Linux

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

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

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

https://www.debian.org/download

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

If you don't embrace snaps just don't use Ubuntu.

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.

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

yay! another company damaging itself!

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.)

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.

What's up with the hate on snaps, again, please anyone?

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).

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.

Ubuntu being Ubloatu.

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

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?

Thanks for the warning. I’ll keep my eyes open. Perhaps it’s time to start distro-hopping.