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.
Thanks for the warning. I’ll keep my eyes open. Perhaps it’s time to start distro-hopping.
It’s been time since Ubuntu was selling user search data to Amazon, and adding ads to the terminal… It’s a shit distro with an even worse company behind it.
You may need to move away from Ubuntu to an Ubuntu-based distro. Pop!_OS still packages firefox as a deb
Have you had any dealings with the FSF? “Forcing users” is standard operating procedure.
All distros make choices for their users. In fact, what applications are available in what repositories via what methods is practically the defining feature of a distribution. That in itself is not what bugs me about Ubuntu. It is the choices they make that bug me. That is why I do not use Ubuntu.
What’s with FSF? If it’s free software and SaaSS, there is no “forcing” by their words.
Firefox snap on Ubuntu is still slow to start after all this time. The binary from Mozilla starts nearly instantly.
It’s no wonder Canonical is partnering up with Microsoft to EEE Linux
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.
:(
What PPA was it? I’m using this one and it seems to be still native. http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/ubuntuzilla/mozilla/apt
That said - I’m experimenting with NixOS to move to.
I keep seeing people mentioning NixOS, what’s so unique about it that people like?
Biggest package repository, a very strange package manager that lets you reproduce exact environment for any package. But also takes a bunch of time to understand and you basically have to learn a whole new programming language to use it if you don’t want to copy-paste examples.
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Nix has “over 80 000 packages,” according to their website. The AUR has 85719, so they’re pretty close. This website seems out of date, as the AUR is listed as having 73914 packages, but it says that Nix is bigger. Either way, there’s a lot.
Kind of like flatpacks but it’s done with symlinks and fancy changes to the build systems. I think it fits better for the developer environment.
I get that people don’t like being forced, but otherwise I couldn’t care less about Firefox snap vs deb. All problems I once had have been ironed out. On the contrary, I like sticking to the “recommended” path with more developer focus and hopefully higher stability. For my usecases I have zero problems with snap.
I also hate that anyone would side for snap based browser installation, and that any of you are upvoting it is horribly icky.
Can you articulate why?
I like my apps to be contained somehow. I don’t like all the choices canonical made with snap, but I like containment.
Your responses here tho, yeah. Icky.
I like some things as flatpak or appimage. But not my browsers, I use a hacked in widevine plugin.
I know you do. I want my stuff in containers as much as possible. So maybe be less judgemental about other people wanting to do that, and I won’t be judgementable about you not wanting to do that.
I see where you’re headed… but having automatic updates, when I’m using a specific PPA to keep me off of a particular snap, only to have that PPA then also shove me over without asking right back to the thing the PPA was designed to help me avoid… Not ok. Just close the PPA, don’t make it a trojan horse to install what I didn’t want anyway. That is hostile and makes me very judgemental and a stick in the mud.
I don’t care about that sorry, just commenting on you being a hostile to others about what they choose to do for no reason. Maybe don’t do that.
Yeah, not caring about your incorrect assumption. As for hostile, try this on… Go stuff it, get lost, you’re uninvited.
Same for our student PCs - As soon as the setup includes network homes snap becomes completely unusable. Applications just crash on startup because snap doesn’t allow them to access the user’s home directory
For one, the snap version is 115 instead of 116, so it’s reverting me to an older version, which makes firefox want to wipe my profile. Not ok. Two, I was purposely using the Mozillateam PPA to get non snap installations, and they up and changed that on us with no warning. Then there is the matter that firefox as a snap is slower. And finally, I can’t add the Widevine for arm64 plugin to the snap.
Snap for browsers is a terrible idea.
Smart card support is still completely broken. I kinda need that to use Linux for my work PC.
Yeah, snaps are garbage as long as canonical keeps the backend locked. Better to switch to a more userfriendly distro. If you want to stay in the deb ecosystem … maybe go with something like Mint or Pop!_OS or debian (testing)
Debian’s packages are more up to date than those in Mint and PopOS. Why people always complain about Debian being out of date, but never complain about that with other distros is beyond me. I guess people just repeat what they hear or read without ever thinking for themselves. Some might call them sheeple, me I just become ever so slightly more disgruntled.
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.
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.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 haven’t had any problems with using Snap. I am currently switching from Chrome to Firefox. Firefox has ran great with Snaps so far.
But I also have an Nvidia RTX 3080. The Linux community hates both Snap and Nvidia. But they are working fine for me.
I tried PopOS but they didn’t have the current drivers for my Nvidia card, so I switched back to Ubuntu. This was about a year or so ago
The NVIDIA driver in Pop!_OS is currently 535.98. I’ve been using a RTX 3080 with Pop!_OS since the pandemic lockdown.
I’m on ARM, arm64 to be more specific. There’s no native Widevine package for the browsers. There is a way to rip it from the new chromeOS for arm64, and to then plug it into chromium and firefox… but not with snap firefox. And to top it off, flatpak doesn’t even have firefox or thunderbird for arm64.
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.
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.
I can agree with that only if they solved the problems with extensions and a few other features that were not working with the snap version. If they did not, then they are assholes.
I use keepass to fill login forms, and that does not work with the snap version.
Just curious if you know why? I thought snap was just a package format, not a siloed container.
In my case, KeePass and ExpressVPN could not function. For KeepassXC, this was the reason:
It is impossible to support native messaging when a browser is running as a sandboxed snap. This is a limitation in snapd not keepassxc.
It appears they found some work-around with an extra script after installation as of 2 years ago. Basically, snaps are sandboxed, which is a feature. That wreaks havoc with certain tools, though. ExpressVPN’s browser plugin was having similar problems, and on Linux, that’s you’re only GUI interface for ExpressVPN.
I just checked, and I was updated to the Snap version, and I had no problems with either extension, so they did solve the problems. Therefore, I’m not outraged. Ubuntu has the right to standardize their deployments on a system that makes their work easier or less chaotic - as long as it does not screw over their customers.
Edit: i was mistaken. I still use the Mozilla PPA, so the problems migjt remain.
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.
Not a fan of immutable distros like Silverblue because you’re giving a lot of control to the upstream, unless you have the ability and time to maintain those system images yourself. And if you’re doing that, except for within an organization, there’s not a huge reason to not just use a traditional distro.
If you don’t want that control, they’re great.
In NixOS you can do an overlay and just make your own package. If the package works, you can submit it to the NUR. If it’s good, you can maintain it in the official channel. I’m doing both, the crappy fork of some GUI is in the NUR, the underlying service is maintained by me in nixpkgs
Nix had a huge learning curve for most folks, but it doesn’t suffer most of my complaints about control.
Ironically a full Ubuntu modular system made up of a bunch of snaps wouldn’t necessarily either. One of the cool things about snaps is that they can hold the kernel and other lower level things so you could build a “snap”-together immutable system out of various components.
Silverblue and its variants are a monolithic system image though.
Or how about… they each have their advantages and disadvantages, and therefore are each better suited to different uses and it doesn’t have to be a competition?
So your saying a Snap based Firefox use case is limited to downloading a different browser… so it’s effectively IE6? I agree, if that’s what you are saying.
Hot take: PPAs suck
Agreed. I’d rather install manually than use a third-party PPA. I’ve had way too many problems, especially when it comes time for an OS upgrade.
snaps/flatpaks are better
I see this as a false dichotomy. The point of a distro is to have a wide array of stuff tested and available in official repositories. If the official repositories only contain half-assed snap ports, what’s the point? I either suffer with a shitty Firefox or jump through more hoops than ever before to install it from external sources? Ugh.
I’m on Ubuntu again, and I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with snaps. When the time comes to upgrade again, I’m either going back upstream to Debian, or downstream to a de-snapped Ubuntu derivative.
Yes, that is the acceptable use case. Aging, I maintained software in a usable form. Not “we’re showing off our container engine so everyone has to use it now”.
@PseudoSpock add Linux Mint repository and install Firefox from there, as described here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1386738/how-to-install-chromium-from-the-linux-mint-repositories-in-ubuntu
Or switch to Linux Mint entirely, like I did :ablobcatbongo:This is affecting my daily driver vm running on arm (m1), otherwise it would already be running Mint. :)
@PseudoSpock too bad
Yeah, other than battery life, I HATE the m1.
The last time I had to deal with Firefox-Snap on a fresh Ubuntu install, it kept crashing on launch. Grabbed a tarball and that justworks ™. That was around a year ago. Hopefully the situation has gotten better.
This may be caused by pinned versions or preferences not being setup correctly in your apt config, rather than a problem with the PPA. It could have been caused by the recent 117 update.
In /etc/apt/preferences.d/ you can create files to control which versions and releases are used for which packages. This is how linux mint prevents snap from getting in, (even though they package their own firefox with its own customizations). Setting up something like:
Package: snapd Pin: release a=* Pin-Priority: -10and
Package: firefox Pin: release o=Ubuntu Pin-Priority: -10should get it working better for any further upgrades
Ubuntu being Ubloatu.
I use snaps for Spotify and Firefox. I know that it’s “forcing” something on users in an ecosystem where things should never be forced on you but as long as they work, I just don’t want to fight them anymore.
They’ve succeeded. They’ve worn you down.
I swapped to pop and Debian.
I refuse to have Google and Microsoft tactics used against me in the Linux world, so Ubuntu are out for me.
I mean it’s on a laptop that’s plugged into my stereo and streams Spotify and my music collection. On my main system I don’t use snaps but for that particular one I wanted kubuntu and Spotify and that was basically it. But I guess you are right about them wearing me down.
Just use the flatpak versions instead. I’ve been using the spotify flatpak for years now and the firefox flatpak for a few week since switching to debian (they package firefox esr which I refuse to use)
