After creating a fresh installation of Ubuntu 24.04, I installed DEB Firefox from APT by following Mozilla’s instructions from here. But I noticed that it was secretly replaced with Snap Firefox. I was able to verify this by checking the About Firefox page. This is the third time I noticed this.

  • Yozul@beehaw.org
    0·
    1 month ago

    The whole apt ecosystem is kind of a mess, if you ask me. Debian stable updates on archeological timescales, Debian testing just isn’t a very good rolling release disto, you’re better off with Arch or OpenSuse Tumbleweed if you want to actually use a rolling release as a daily driver, Ubuntu is a mess of annoying corporate decisions I hate from Canonical, and all the others are all just kind of disjointed in how they try to fix those issues.

    My personal favorite is Mint. They just try to make Ubuntu with some classic, boring desktop design and minus the more controversial Canonical decisions, but obviously that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. I dunno, there is no perfect distro, you just have to find the one that for you it takes the least amount of effort to fix. Ubuntu really just kind of makes it a pain in the butt to fix all their weirdness though.

    • sourov@lemm.eeOP
      0·
      1 month ago

      I’m aware that when the user runs(without adding Mozilla’s apt repository),

      sudo apt install firefox

      the snap version of Firefox is installed. But I never heard that, though APT is configured to install Firefox from Mozilla’s repository, the DEB version will be uninstalled and the Snap version will be installed.

      • caseyweederman@lemmy.ca
        0·
        1 month ago

        Firefox now has instructions on their “Debian-based” install section about pinning their repo over Canonical’s so that doesn’t happen.

        Because you’re right, Canonical does think so highly of their product that they will constantly attempt to undermine other options against your will.

      • Eugenia@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        1 month ago

        Yes, this is known. They do the same for Chromium. If you want a browser from ubuntu, it’s going to be a snap.

        • Morphit @feddit.uk
          0·
          1 month ago

          w3m is a proper deb 😛

          Looks like only firefox, chromium-browser and thunderbird are these dummy transitional packages. There’s a fwupd-snap, but the default fwupd is a full deb.

    • typhoon@lemmy.world
      0·
      1 month ago

      No defending Ubuntu but wasn’t this clarified to be Mozilla’s deploying it via Snap and requesting to remove the apt installation?

  • Revan343@lemmy.ca
    0·
    1 month ago

    I suggest Mint or straight Debian. I prefer Mint for anything graphical, Debian for headless

  • Mwa@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    They have been doing this for a while.

    Would recommend you to stick to MX,Mint or if you care only about stability and not Updates debian.

  • Lemmchen@feddit.org
    0·
    1 month ago

    Have you correctly set your apt preferences? I didn’t have any issues anymore since I’ve done that.

  • daggermoon@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 month ago

    Is KDE Neon still broken? For awhile it was the only Ubuntu based distro I’d recommend. Yes, I know about Mint but no HDR or Wayland.

    • MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      I’m reasonably happy with XFCE/Xubuntu - it’s not as slick of a desktop as KDE or Gnome, and in some ways that’s a great thing.

  • beeng@discuss.tchncs.de
    0·
    1 month ago

    My work cannot manage permissions well so I cannot remove snap Firefox cos its in use by another user.

    Meanwhile current snap version of Firefox is crashing on my profile

  • notabot@lemm.ee
    0·
    1 month ago

    I suspect that what’s happened is you installed the apt version, then at some point upgraded it and there was a version in the main repo that had a higher version number and installed the snap version. If two repositories both have a package with the same name, and no other rules in place, the higher version number wins.

    If that is the case, you need to pin the firefox package to the mozilla repository. You can find more details here: https://wiki.debian.org/AptConfiguration

    • ritchie@lemmy.world
      0·
      1 month ago

      I got a notification about it when I upgraded from 20.04 LTS that they will only serve it as a snap package.

    • beeng@discuss.tchncs.de
      0·
      1 month ago

      I… I… I don’t know why I haven’t done that myself. (Am now on NixOS btw) but for work maybe I ask for Debian cloud box.

      • N.E.P.T.R@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        0·
        1 month ago

        For work, you could also try Fedora Workstation or Linux Mint Debian Edition. Debian is pretty barebones, but if that isnt a bother then do whatever.

        • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.comEnglish
          0·
          1 month ago

          It’s not barebones. I use it as my main desktop and barely notice any difference from Ubuntu, it has every package I’ve ever needed. I think that mentality of Debian being “bare” is outdated.

          @beeng@discuss.tchncs.de this is for you, too.

          • N.E.P.T.R@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            0·
            1 month ago

            I had a friend jump ship from Windows and they said that Debian felt barebones. I personally dont have any problem with it, I use it all the time for VMs, server, and I used to main it. I still think it is missing a lot of user-friendly small things that i never noticed on my own because I am very comfortable with Linux.

            • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.comEnglish
              0·
              1 month ago

              They do install less by default, but I’d love to pick their brain to understand what they meant. Oh well ¯_(ツ)_/¯

              • N.E.P.T.R@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
                0·
                1 month ago

                Linux just isnt transparent about some things. Beginners most have problems when they use a GUI tool and then have to still edit a file. Like dirt example, adding a new drive using GUI disk utility and then sometime in the future disconnecting the drive and being forced into emergency mode.

                • caseyweederman@lemmy.ca
                  0·
                  1 month ago

                  I’d suggest the KDE flavor of Debian, then. Its settings manager is divine, and its software management platform ties every other package management system in (apt/dpkg for Debian, yum for Redhat, pacman for Arch, plus flatpak, nixpkg, and even snaps if you absolutely must). By default starting in Plasma 6.0.

                  More to @fmstrat’s point, and to suggest a possible cause your friend had that impression: if you install the Minimal flavor of any distro, you’re going to get a minimal experience.

        • beeng@discuss.tchncs.de
          0·
          1 month ago

          I like gnome, but i guess i could look at fedora.

          I would like to stay with apt as package manager so the package names stay the same to what I know, or is yum/dnf/etc gonna use the same for most?

    • ritchie@lemmy.world
      0·
      1 month ago

      I must have hit that 1% last time. I assembled a new PC, wanted to install debian and could not get a login screen after installation. At that point I wanted something that just works. I installed Xubuntu and had the machine ready right away.

  • zod000@lemmy.ml
    0·
    1 month ago

    Definitely not you, they absolutely do this with snaps and have for a while. This was the main reason I stopped using Ubuntu.

  • 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬@lemmy.ml
    0·
    1 month ago

    Ubuntu uses Snap as first-class method to install software. So if a piece of software is available as DEB or Snap, Ubuntu will always use Snap.

    • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      But it’s not obvious either. When I say ‘apt install firefox’, specially after adding their repository to sources.list, I’d expect to get a .deb from mozilla. Silently overriding my commands rubs me in a very wrong way.

      • BluescreenOfDeath@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        1 month ago

        It takes a little more than just adding a different repository to your package manager, you have to tell apt which to prefer:

        echo ’
        Package: *
        Pin: origin packages.mozilla.org
        Pin-Priority: 1000

        Package: firefox*
        Pin: release o=Ubuntu
        Pin-Priority: -1’ | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/mozilla

        • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          0·
          1 month ago

          True, but more often than not mozilla should have newer packages on their repository than any distribution. And the main problem still is that Ubuntu changed apt and threw snap in to the mix where it doesn’t belong.

          • BluescreenOfDeath@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            1 month ago

            I’m not disagreeing with anything you’ve said?

            I’m saying that just adding Mozilla’s PPA to your sources won’t change apt’s behavior when installing Firefox unless you tell apt to prefer the package offered by the Mozilla PPA.

            As someone who uses Kubuntu as a daily driver, I’m well aware of the snap drama and have worked around it using the method I pasted above.

            Even though it’s an underhanded move by Cannonical, I’m still glad the OS is open source since it makes the workaround so trivial.

    • sourov@lemm.eeOP
      0·
      1 month ago

      Since when this became a known thing? I’m aware that the snap version is installed when the user is trying to install the deb version of Firefox by running,

      sudo apt install firefox

      But I never heard that the installed DEB version of Firefox is replaced by Snap version of Firefox.

      • Routhinator@startrek.websiteEnglish
        0·
        1 month ago

        The deb version is a pointer to the snap in their repos. Nothings being replaced, it no longer exists. The deb version of Firefox in Ubuntu repos is a wrapper that installs snap and has no binaries in it. Has been for 3 years or so.

        • JuxtaposedJaguar@lemmy.ml
          0·
          1 month ago

          It’s more than that. Ubuntu copies the Debian repos and then applies their own changes on top. Debian has a native (DEB) Firefox package, so Ubuntu specifically has to remove it for every new version.

      • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 month ago

        Well then you haven’t been following it closely. As someone else said, the reason is simple: the Snap version is more recent (like it or not) and in Ubuntu apt is configured to take into account Snap packages.

        • Morphit @feddit.uk
          0·
          1 month ago

          Canonical added an epoch prefix to the firefox version number. Because that epoch (1) is higher than the implicit default (0), the official ubuntu dummy package is always considered to be a higher version than the official Mozilla package. apt doesn’t look at snap packages, it installs the deb, but the ubuntu deb just runs snap install firefox and basically nothing else.