windows, thereby either requiring the user to scroll to find things or to waste desktop space with larger file manager windows. You might think these to be minor effects, but that doesn't excuse it, and they add up quickly. Especially for the single most visible directory in the entire system.

> echo snap >> ~/.hidden

That doesn't work my terminal or my Thunar (file manager) windows.

> "me too" is not really bringing anything to the discussion.

I normally agree, but this is a special case. It would be difficult to overstate how foolish this design decision was. The flood of comments serve as a clear demonstration of that, and will (hopefully) ensure that the people responsible think more carefully before repeating their mistake in the future.

Consider also that each "me too" here represents not just the person who wrote it, but also multiple others who had the same reaction but didn't bother (or don't know how) to come here and write about it.

While we're at it, not that there wouldn't be so many "me too" comments if the snap folks hadn't left this problem unaddressed for nearly four years.

Four. Years.

Okay, so fixing it properly is difficult because of your rigid design. Okay, that happens; we all make mistakes. But maybe consider implementing a temporary fix early, so you don't leave people burdened with your mistake while you take four freaking years to fix it properly?

I am in disbelief.

Amusingly, I happen to be evaluating container-style packaging systems this week, with FlatPak and Snap on my short list because of their sandboxing features. The fact that this bug exists in the first place, along with the fact that it has been allowed to persist for nearly four years, has convinced me: I'm not building anything with snap.