> If Canonical goes to snap only and drops debs, that means 41 > downstream distros like Trisquel could be stuck with having to become > snap/systemd systems.
They probably won't drop debs entirely. The base system, maybe things like desktop environments too, will likely still be based on Debian. However, they are encouraging users to install applications like LibreOffice and VLC from the Snap Store. For now such applications are still available in the universe repository, and most applications exclusive to the Snap Store are likely proprietary, so it is currently not a problem for Trisquel to simply not include snap. However, once Ubuntu users transition to using snap for applications, Ubuntu could conceivably drop its Universe repository (which already does not receive security updates), and that would affect Trisquel. A distro like Mint may or may not mind having their users just use the Snap Store, but for Trisquel that is not an option, because the Snap Store contains proprietary software. As for free software that is not packaged in Debian/Ubuntu, due to Ubuntu's popularity, developers often desire to make their software easy to install on Ubuntu. When they do this by providing a PPA or apt repository, that involves creating Debian source packages which can be easily imported to Trisquel and other Debian-based distros, so accommodating Ubuntu benefits also benefits other distros. However, I'm lately seeing some[1] cases[2] where developers upload to the Snap Store instead, which only increases Canonical's influence. I'm not against distro-agnostic packaging in general, but I am against walled-garden app stores that prioritize the power of developers over the freedom of users.
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