Yeah they’re all in on snaps. Vote with your distro choice.
this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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I'm afraid they'll break off Debian one day. Supporting snap is one thing, sabotaging well established user cases (apt installing deb, not being a snap prozy) is another.
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What I don't get is why. What with the recent Red Hat debacle one would think Canonical would make a stronger case as opposed to force feeding the issue.
Imagine having to fight your OS to do what you want. True Windows experience.
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You know what, enough is enough. Snaps run like shit in my system (IDK/DC why), I hate companies forcing their shit down my throat, and I was planning a clean reinstall anyway from Ubuntu 20.04 to 22.04. Might as well use the opportunity to go back to Debian. Or Mint. Or Mint Debian Edition. Who knows.
Next on the news, Ubuntu ("humanity") gets renamed to Amasimba ("shit"). /s
Feeling bold? Try MenuetOS, it even claims to have an http client.
TempleOS and give it a try. The prophet Terry will be smilling from the Heaven TempleOS
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I warned you guys. "It's so easy, just do these three steps if you don't like snaps" but then later they tighten the vise
Yeah. I switched away from Ubuntu for all this crap.
I moved to Fedora for my laptop & desktop, and Debian for my home server. I'm considering switching everything to Debian eventually, but there's a couple dedicated repos that make using Fedora on my laptop much easier for now.
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There's a simple reason why Mozilla/canonical does this and that is security fixes. Due to the difference in support cycles of Firefox and Ubuntu LTS versions fixes would have to be manually backported to the system Firefox version and newer versions won't run due to library dependencies. Snap solves all of that.
Don't get me wrong though, snap is still terrible, but other than flatpak or doing the work of backporting it's the only option to get security fixes to Ubuntu
Previous to the switch to snaps, Ubuntu was providing the latest version of Firefox built for each supported Ubuntu release. I'm sure this was more work, but the older system library version issue was not a blocker.
Edit: in fact, Mozilla still provides an apt repo with Firefox deb packages built for each supported Ubuntu release.
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I like the approach Pop OS takes. Their software store lets you choose between deb or flatpak when you install software. I've had issues with flatpak versions of some software, and flipping to the deb package usually fixes it.
Fedora does the same thing where you can choose between RPM or Flatpak. The only flatpak package I've ever had problems with was OnlyOffice, and the issue was that the scaling was blown way out of proportions. Switching to the RPM version resolved that.
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LibreWolf is a Firefox fork with features removed which we don't want (Telemetry, Pocket, ...) and a few (privacy) features enabled (which can be deactivated if they're too annoying). I didn't had any issues with Firefox extensions as well.
I'm currently using it on Debian and it runs smoothly. Recent Ubuntu versions are also supported and you can install them via your package manager, see here.
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If you don't embrace snaps just don't use Ubuntu.
There are several high quality community run distributions which aren't beholden to corporate tools.
I stopped using Ubuntu because of snap a while ago. I tend to run Linux on older machines and flat packs tend to take much longer to load than native apps. I get that they have their purpose but I would prefer to choose to use rather than be forced. I’m currently trying out POP_OS! and it’s a welcome flavor of Ubuntu
They forget this
Most normies using linux distros use it because they don't have 16gb of ram and a massive ssd
Now the most mainstream linux distro does a lil trolling
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Time to switch to Mint ( or Debian ). I have not like Ubuntu for a while but this forced match to snaps seems too much.
I use Arch myself. I have been considering trying Debian Stable with Distrobox / Arch. The stability of Debian with a totally current and massive package inventory ( thank you AUR ) sounds like perhaps the best of all worlds.
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I use the binary provided by Mozilla at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/
I even wrote an installation script that takes care of it all. (For amd64, not arm64. I'm not sure if they provide a stand-alone arm build.)
TIL about desktop-file-edit.
I’ve been doing desktop files by hand for years.
My favorite thing about the Mozilla binary is that it auto updates just like Windows, as long as you have write permissions.
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I'm a bit confused to see that the hate falls entirely on ubuntu. Isn't the change in the ppa of mozillateam, ~~owned by mozilla~~?
Edit: It seems that mozillateam is actually ubuntu.
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Ubuntu was my first-ever training-wheels gateway to Linux. I started from 8.04 Hardy Heron, and it felt like such a counter-culture move back then and I wanted to be part of the 'cool' edgy goth kids that DGAF about the mainstream normies.
15 years later, I still daily-drive windows, but I have many linux boxes for various specialist use-cases, mainly for scripting or self-hosting services, and still have 22.04 server versions running here and there. But this will be my last version of Ubuntu, and the only reason its still there is because migrating them is going to be no fun.
The Ubuntu today feels like a completely different animal than when I started. My breaking point was the 'upgrade to pro' message on every apt run. I DON'T WANT TO SIGN UP FOR YET ANOTHER METERED ACCOUNT. I use Linux to escape all the mainstream commercialism and monetization once in a while when I'm up for it. Next thing I know, it starts popping up in Linux OS's and even terminals asking me to login with an account so that I can be monetized.
Don't get me wrong, I know people need to eat and companies need revenue streams to pay their staff. Linux was my occasional escape back to my engineering and tinkering roots, but corporatism is creeping in like what happens to all good things (eventually).
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Seems like Canonical wants to push snaps now really hard. I hope that Flathub soon implements its payment structure, before companies flock to the Canonical store.
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Hot take: PPAs suck and snaps/flatpaks are better.
With PPAs, inevitably some repo that hasn’t been updated since 2015 causes dependency conflicts and you have to sit there and troubleshoot, or pick between the software you need and actually having an OS that’s not EOL. With snaps, you can keep your decade old dependencies all bundled up and still upgrade your system even if the package maintainer has abandoned it.
The issue people have with snaps isn't the containerization or the bundles, but the proprietary backend. There is no way to point the snaps at a different store other than the one canonical controls. Canonicals forcing snaps on people pisses a lot of people off because it's a blatant power grab, an attempt to get people dependent on something they have control over in a microsoft-esque move. Flatpaks and docker don't have that issue.
Hot take: it doesn't feel nice to have a change forced.
It should be the personal preference of the user to decide whether to use native or snap/flatpak. If native package manager decide to not support the package any longer it would be better to make user aware and stop maintaining app, than to install a snap package. This is a user's decision.
Also this can have far reaching consequences. Imagine you cannot use/install snaps on your machine due some reason, what now?
I tried so hard to embrace snaps and flatpak. I really did. But the snap service kept bogging down. Installs specifically of Firefox were ponderously slow to start up. And ultimately I ended up with regular installs, PPAs, snaps, and flatpaks all together with their own daemons, update paths, and quirks sucking up my system bandwidth and emotional resources. System was constantly slow. Felt like I was running Windows.
I flipped over to endeavours, really enjoying it. Feels like Ubuntu did in the earlier years. Great support community, lots of choice, but a straightforward path to just using your system if that's what you're there for. And the same computer runs a good 25% faster.
Valid opinion and immutable distros like silverblue might be where the future is headed.
It's not the point though, I'm not going with a distro that tries to force their proprietary solution on me.
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PPAs suck, no doubt. But the thing is, if snap is so superior, just switch your whole distribution over to it and be done with it. Don't do this underhanded switcheroo with individual packages spread over so many years.
The crux here is ultimately that snap just doesn't look to be up to the task of replacing .deb, otherwise they'd have already done it. But they still want their proprietary appstore, so they have to make snap relevant by force.
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yay! another company damaging itself!
They are mostly Mozilla members, not Ubuntu members, who are responsible for the PPA. Are you sure, that your complaints and grievances are directed to the right address? See here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Contacts
Hello, member of Mozilla release engineering here. We have no association with that PPA and the contacts are not mozilla.com email addresses.
Yeah… For years I already suggested anything good but Ubuntu to those interested in trying Linux, but now I'm going to directly tell them not to touch it. Sure, you've got lots of online discussions from the past 20-ish years of people teaching each other how to install PPAs for up-to-date versions of programs or drivers and that's sweet. But how about a distro where that stuff is just available out of the box and one that doesn't force you to use snaps as if they didn't cause issues left and right?
You may need to move away from Ubuntu to an Ubuntu-based distro. Pop!_OS still packages firefox as a deb
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