On Sun, Feb 02, 2025 at 04:48:48PM +0000, Thom Harmon wrote:

...

How do you use x2go with this problem?

I know this is not going to be a satisfactory answer...

I struggled with this for months trying to figure out what permissions needed to be configured for the Snaps apps to work in x2go with no luck. It seems to be related to access to /run.

For me it was the final straw for Snap and Ubuntu more broadly. I rotated over to Debian stable (well, Spiral actually) for everything and if I need an application-level jail I use Flatpak. In only a handful of cases have I had to use Flatseal to adjust permissions for x2go compat. Much better experience.

Like I said, probably not a satisfactory answers but sometimes just knowing that there is an escape hatch available is useful.

Now if I could figure out a work-around for when an app doesn't support Xinput2....

I think this is the 'right' answer even if it isn't a 'satisfactory' answer. Snap just manages to break so many things in subtle ways that one is better off without it.

I too left [x]ubuntu because of the increasing dependency on snap for important applications. I have moved to Debian 12 and am very happy with it. I have a couple of Appimage based programs but everything else comes from the Debian repositories.

-- Chris Green

Generally spoken: the underlying nxagent (named x2goagent) is lacking support for the COMPOSITE Xserver extension. Unfortunately more and more Desktops, even the ones designed to be "lightweight", are not working without that extension. At least not out of the box. So you need to figure out how to configure your desktop environment to run without the Composite Extension. Usually by changing the window manager to a non-compositing one.

Same for XINPUT2. nxagent only offers XINPUT1.

I have been working on implementing both but the current state is release-ready.

Uli

PS: you can try and switch x2go to use x2gokdrive instead of nxagent. There's some checkmark in the config dialog to be set. This uses a completely different approach which is less efficient than the NX technology (using more bandwidth) but it comes with the two mentioned extensions.

On Mon, Feb 3, 2025 at 12:21 PM Buddy Butterfly <buddy.butterfly@web.de> wrote:

I second this. Also moving away from Ubuntu distros. This started when I discovered that Ubuntu uses "ubuntu-advantage-..." to install an opc client to phone home to vendor. Such things could get even worse with using snaps.

Not that snaps are slower and are causing issues. No one checks them for security issues. This is true for any "containerized" apps like AppImage or Flatpak, though, being a bit more trustworthy. At the end, packaged apps are a security nightmare. Imagine a server with 20+ containers and you have to prove security with an audit on that system. You would have to validate all containers separately. If one provider does not maintain the container your containerized app will not get any updates!

A good example is openssl, a very central library/application. Who patches all the containers when there are security fixes of it or any possible data breaches? If, for example, you run "pure" Debian with all packages being installed into the system, this will be pushed as a security fix from Debian update and every installed app uses this and is therefore also fixed!

So, all I can say, nowadays a lot of security audits overlook this issue not guaranteeing the latest library security fixes and possible data breaches of app containers.

Anyhow, this is the advantage/disadvantage in the comparison of having a containerized app system or a "centralized" system like it was before.

Am 02.02.25 um 21:08 schrieb Chris Green:

On Sun, Feb 02, 2025 at 04:48:48PM +0000, Thom Harmon wrote:

How do you use x2go with this problem?

I know this is not going to be a satisfactory answer...

I struggled with this for months trying to figure out what permissions needed to be configured for the Snaps apps to work in x2go with no luck. It seems to be related to access to /run.

For me it was the final straw for Snap and Ubuntu more broadly. I rotated over to Debian stable (well, Spiral actually) for everything and if I need an application-level jail I use Flatpak. In only a handful of cases have I had to use Flatseal to adjust permissions for x2go compat. Much better experience.

Like I said, probably not a satisfactory answers but sometimes just knowing that there is an escape hatch available is useful.

Now if I could figure out a work-around for when an app doesn't support Xinput2....

I think this is the 'right' answer even if it isn't a 'satisfactory' answer. Snap just manages to break so many things in subtle ways that one is better off without it.

I too left [x]ubuntu because of the increasing dependency on snap for important applications. I have moved to Debian 12 and am very happy with it. I have a couple of Appimage based programs but everything else comes from the Debian repositories.

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