What use to be the PPA that allowed Ubuntu users to use native .deb packages for Firefox has recently changed to the same meta package that forces installation of Snap and the Firefox snap package.

I am having to remove the meta package, then re-uninstall the snap firefox, then re-uninstall Snap, then install pin the latest build I could get (firefox_116.0.3+build2-0ubuntu0.22.04.1~mt1_arm64.deb) to keep the native firefox build.

I’m so done with Ubuntu.

  • LiveLM@lemmy.zipEnglish
    851·
    11 months ago

    Imagine having to fight your OS to do what you want. True Windows experience.

    • danielfgom@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      11 months ago

      Yes exactly. This is the main problem. It’s one thing to offer Snaps as an alternative, but to force them on users is not the Libre/FOSS way at all.

      I switched away to Mint and I’m very glad I did. I’m in control and it works perfectly. Fantastic distro. No Snaps BS and it uses less RAM and is faster than Ubuntu.

      I would encourage all Ubuntu users to switch to Mint. You won’t regret it.

  • ebits21@lemmy.caEnglish
    543·
    11 months ago

    Yeah they’re all in on snaps. Vote with your distro choice.

    • neutron@thelemmy.club
      17·
      11 months ago

      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.

      • garam@lemmy.my.idEnglish
        4·
        11 months ago

        On my corporate laptop, because they require ubuntu to… well spy on us, I wrote a interface in front of snap to works like flatpak… as snap forcing through on everything I work on…

        At least I tried to disable it. and failed, so I wrote a piece of junk code to accomodate my flatpak muscle memory

    • Hominine@lemonine.hominine.xyzEnglish
      141·
      11 months ago

      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.

        • garam@lemmy.my.idEnglish
          61·
          11 months ago

          haha… ubuntu on enterprise doesn’t even touch 5% of the market, where 90% of it is RHEL and 5% another is Windows Server and some OSX… so… I don’t think canonical is dumb enough

          *please read, enterprise market, not hobbyist. Hobbyist doesn’t make money for ubuntu. Well if the hobbyist is a decision maker in enterprise, they probably will have effect, but the problem is, most of them opt in RHEL/Clones

            • garam@lemmy.my.idEnglish
              2·
              11 months ago

              You can look into fortune 500 report on Server stack, and self published red hat report. Red Hat claims is higher, but I will say, it should be at max 90%, not 95% as Red Hat Claims.

              https://fortune.com/2013/05/06/how-linux-conquered-the-fortune-500/#:~:text=Today more than 90%25 of the Fortune 500,Hat%2C the largest vendor of Linux support services.

              https://www.redhat.com/en/about/company

              Seems they revise it. hem… the fly-er I got for Red Hat academy promotion written is 95% in 2019… strange…

              But anyway, you can see anywhere, on any business medium high, mostly use Linux.

              Azure, 100% backed by Red Hat in their Infra, even Microsoft doesn’t deny or agree with it. AWS 100% EL based (old times RHEL, nowdays Fedora), Linode, Scaleway, Contabo, Hetzner, BiznetGio, Aliyun (even their Aliyun/Alibaba Linux is RHEL), OVH, etc. so I will say it’s high enough… that almost entire infrastructure rely on Red Hat Engineering. At least if Red Hat gone, CentOS Stream code still there, Fedora Code still there. The community can continue to develop it.

              Ubuntu only popular and first class only on Digital Ocean. No other cloud providers make ubuntu first class other than DO. Sure enough Ubuntu/Debian is there, you can install it, but, it’s not entirely first class as RHEL/Clones

              Hate it or love it. Red Hat still the king of mission critical system except in Europe, where SUSE is leading, but SUSE itself is well… have same or near identical to Red Hat… so… welp… kind like in same EL boat.

              Some will say data like this https://www.enterpriseappstoday.com/stats/linux-statistics.html#The_Most_Popular_Linux_Distribution is more re presentable for general mass, but I don’t think it’s for enterprises…

    • AeroLemming@lemm.eeEnglish
      9·
      11 months ago

      Are forks of Ubuntu like Mint and Pop_OS still good choices, or do they suffer from a Chromium-style lack of freedom?

      • Holzkohlen@feddit.de
        10·
        11 months ago

        Mint is great. Definitely one of the best distros around. PopOS I’d wait for their new DE. Though with Ubuntu going balls deep on snaps, all those ubuntu based distros hang in the balance. At least Mint got a Debian edition already and they are working on a new version right now. Or just use straight up Debian with flatpaks, which is what I do.

        • Fonzie!@ttrpg.network
          1·
          10 months ago

          Mint also does not force either dpkg/apt-get/apt nor flatpak.
          Even its GUI installer is a GUI wrapper around dpkg and flatpak, every application available on both shows a drop-down allowing you to choose between the two.
          You can also change its config to allow other sources, in case you want to add something else like snap.

      • Omega_Jimes@lemmy.ca
        8·
        11 months ago

        The Pop_Shop gives you the option via a little drop down of flatpak/Deb. I’m not sure if the option is flagged by application developers or system76.

      • Dubious_Fart@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        I recently went to Nobara, not a Deb/Ubuntu fork, but its literally been the easiest, smoothest Linux install/usage experience of my life.

  • iopq@lemmy.world
    46·
    11 months ago

    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

    • wim@lemmy.sdf.org
      10·
      11 months ago

      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.

      • tool@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        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.

        I’d recommend against that. Debian is fantastic for a server, but I think it leaves a lot to be desired as a workstation OS as compared to Fedora.

        You can get it there/make it that way, but Fedora is just better from a user experience/convenience perspective out of the box.

        • wim@lemmy.sdf.org
          1·
          11 months ago

          I don’t know. I like Debian. My home server also doubles as a desktop sometimes and it does a good job.

          I’m mostly not super interested in cutting edge versions. I run a newer kernel and mesa than default Debian, but the rest is just fine. I’m fine with Firefox ESR, and lagging a little bit behind the state of the art.

  • CaptainJack42@discuss.tchncs.de
    482·
    11 months ago

    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

  • Lvxferre@lemmy.ml
    38·
    11 months ago

    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

      • garam@lemmy.my.idEnglish
        111·
        11 months ago

        TempleOS and give it a try. The prophet Terry will be smilling from the Heaven TempleOS

      • Lvxferre@lemmy.ml
        3·
        11 months ago

        I toyed with the idea of gentoo. Not because I want a rolling distro, but because of that 4chan meme.

        • msage@programming.dev
          21·
          11 months ago

          Gentoo is very good actually, specially if you have a modern CPU.

          I tried it on my desktop, and I never want anything else.

      • RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz
        2·
        11 months ago

        Redistribution, reverse engineering, disassembly or decompilation prohibited without permission from the copyright holders.

        no

    • cloudy1999@sh.itjust.works
      3·
      11 months ago

      After using it since Lucid Lynx 10.04, I switched from Ubuntu to Mint last weekend. I’m lazy about distros these days, and I really didn’t want to switch, but Firefox instability was driving me nuts. The web browser must be reliable, IMO. It’s a fundamental requirement for a desktop OS, and this problem didn’t exist before snaps.

  • Seltsamsel@feddit.deEnglish
    293·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • hornedfiend@sopuli.xyz
      71·
      11 months ago

      I’ve recently distro hopped and the new distro came with Firefox preinstalled (had arch before but with xfs and wanted btrf snapshots).

      Do you think its telemetry is so bad? I want to help Mozilla to some extent to keep them working on Firefox as I think Librewolf isn’t showing much usage or support for Firefox itself.

      • nestEggParrot@lemmy.sdf.org
        2·
        11 months ago

        You shouldbea able to turn off from settings. More options are present in the config. You can find github guides doing more hardening for sedurity and privacy.

        Not sure about librewolf specifically but most of these firefox forks do these initial setups for you and maybeave a couple of addons preinstalled. You would still be using firefox. Beyond crash reports and some reduced usage metrics turning them off should hinder firefox much.

        • PseudoSpock@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
          3·
          11 months ago

          EndeavourOS. It’s available for Arm64. Has firefox, has chromium, has vivaldi, and even has a widevine plugin builder in their AUR repo for the first two.

          For UTM hypervisor, select the Arch for ARM from their gallery and install it. Then follow the instructions for Parallels to EndeavourOS it. Oh, expand the disk and filesystem first, though.

          It’s quite a step back in time for an installation process, though. Even after getting it installed and setup for KDE Plasma, still need to install a lot of things:

          • NetworkManager
          • git base-devel
          • man-pages man-db
          • dnsutils
          • LibreOffice Plus all the things one installs for customization on any Linux… preferred shell(s), if not bash, shell customizations and completions, various cli’s you’ll want or need, your favorite IDE, browsers, browser extensions, programming languages, ansible, terraform, helm, kubectl, podman and or docker, etc etc.
  • LeFantome@programming.dev
    25·
    11 months ago

    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.

  • Infiltrated_ad8271@kbin.social
    201·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • NaN@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      13·
      11 months ago

      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.

        • NaN@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          Their script has a really good example of using the “proper” tools to create, validate, and install the desktop file automagically. The tools themselves are likely already installed.

  • milkjug@lemmy.wildfyre.dev
    181·
    11 months ago

    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).

      • milkjug@lemmy.wildfyre.dev
        8·
        11 months ago

        Yes indeed, it just works when I need it to. Just 10 minutes ago I regretted installing Arch as I had some trouble trying to get my WH1000XM4 to connect. I was able to figure it out eventually as I was missing a bunch of missing packages for bluetooth and bluetooth audio that for some reason archinstall decided wasn’t part of the core packages. There was zero prompts from KDE as to why the pairing was failing and I had to figure out with some trial and error which ones were missing and which ones I needed. And after doing all that I still couldn’t get LDAC to work.

        Seriously reflecting on my life choices right now, should have stuck to a distro with some sensible defaults when I just need shit to work. Of all the problems people have with M$, windows always just worked for me. Perhaps Linux and I just aren’t fated to be together. I always come back a couple of times a year to try out the state of Linux and while it has gotten a whole lot better, its always these little gotchas that result in me telling myself “maybe next year will be the year of linux”, which has been happening for the past ~15 years for me now.

        • theshatterstone54@feddit.uk
          2·
          11 months ago

          I hope one day those gotchas disappear for you. You said yourself you want to get away from corporatism. Let’s hope that one day, Linux can provide that for you.

    • Carlos Solís@communities.azkware.netEnglish
      37·
      11 months ago
      • There is only a single Snap server, and it is a proprietary one exclusive to Canonical
      • Upgrades are pushed in a mandatory fashion, which means things will break if a bad upgrade ever gets pushed
      • Snaps have about the same integration issues that Flatpaks have due to their sandboxing, but overcoming them is even harder due to lack of tools on the Snap side of things
      • Snaps are mostly Ubuntu-centric, and don’t quite work on other distros
      • just_another_person@lemmy.world
        2·
        11 months ago

        Mostly agree, except the last two points. Snaps are available anywhere…if you so wish (I wouldn’t).

        The biggest issue with snaps is that they are SLOOOOOOOW when compared to a standard binary install, or even Flatpak. Most of this has to do with fuse, but when you have many versions of a specific package, it just gets slower and slower.

        The local versioning system also takes up a ton of local space by not expiring caches regularly, so it’s not fit for lightweight installs.

        • Carlos Solís@communities.azkware.net
          1·
          11 months ago

          Thanks for the clarification! I’ve never used Snaps myself (as I’d rather use Arch than Ubuntu), so I was unaware on how slow do Snaps run on an average computer. Again, sandboxing can be an overhead too large for an old machine.

    • leo85811nardo@lemmy.world
      30·
      11 months ago

      For me it’s the fact that Ubuntu forcefully shove snap into my system when I want the normal deb install with apt. I’m sure snap has gone better over the years but this is something that I absolutely hate. When I want to use snap/flatpak, I can use snap/flatpak install, and when I say apt install it should be deb install as it’s supposed to be as a Debian variant. Linux tools has always been known for doing exactly what is told, whereas what Ubuntu is recently doing is the opposite of it

      • XTornado@lemmy.ml
        6·
        11 months ago

        I mean the alternative would be to just stop providing the package at all I guess? Like it seems they want to switch to snap.

        • LeFantome@programming.dev
          1·
          11 months ago

          I think that would be a higher integrity move for sure. The issue of course is how to migrate existing users. If they just remove the deb, many users will just stay on the old version forever. They may never know the snap version even exists.

          I get the problem. I just hate their solution.

          • leo85811nardo@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            11 months ago

            I believe apt has the ability to “redirect” or “inform” the user on prompt. They could just show a message that says it’s no longer available for this LTS version, and let them use snap or flatpak instead

    • lily33@lemm.ee
      16·
      11 months ago

      While I’m sure some people hate snap in general, most people simply hate being forced to use it. Or rather, bring forced to switch distro and reinstall everything.

    • merthyr1831@lemmy.world
      12·
      11 months ago

      Beyond the complaints about Canonical’s hostility to Flatpak and other formats, but the real risk snap poses is that Canonical has a lot of control over the snap store, and lack of integration with distros beyond Ubuntu.

      There’s a vague promise of “new stores” and better integration with other distros but Flatpak is a truly open technology that gives you the option to install apps from ANY source and other distros are collaborating to improve it.

    • nestEggParrot@lemmy.sdf.org
      10·
      11 months ago

      Many have issues with stability. Especially with firefox which comes installed via snap on ubuntu. Similarly compared to deb snaps versions occasionally have weird bugs. I personaaly had an issue with opening files properly using snap but worked fine on deb.

      Also its unnecessarily forced. Deb works great and apt is widely used as primary package manager. No need to maintain the system with another one in the mix.

      Its also repoted not to work well on otknr platforms like fedora or arch. Other package formats like AppImage, flatpak might be better in that regard though I havent used them.

    • library_napper@monyet.cc
      145·
      11 months ago

      For one, packages aren’t cryptographically verified after downloading them, as is done with apt.

      This is a massive security vulnerability.

    • X3I@lemmy.x3i.tech
      31·
      11 months ago

      Main reasons I see being raised a lot are Canonical’s absolute control over the snap ecosystem and the dependency problem inside the snaps, meaning they often ship outdated versions of dependencies which might have known bugs or flaws.

      The fact that it is forced on users is mentioned by other people here already. Afaik this is not a thing yet on Ubuntu server, so maybe install that one + the GUI packages? Not an Ubuntu user myself, so this could be oversimplified.

  • Rhabuko@feddit.de
    13·
    11 months ago

    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.

      • Rhabuko@feddit.de
        2·
        11 months ago

        For buying or donating (maybe even subscriptions). Both open source and proprietary software. They’re working on it.

          • TeryVeneno@lemmy.ml
            9·
            11 months ago

            I think you’re misunderstanding what the claim here is. The payments are not necessary for Flathub and flatpak (though they take a cut), it’s revenue for developers. Revenue they would have never seen if their app is packaged in distro repos like normal. Implementing payment systems in the native package format is basically impossible which is why no one ever did it. Flathub is giving app developers (whose job is oftentimes thankless) a chance to receive easier funding or even a livelihood. All around a good thing.

  • aport@programming.dev
    13·
    11 months ago

    There are several high quality community run distributions which aren’t beholden to corporate tools.