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.

    • sourov@lemm.eeOP
      61·
      2 months ago

      My problem is not like that. 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.

      • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
        4·
        2 months ago

        Yes, that’s the exact issue. Ubuntu does that for years. You use apt to install deb, but Ubuntu installs silently the Snap version. The article I linked was talking about that almost 4 years ago and talks about how to stop that. It’s an old issue not many are aware off.

  • zod000@lemmy.ml
    28·
    2 months ago

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

  • Yozul@beehaw.org
    11·
    2 months 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.

      • Yozul@beehaw.org
        1·
        2 months ago

        It’s not as up to date as other rolling releases, unlike stable it doesn’t get security patches right away, it gets frozen for months during the switch from one stable to the next, and in my fairly limited experience it just has more bugs. It’s not bad, but it’s a testing branch. It’s not intended as a daily driver, and it shows.

  • 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬@lemmy.ml
    111·
    2 months 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.

    • Mubelotix@jlai.lu
      22·
      2 months ago

      Or you can just remove snap. I have been running a up-to-date snap-free ubuntu for 2 years

      • caseyweederman@lemmy.ca
        2·
        2 months ago

        And pin other repos so Ubuntu doesn’t replace it. And change the apt.conf rules that alias out apt install commands for the snap install equivalent. And whatever the countermeasure is for the next sneaky ploy they put into action.

      • SatanClaus@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        I like my operating system to work for me not against me. So no. I’ll just never use their shitty spin of Linux and rely on someone that makes a quality distro. Not one that forced it’s users to use their pile of shit proprietary nonsense.

  • Decker108@lemmy.ml
    33·
    2 months ago

    You could compile it from source yourself, and you won’t even have to worry about packaging and package managers.

  • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
    14·
    2 months ago

    Yup. They also did this with Docker, and it broke my setup (and was a bitch to debug).

    This was a couple of years ago, and I haven’t used Ubuntu unless absolutely necessary (and then usually in a container).

  • Papamousse@beehaw.org
    2·
    2 months ago

    One of the reason I moved to MX Linux, it is Debian based, always latest everything, like 6.12.11 kernel, my FF just got updated to 135.0, and it is no systemd, no flatpak, no snap, everything is DEB, and stable.

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
      512·
      2 months ago

      From a security standpoint? Not even close. From a software-release validation requirement, not even in the same galaxy. If they look the same, it’s only due to Clarke’s law.

      • juipeltje@lemmy.world
        10·
        2 months ago

        It’s a joke based of the fact that when you type apt install firefox on ubuntu, it will install the snap instead of the deb package, which is what you would expect when you use apt to install something.

        • IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org
          25·
          2 months ago

          That is not the same thing as “snap and apt Firefox are the same”. They just hijacked apt to force snap in.

          • Morphit @feddit.uk
            11·
            2 months ago

            So both commands do the same thing… right? I’m not saying snap and apt are the same in general.

            • IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org
              4·
              2 months ago

              Yeah for sure, I read your comment as excusing canonical screwing with user intent but I see that’s not what you meant.

              • Morphit @feddit.uk
                2·
                2 months ago

                Yeah, I really dislike snap and have puppet clean it out and add in the real mozilla repo for me. If I wanted sandboxed apps I’d probably look at flatpak but I think there’s still work to be done there also.

          • Baaahb@feddit.nlEnglish
            5·
            2 months ago

            You are missing the attribution. The person you are replying to is making a joke that Canonical says they are the same, not that they are actually the same.

            • Morphit @feddit.uk
              1·
              2 months ago

              Well, yes, except Canonical have made them actually do the same thing in the case of Firefox. I’m not aware of any other packages that have the deb install just run the snap install.

                • Morphit @feddit.uk
                  1·
                  2 months ago

                  Yup, apt install chromium-browser calls snap install chromium. Looks like thunderbird is the same. There’s a fwupd-snap deb but fwupd seems to be the default.

              • Baaahb@feddit.nlEnglish
                2·
                2 months ago

                Yep, I am agreeing with you. The statement was never snap and deb are identical, its that canonical is making them do identical things.

                • Morphit @feddit.uk
                  1·
                  2 months ago

                  Yeah, I just liked that bit of the meme. In the prank the meme is based on, they really are the same.

      • Baaahb@feddit.nlEnglish
        231·
        2 months ago

        You are missing the attribution. The person you are replying to is making a joke that Canonical says they are the same, not that they are actually the same.

        • hedgehog@ttrpg.network
          8·
          2 months ago

          Clearly they’re cosplaying as a Canonical engineer whose internal explanation and pleas for them to not take this approach fell upon deaf ears /j

    • beeng@discuss.tchncs.de
      6·
      2 months 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
        2·
        2 months 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.

        • beeng@discuss.tchncs.de
          2·
          2 months 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?

          • caseyweederman@lemmy.ca
            1·
            2 months ago

            You can get Gnome on Fedora. It won’t have Apt.
            Packages will have a different naming scheme based on the maintainers’ preferences, even between Debian and Ubuntu (though those are usually pretty minor).
            Your muscle memory is gonna trip you up for a while though.

        • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.comEnglish
          4·
          2 months 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.

          @[email protected] this is for you, too.

          • N.E.P.T.R@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            2·
            2 months 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
              2·
              2 months 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
                2·
                2 months 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
                  1·
                  2 months 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.

    • ritchie@lemmy.world
      6·
      2 months 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.

  • TxTechnician@lemmy.ml
    101·
    2 months ago

    I battled that for about a year and then ditched Debian based diatros altogether.

    OpenSUSE ftw

    • Noble Bacon@lemmy.mlPortuguês
      8·
      2 months ago

      You could have gone pure Debian. There are no snap shenanigans over there :)

      OpenSuse is also a great pick tho!

    • sourov@lemm.eeOP
      61·
      2 months 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
        11·
        2 months 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
          4·
          2 months 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
        32·
        2 months 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
          5·
          2 months 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.

    • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      24·
      2 months 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
        8·
        2 months 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
          4·
          2 months 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
            3·
            2 months 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.