12 ms·

Firefox now only available via snap on Ubuntu

86 points by sm4rk0 5y ago

sm4rk0 5y ago
> Canonical and Mozilla are working together to make the firefox snap the only supported package in Ubuntu, thus deprecating the deb package in the archive. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/1962021 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/19620...
- codethief 5y ago
  Also in that thread: > This was ultimately Mozilla's decision as part of the redistribution agreement. Mozilla could have just pulled it from being redistributed at all. This was the only way they were willing to allow Firefox to be redistributed as part of Ubuntu. which seems at least odd (if not contradictory), given that Mozilla and Linux Mint have partnered to distribute Firefox as deb package, compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30777066 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30777066 .
jjgreen 5y ago
Euch, so what happens in Mint/Ubuntu which has so-far avoided this snap nastiness?
- fransje26 5y ago
  Nothing will change for Mint. They are committed to continue distributing Firefox as a .deb package, following upstream as closely as possible. https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4244 https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4244
nicolaslem 5y ago
For me the best way to run Firefox on Debian based system is to download the compiled tar and extract it somewhere in my home dir. This way I get update through Firefox itself (like on Windows/MacOS).
- pabs3 5y ago
  If you are downloading the tarball from Mozilla, then you are affected by this telemetry: https://www.ghacks.net/2022/03/17/each-firefox-download-has-a-unique-identifier/ https://www.ghacks.net/2022/03/17/each-firefox-download-has-...
  - xcdzvyn 5y ago
    I don't think that's the case; the telemetry is part of the installer, not the installed binary (that the tarball would contain)
    - pabs3 5y ago
      The article says the download id is transmitted to Mozilla on first run, so it must be part of the installed binary? However, the article does say the Mozilla FTP site doesn't have the download id.
- rohanrd-xyz 5y ago
  Yeah it can. The only problem is my home directory is not on SSD and it takes long time to load Firefox from regular HDD.
  - OscarCunningham 5y ago
    I believe the 'proper' place to install it would be /opt. You can then give yourself edit permissions for the firefox directory so that firefox is capable of upgrading itself when you run it.
    - dhimes 5y ago
      Yep- this. And put a symlink to it. Then you can quickly switch versions to nightly or whatever you need.
- watchdogtimer 5y ago
  Unfortunately, I don't think this is an option on aarch64 Linux.
lioeters 5y ago
Related: How to Fix Firefox Crashes on Ubuntu 21.10+ https://www.mikekasberg.com/blog/2022/03/21/how-to-fix-firefox-crashes-on-ubuntu-21-10.html https://www.mikekasberg.com/blog/2022/03/21/how-to-fix-firef... > ..The snap version of Firefox currently suffers from several problems that can lead to a bad user experience, including crashes. Their recommendation is to backup everything (bookmarks, settings), remove the snap, and install via apt or self-contained zip.
New_California 5y ago
Very bad, snap is crap.
philliphaydon 5y ago
I don’t think I’ll ever use ubuntu again. The continued forcing of snap is killing it for me.
- jsilence 5y ago
  Same here. Strongly eyeing NixOS and patiently awaiting real work experience from a co-worker who already did the plunge.
  - kkfx 5y ago
    Time ago, when OpenSolaris dead I've switched to Ubuntu, until Unity (WM) was there it was good enough, after they took "the enterprise path", I'm on NixOS, there are a bit of annoyances to run unpackaged binaries but the rest work like a charm AND it's fully reproducible AND creating a custom iso is just the config + a oneliner, so deploy a personal desktop/homeserver is as easy as deploy in an enterprise automated infra without the burden of it. The nix language is indigestible for me, so I eye Guix System but so far Guix does not have things I like/need so still on NixOS in a calm state: systems updated, automated, reproducible without thinking and babysitting them continuously.
  - alekun 5y ago
    I got interested in NixOS after watching https://youtu.be/LA8KF9Fs2sk https://youtu.be/LA8KF9Fs2sk and https://youtu.be/ubDMLoWz76U https://youtu.be/ubDMLoWz76U I use fedora since long time and so far is quite stable without any non-sense
  - hiimshort 5y ago
    I jumped in several months ago and haven't really regretted it. The caveat being that you have to be okay with learning Nix (the language), debugging with only arcane error messages to go off of, and reading a lot of the config source because documentation is vast but shallow. If you feel like you're willing to make the tradeoff, then it is a blast and you'll be surprised you ever lived without Nix. In case you want some inspiration or to take an existing config and run, feel free to take a peek at or use mine: https://github.com/jakehamilton/config https://github.com/jakehamilton/config
ale42 5y ago
... on our systems we removed snapd on purpose, because we only have problems with it (we have NFS-mounted homes, and many snap packages don't work in this configuration)... now Firefox on snap doesn't sound good for us.
- spaniard89277 5y ago
  Snap gives all kind of headaches. I remember trying VSCode and I had problems working with files normally. I asked for help and I got quite a bit of backlash because I didn't wan't to deal with another layer of configuring a system just to access to my local files, and even after that you won't get the same experience. But apparently I'm some bastard n00b that does not care about security enough! Can you imagine trying to access your files from your editor like you've been doing for decades? This guy doesn't get it! Apparently flatpak et al have the same problems. In my case, I'm not sure where to switch. I want easy of use, I don't really enjoy meddling with the OS. I use Xubuntu because it works better out of the box for me, but if I have to deal with this, I'm not interested.
  - vurpo 5y ago
    I don't know what kind of hoops Snap require to access files. Flatpak, however, has a pretty simple system for a fully sandboxed app to open a file or a directory: it just opens a file or directory picker, you pick a file or directory, and the app gets access to that file or directory without getting access to anything outside what you picked. Behind the scenes this is done via the XDG Portal system, but that's irrelevant to the end user who only sees a normal file open dialog. Then for apps that have dotfile-type directories where you can put config files and other stuff, those simply exist in app-specific directories under .var in your home directory, so they're not difficult to find either.
    - rlpb 5y ago
      Snaps use exactly the same system with the same underlying APIs. An app that uses XDG Portals will work seamlessly when packaged as a snap, too.
    - 5y ago
tannhaeuser 5y ago
I'll be the first one to moan that browsers have become way too complex beasts. What's left of the idea that a browser is a (moderately complex) commodity item to view docs on the web bundled with your O/S of choice? Now we must update our browsers more frequently than the fscking web pages. I understand why they do it - as browsers have become kitchen sinks, their API surface has become enormous. But at the same time, the stuff you actually want to read on the web is really getting few and far between, making constant x GiB browser updates uneconomical from an information theory standpoint, so to speak. Especially with FF updates in the habit to require restarts (why?) at the worst possible points in time for me.
- sreevisakh 5y ago
  The people you should be blaming are the ones who decide the web standards. The browsers are bloated and updated frequently because the web standards are bloated and updated frequently. That also killed off many alternative implementations. I'm sure that the requirements of the web platforms can be met without so many APIs and formats. They ruined a completely functional platform.
jeffparsons 5y ago
I've been hearing good things about modern Fedora as an alternative "boring" operating system. Maybe now is the time to make the switch.
- smackeyacky 5y ago
  More obvious choice for an Ubuntu user would be Debian or another direct debian derivative wouldn't it?
  - sph 5y ago
    Pretty much all package managers work the same. Learning dnf when you know apt isn't that big of a deal.
  - richardfey 5y ago
    I would go for Debian or Gentoo. Or use official PPAs for all the snaps that Canonical is forcing on users.
    - sm4rk0 5y ago
      Not sure official Mozilla PPA is going to ship debs.
      - smackeyacky 5y ago
        Makes it easy then, simply ignore Mozilla. It's not like there are no alternatives.
  - greatgib 5y ago
    I would highly recommend Linux Mint as an alternative. (Cinnamon has my preference) So far they are still kind of corporate free in the spirit of doing a desktop distribution keeping things as a normal or dev user would expect without pushing stupid changes in order to advance a corporate agenda. Also, they are currently based on Ubuntu that they debloat but there is a debian based variant (LMDE) that show future perspectives if Ubuntu become not really usable anymore as a base in the future.
NGRhodes 5y ago
Conversely Linux Mint has agreed for Mozilla to provide debs directly for Mint. https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4244 https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4244
- account42 5y ago
  Good that I am not using Mint - I prefer to have a real packager who cares about my interests between Mozilla and my Firefox install.
  - gs17 5y ago
    You can use the snap for Firefox in Mint, it's just not the default.
    - NGRhodes 5y ago
      The Firefox snap is also maintained by Mozilla.
compsciphd 5y ago
I'll take a counter approach. it makes sense to install firefox via snap. firefox breaks if you overwrite its files. therefore installing "normall" via dpkg is bad while firefox is in use (especially on a multi user system). running via a container ensures that the existing running processes don't break while allowing you to upgrade and have any new instance get the new version. there are reasons to dislike snap, but the usage of containers (even as simply a packaging mechanism, not any form of isolation) can improve user experience.
- antpls 5y ago
  Same, I have been using snap to run Firefox and Chromium for about more than a year (personal usage, not professional), and rarely had issues. I had one issue regarding a feature like WebGL or a file picker, but it was solved after 5 minutes of googling, and it was about running a single command line to give more permissions to the snap package. This way of distribution works quite well for big applications with many dependencies that you want to be automatically updated without fear of breaking some shared libraries. I also feels more confident trying new applications with snap. I know I can easily install different versions and uninstall them without breaking the system.
AussieWog93 5y ago
There's a very strong reaction here from users, but overall if more software became snap-only (or FlatPak-only, or anything-only), it would solve one of Linux's biggest pain points as a software developer. MSI on Windows is completely fucked, PKG on Mac has a few footguns, but at least they're universal, decades-old standards supported by mature tooling. You release an MSI/PKG, and you're done. Works on every Windows/Mac system, no issues. On Linux, an OS with 3% market share, there are more competing standards to count: Deb, RPM, snap, FlatPak, AUR, AppImage and probably a dozen other semi-popular ones. Every individual user has their opinion (and they'll voice it!) as to which standard is the best. At best, this leads to God knows how many man-hours of duplicated work packaging and QAing. At worst, it leads to the dev abandoning the thought of Linux altogether. Linux on Desktop simply can't move forward by continued bike-shedding over frankly irrelevant details. Even if the only rationale for a standard is "Because Mike Shuttleworth said so, and he got a phone call from Mandela in space", that's a massive improvement over the current status quo.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- robert_foss 5y ago
  Snap is not a standard, and never will be (RedHat will always ship flatpak for example). So Snap is no universal solution. At the same time snap packages have serious downsides for end users.
  - jckahn 5y ago
    I think this comment demonstrates the parent’s point.
    - robert_foss 5y ago
      Well, no. The parent point was that Snap is a way out of this software packaging quagmire, but I am saying that Snap will never unify the linux distros.
aero-glide2 5y ago
Snap/flatpack is one of the best things to happen to Linux desktop. I no longer have to worry about messed up installs and missing dependencies.
- stewbrew 5y ago
  Either snap or flatpack is the best thing. Both are just a waste of time and space.
- rhamzeh 5y ago
  I love flatpak. I consider snap to be just bloatware I have to wipe of my system on installation. Hopefully soon I'll move off Ubuntu to greener pastures. Fedora Silverlight seems particularly intriguing.
encryptluks2 5y ago
Some of the best projects come from Ubuntu employees... after they quit from the toxic culture and can finally think for themselves.
GNOMES 5y ago
Biggest grip with Snaps is the longer start times. Otherwise I personally enjoy the auto updating of my applications.
kkfx 5y ago
Another good reason to ditch a distro once honest, well done, but things change, now just a distro that push commercial crap. It's not a bold statement, snap, flatpack, appimage exists ONLY for commercial purposes. The FLOSS world works with - devs :: who write and publish code without the need to support any specific distro, packaging etc, many also package for their own favorite distro but that's a mere choice, many others just manually build their own code to have is hyper-fresh; - packagers :: who package "upstream" code, some are distro core developers who package system things, others more or less casual packagers who package various software they use/need/like. They all provide patches as needed, ideas, well done bugreports to devs, they are not "a burden" but the core of the model, the ones who provide quality testing and reporting to devs, something no end-users do without a tremendous background noise, something no commercial software devs can get, the key to hi quality of FLOSS; - generic users :: who profit from a complete distro, the one that fist their need most, offering casual bugreports, ideas, background noise as any casual user do, but filtered by distro community itself and distro packager the best kind of "data lake" that matched to packages form the best kind of automated expert system; "modern" app-only packages serve a sole purpose: cut the packagers, cut off the distro variety pushing distros to mere cargo ship of apps, well separating "code producer" to "customers", something harmful for FLOSS but vital for commerce, the sole way a proprietary software house to stay afloat without the need to give code to a community, without the need of a community that help, of course, but also demand and pretend useful features and not anti-users lock-in. IMVHO FSF should write a formal statements: supporting those limited and limiting (they can't work at system level) package systems means supporting commercial crap against FLOSS so distro who choose them must be considered Troy Horses in the FLOSS land. Unfortunately FSF receive too many funds by some interested party so I doubt that happen and that's another good reason to discuss the actual FLOSS sorry state reviving classic models from usenet to email-based development, modernized in UI/frontends terms for young devs, with modern video-tutorials etc, but pushed as much as possible to teach people the FLOSS model not the commercial model in disguise.
- vurpo 5y ago
  That's a lot of text without giving any motivation for your main point. What makes an app package created by the app developer more "commercial" and anti-FOSS than an app package created by a distro-specific packager? What's the difference between an RPM package and a Flatpak package? Proprietary software and FOSS software both get distributed in both kinds of packages. In short: what are you talking about?
branon 5y ago
I don't like this at all. The Firefox snap has really bad crashing issues, and the filesystem sandbox makes using the file picker confusing especially for my nontechnical family members. I tried using the snap, I really gave it an honest attempt, and it stinks. The final straw was when removing and reinstalling the snap deleted my Firefox profile. That was really unacceptable. Removing Firefox via apt doesn't wipe out ~/.mozilla Snapd is now removed and pinned with negative priority on my Ubuntu systems so it will never be installed. I'd like to find a PPA that builds vanilla Firefox but so far I've only come across ESR and Beta. I've considered switching to Chromium over this nonsense though I'll try running tarball Firefox first, I didn't realize it could update itself. Maybe Librewolf is an option too.
- rando832 5y ago
  Try abrowser from the Trisquel apt repo. It is a firefox rebuild with a few tweaks for privacy.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
matthewmacleod 5y ago
I generally try to keep a pretty open mind about new approaches to traditional systems, and I think it's honestly pretty obvious that there is scope for a whole new approach to distributing applications on Linux platforms. All of that said, snaps are unfortunately not a good solution. The implementation sucks, the tooling sucks, the distribution channels suck. Ubuntu Core is an abomination. The lack of ability to control updates or publish a private repository are basically unforgivable and obvious manipulations of the platform. I don't think it's possible to say too many bad things about how bad the ecosystem is generally and how poorly Canonical have behaved. The whole situation honestly sucks, because there there really is a need for a comprehensive and open solution for the challenges that the "snap" ecosystem is trying to address. All it's currently managing to do is get me off of Ubuntu as quickly as possible, which is probably not the goal.
SahAssar 5y ago
Native messaging (which I use for my password manager) is broken. Screen sharing is broken. File picking/saving is hit and miss. It takes longer to start. My list of disks in bottom is riddled with random snap mounts. This is what made me switch off ubuntu.
- sm4rk0 5y ago
  Whoa! That's enough showstoppers for me. Where did you switch to? When Ubuntu dropped 32-bit support, I relatively easily switched my old 32-bit netbook from Ubuntu to Debian (by changing the sources and some manual fiddling with packages). OTOH, I'm using Fedora on my work computer, just for the fun of it, and I'm really satisfied with it.
  - SahAssar 5y ago
    I generally use arch now because I like tinkering. If I didn't I'd probably use either debian or fedora.
jckahn 5y ago
I get the hate against snaps. I tried really hard to give them a chance, but in my experience it’s a generally poor user experience. What I don’t get is why people feel like they need to leave Ubuntu because of it. Flatpak et al. work just as well on Ubuntu as anything else. Simply not using snaps on Ubuntu seems like a simpler solution than abandoning the distro altogether (assuming you don’t distro hop for fun).
- haunter 5y ago
  >What I don’t get is why people feel like they need to leave Ubuntu because of it Because how would you otherwise end up with 999 different Linux distros? I bet someone already working on the Ubuntu-sans-snap distro (if not already exist)
  - timbit42 5y ago
    It's called Linux Mint.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ppseafield 5y ago
  For me, snaps auto-update without my input, and apt will install snaps without telling you they're snaps. So my assumption that my computer only updates when I tell it to no longer holds.
- suyjuris 5y ago
  There is something to be said for leaving a platform if you do not like the direction it seems to be headed in, even if you could compensate for the issues in the short term. Otherwise you might sign up for years of incrementally increasing misery. Once Windows installed updates against their users' preference I switched my main desktop to Linux – this was a significant amount of work but has saved me a lot of frustration over the past years. Similarly, once I experienced UI stutter in Gnome and noticed that it moved towards Javascript, I switched to i3. Again, huge setup cost (e.g. I had to implement alt-tab behaviour myself), but things ran smoothly since.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
throwawaymanbot 5y ago
FrenchAmerican 5y ago
As long as LibreWolf isn't snap-only... so we should contribute to their effort by funding them, if we want them to last. "Pay your maintainers" should become the norm to all users of FLOSS. We must lobby our bosses to make regular donations to maintainers of the FOSS software used by the company. That's a purely rational business decision, not an ideological one.
- rhamzeh 5y ago
  The problem isn't Mozilla/Firefox in this case. It is Canonical/Ubuntu. Firefox on most other distro (debian based or otherwise) can be installed with the proper system package manager. Additionally Mozilla offers a flatpak version of Firefox which I strongly prefer over snap. It's just Canonical's disdain to anything not homegrown that's behind this move.
spyc 5y ago
One more reason to add to list "Why I recommend Debian over Ubuntu by now" (https://blog.hartwork.org/posts/why-i-recommend-debian-over-ubuntu-by-now/ https://blog.hartwork.org/posts/why-i-recommend-debian-over-...).
lproven 5y ago
I have not tried 22.04 yet, but it sounds like Ubuntuzilla may win some new users in the near future. https://sourceforge.net/p/ubuntuzilla/wiki/Main_Page/ https://sourceforge.net/p/ubuntuzilla/wiki/Main_Page/
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
robto 5y ago
I've been using NixOS for several years and one of the pain points was frequently updating software - the updates don't come out until the package definitions get updated. Last year I just started using Flatpak for those packages and it works a treat - plus, I can keep the proprietary, non-free software that I need out of my system config, which I like. Snap is a non-starter, and while I hope more software shows up properly, reproducibly packaged for Nix, Flatpak is the next best thing.
- sreevisakh 5y ago
  I really wish nix or guix had a flatpak export capability. Guix can already export several types of images like tarballs, docker images and squashfs images.
  - balancesoggy 5y ago
    Flatpak works on guix. Just guix install it and then run the Firefox or any flatpak as usual using flatpak run
    - sreevisakh 5y ago
      That's not what I meant. I wish for guix or nix to be a way to build flatpaks.
savant_penguin 5y ago
So it's time to learn to compile Firefox from source, got it
stuntkite 5y ago
Gross. Snap can be handy but I've had so many problems with it. I don't like it becoming the defacto. Ubuntu has been good to me for a while, but more and more it seems like I gotta go find my new home. Maybe in the woods... where I build my own linux inside a pachinko machine and it calculates the time of year when I need to start preparing for the long cold winter. My partner and my children are loving and we work pretty hard and we do our best to maintain Pachintix, but sometimes forget the old standby's need of a dusting and some oil on the worm gears. One year it meant we didn't save enough grain and our goats had an out of season extra birth, it got so cold so quick that the mothers died and we were only able to save one baby. The stew we ate through that sad, hard, cold winter was bitter... emotionally... and because the baby goats were so lean. Something that kept us going was Pachintix being able to very slowly render old Sierra games to a tube oscilloscope that was for timing engines in the 50s that I adapted to render the terminal. We would all be so thrilled when we could enter our just barely two commands every day so Buck Rodgers could escape that alien night club and tell some jokes about Star Trek. To fill the time at night, I would regale my children with tales of the old shows. How one time Data started dreaming and cut Troi up like a cake but it turned out it was all fine and I forgot why. To think, all this difficult bliss was started by just how much it sucked to use Snap.

86 points by sm4rk0 5y ago

> Canonical and Mozilla are working together to make the firefox snap the only supported package in Ubuntu, thus deprecating the deb package in the archive. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/1962021 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/19620...

codethief 5y ago
Also in that thread: > This was ultimately Mozilla's decision as part of the redistribution agreement. Mozilla could have just pulled it from being redistributed at all. This was the only way they were willing to allow Firefox to be redistributed as part of Ubuntu. which seems at least odd (if not contradictory), given that Mozilla and Linux Mint have partnered to distribute Firefox as deb package, compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30777066 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30777066 .

jjgreen 5y ago

Euch, so what happens in Mint/Ubuntu which has so-far avoided this snap nastiness?

fransje26 5y ago
Nothing will change for Mint. They are committed to continue distributing Firefox as a .deb package, following upstream as closely as possible. https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4244 https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4244

nicolaslem 5y ago

For me the best way to run Firefox on Debian based system is to download the compiled tar and extract it somewhere in my home dir. This way I get update through Firefox itself (like on Windows/MacOS).

pabs3 5y ago
If you are downloading the tarball from Mozilla, then you are affected by this telemetry: https://www.ghacks.net/2022/03/17/each-firefox-download-has-a-unique-identifier/ https://www.ghacks.net/2022/03/17/each-firefox-download-has-...
- xcdzvyn 5y ago
  I don't think that's the case; the telemetry is part of the installer, not the installed binary (that the tarball would contain)
  - pabs3 5y ago
    The article says the download id is transmitted to Mozilla on first run, so it must be part of the installed binary? However, the article does say the Mozilla FTP site doesn't have the download id.
rohanrd-xyz 5y ago
Yeah it can. The only problem is my home directory is not on SSD and it takes long time to load Firefox from regular HDD.
- OscarCunningham 5y ago
  I believe the 'proper' place to install it would be /opt. You can then give yourself edit permissions for the firefox directory so that firefox is capable of upgrading itself when you run it.
  - dhimes 5y ago
    Yep- this. And put a symlink to it. Then you can quickly switch versions to nightly or whatever you need.
watchdogtimer 5y ago
Unfortunately, I don't think this is an option on aarch64 Linux.

lioeters 5y ago

Related: How to Fix Firefox Crashes on Ubuntu 21.10+ https://www.mikekasberg.com/blog/2022/03/21/how-to-fix-firefox-crashes-on-ubuntu-21-10.html https://www.mikekasberg.com/blog/2022/03/21/how-to-fix-firef... > ..The snap version of Firefox currently suffers from several problems that can lead to a bad user experience, including crashes. Their recommendation is to backup everything (bookmarks, settings), remove the snap, and install via apt or self-contained zip.

New_California 5y ago

Very bad, snap is crap.

philliphaydon 5y ago

I don’t think I’ll ever use ubuntu again. The continued forcing of snap is killing it for me.

jsilence 5y ago
Same here. Strongly eyeing NixOS and patiently awaiting real work experience from a co-worker who already did the plunge.
- kkfx 5y ago
  Time ago, when OpenSolaris dead I've switched to Ubuntu, until Unity (WM) was there it was good enough, after they took "the enterprise path", I'm on NixOS, there are a bit of annoyances to run unpackaged binaries but the rest work like a charm AND it's fully reproducible AND creating a custom iso is just the config + a oneliner, so deploy a personal desktop/homeserver is as easy as deploy in an enterprise automated infra without the burden of it. The nix language is indigestible for me, so I eye Guix System but so far Guix does not have things I like/need so still on NixOS in a calm state: systems updated, automated, reproducible without thinking and babysitting them continuously.
- alekun 5y ago
  I got interested in NixOS after watching https://youtu.be/LA8KF9Fs2sk https://youtu.be/LA8KF9Fs2sk and https://youtu.be/ubDMLoWz76U https://youtu.be/ubDMLoWz76U I use fedora since long time and so far is quite stable without any non-sense
- hiimshort 5y ago
  I jumped in several months ago and haven't really regretted it. The caveat being that you have to be okay with learning Nix (the language), debugging with only arcane error messages to go off of, and reading a lot of the config source because documentation is vast but shallow. If you feel like you're willing to make the tradeoff, then it is a blast and you'll be surprised you ever lived without Nix. In case you want some inspiration or to take an existing config and run, feel free to take a peek at or use mine: https://github.com/jakehamilton/config https://github.com/jakehamilton/config

ale42 5y ago

... on our systems we removed snapd on purpose, because we only have problems with it (we have NFS-mounted homes, and many snap packages don't work in this configuration)... now Firefox on snap doesn't sound good for us.

spaniard89277 5y ago
Snap gives all kind of headaches. I remember trying VSCode and I had problems working with files normally. I asked for help and I got quite a bit of backlash because I didn't wan't to deal with another layer of configuring a system just to access to my local files, and even after that you won't get the same experience. But apparently I'm some bastard n00b that does not care about security enough! Can you imagine trying to access your files from your editor like you've been doing for decades? This guy doesn't get it! Apparently flatpak et al have the same problems. In my case, I'm not sure where to switch. I want easy of use, I don't really enjoy meddling with the OS. I use Xubuntu because it works better out of the box for me, but if I have to deal with this, I'm not interested.
- vurpo 5y ago
  I don't know what kind of hoops Snap require to access files. Flatpak, however, has a pretty simple system for a fully sandboxed app to open a file or a directory: it just opens a file or directory picker, you pick a file or directory, and the app gets access to that file or directory without getting access to anything outside what you picked. Behind the scenes this is done via the XDG Portal system, but that's irrelevant to the end user who only sees a normal file open dialog. Then for apps that have dotfile-type directories where you can put config files and other stuff, those simply exist in app-specific directories under .var in your home directory, so they're not difficult to find either.
  - rlpb 5y ago
    Snaps use exactly the same system with the same underlying APIs. An app that uses XDG Portals will work seamlessly when packaged as a snap, too.
  - 5y ago

tannhaeuser 5y ago

I'll be the first one to moan that browsers have become way too complex beasts. What's left of the idea that a browser is a (moderately complex) commodity item to view docs on the web bundled with your O/S of choice? Now we must update our browsers more frequently than the fscking web pages. I understand why they do it - as browsers have become kitchen sinks, their API surface has become enormous. But at the same time, the stuff you actually want to read on the web is really getting few and far between, making constant x GiB browser updates uneconomical from an information theory standpoint, so to speak. Especially with FF updates in the habit to require restarts (why?) at the worst possible points in time for me.

sreevisakh 5y ago
The people you should be blaming are the ones who decide the web standards. The browsers are bloated and updated frequently because the web standards are bloated and updated frequently. That also killed off many alternative implementations. I'm sure that the requirements of the web platforms can be met without so many APIs and formats. They ruined a completely functional platform.

jeffparsons 5y ago

I've been hearing good things about modern Fedora as an alternative "boring" operating system. Maybe now is the time to make the switch.

smackeyacky 5y ago
More obvious choice for an Ubuntu user would be Debian or another direct debian derivative wouldn't it?
- sph 5y ago
  Pretty much all package managers work the same. Learning dnf when you know apt isn't that big of a deal.
- richardfey 5y ago
  I would go for Debian or Gentoo. Or use official PPAs for all the snaps that Canonical is forcing on users.
  - sm4rk0 5y ago
    Not sure official Mozilla PPA is going to ship debs.
    - smackeyacky 5y ago
      Makes it easy then, simply ignore Mozilla. It's not like there are no alternatives.
- greatgib 5y ago
  I would highly recommend Linux Mint as an alternative. (Cinnamon has my preference) So far they are still kind of corporate free in the spirit of doing a desktop distribution keeping things as a normal or dev user would expect without pushing stupid changes in order to advance a corporate agenda. Also, they are currently based on Ubuntu that they debloat but there is a debian based variant (LMDE) that show future perspectives if Ubuntu become not really usable anymore as a base in the future.

NGRhodes 5y ago

Conversely Linux Mint has agreed for Mozilla to provide debs directly for Mint. https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4244 https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4244

account42 5y ago
Good that I am not using Mint - I prefer to have a real packager who cares about my interests between Mozilla and my Firefox install.
- gs17 5y ago
  You can use the snap for Firefox in Mint, it's just not the default.
  - NGRhodes 5y ago
    The Firefox snap is also maintained by Mozilla.

compsciphd 5y ago

I'll take a counter approach. it makes sense to install firefox via snap. firefox breaks if you overwrite its files. therefore installing "normall" via dpkg is bad while firefox is in use (especially on a multi user system). running via a container ensures that the existing running processes don't break while allowing you to upgrade and have any new instance get the new version. there are reasons to dislike snap, but the usage of containers (even as simply a packaging mechanism, not any form of isolation) can improve user experience.

antpls 5y ago
Same, I have been using snap to run Firefox and Chromium for about more than a year (personal usage, not professional), and rarely had issues. I had one issue regarding a feature like WebGL or a file picker, but it was solved after 5 minutes of googling, and it was about running a single command line to give more permissions to the snap package. This way of distribution works quite well for big applications with many dependencies that you want to be automatically updated without fear of breaking some shared libraries. I also feels more confident trying new applications with snap. I know I can easily install different versions and uninstall them without breaking the system.

AussieWog93 5y ago

There's a very strong reaction here from users, but overall if more software became snap-only (or FlatPak-only, or anything-only), it would solve one of Linux's biggest pain points as a software developer. MSI on Windows is completely fucked, PKG on Mac has a few footguns, but at least they're universal, decades-old standards supported by mature tooling. You release an MSI/PKG, and you're done. Works on every Windows/Mac system, no issues. On Linux, an OS with 3% market share, there are more competing standards to count: Deb, RPM, snap, FlatPak, AUR, AppImage and probably a dozen other semi-popular ones. Every individual user has their opinion (and they'll voice it!) as to which standard is the best. At best, this leads to God knows how many man-hours of duplicated work packaging and QAing. At worst, it leads to the dev abandoning the thought of Linux altogether. Linux on Desktop simply can't move forward by continued bike-shedding over frankly irrelevant details. Even if the only rationale for a standard is "Because Mike Shuttleworth said so, and he got a phone call from Mandela in space", that's a massive improvement over the current status quo.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
robert_foss 5y ago
Snap is not a standard, and never will be (RedHat will always ship flatpak for example). So Snap is no universal solution. At the same time snap packages have serious downsides for end users.
- jckahn 5y ago
  I think this comment demonstrates the parent’s point.
  - robert_foss 5y ago
    Well, no. The parent point was that Snap is a way out of this software packaging quagmire, but I am saying that Snap will never unify the linux distros.

aero-glide2 5y ago

Snap/flatpack is one of the best things to happen to Linux desktop. I no longer have to worry about messed up installs and missing dependencies.

stewbrew 5y ago
Either snap or flatpack is the best thing. Both are just a waste of time and space.
rhamzeh 5y ago
I love flatpak. I consider snap to be just bloatware I have to wipe of my system on installation. Hopefully soon I'll move off Ubuntu to greener pastures. Fedora Silverlight seems particularly intriguing.

encryptluks2 5y ago

Some of the best projects come from Ubuntu employees... after they quit from the toxic culture and can finally think for themselves.

GNOMES 5y ago

Biggest grip with Snaps is the longer start times. Otherwise I personally enjoy the auto updating of my applications.

kkfx 5y ago

Another good reason to ditch a distro once honest, well done, but things change, now just a distro that push commercial crap. It's not a bold statement, snap, flatpack, appimage exists ONLY for commercial purposes. The FLOSS world works with - devs :: who write and publish code without the need to support any specific distro, packaging etc, many also package for their own favorite distro but that's a mere choice, many others just manually build their own code to have is hyper-fresh; - packagers :: who package "upstream" code, some are distro core developers who package system things, others more or less casual packagers who package various software they use/need/like. They all provide patches as needed, ideas, well done bugreports to devs, they are not "a burden" but the core of the model, the ones who provide quality testing and reporting to devs, something no end-users do without a tremendous background noise, something no commercial software devs can get, the key to hi quality of FLOSS; - generic users :: who profit from a complete distro, the one that fist their need most, offering casual bugreports, ideas, background noise as any casual user do, but filtered by distro community itself and distro packager the best kind of "data lake" that matched to packages form the best kind of automated expert system; "modern" app-only packages serve a sole purpose: cut the packagers, cut off the distro variety pushing distros to mere cargo ship of apps, well separating "code producer" to "customers", something harmful for FLOSS but vital for commerce, the sole way a proprietary software house to stay afloat without the need to give code to a community, without the need of a community that help, of course, but also demand and pretend useful features and not anti-users lock-in. IMVHO FSF should write a formal statements: supporting those limited and limiting (they can't work at system level) package systems means supporting commercial crap against FLOSS so distro who choose them must be considered Troy Horses in the FLOSS land. Unfortunately FSF receive too many funds by some interested party so I doubt that happen and that's another good reason to discuss the actual FLOSS sorry state reviving classic models from usenet to email-based development, modernized in UI/frontends terms for young devs, with modern video-tutorials etc, but pushed as much as possible to teach people the FLOSS model not the commercial model in disguise.

vurpo 5y ago
That's a lot of text without giving any motivation for your main point. What makes an app package created by the app developer more "commercial" and anti-FOSS than an app package created by a distro-specific packager? What's the difference between an RPM package and a Flatpak package? Proprietary software and FOSS software both get distributed in both kinds of packages. In short: what are you talking about?

branon 5y ago

I don't like this at all. The Firefox snap has really bad crashing issues, and the filesystem sandbox makes using the file picker confusing especially for my nontechnical family members. I tried using the snap, I really gave it an honest attempt, and it stinks. The final straw was when removing and reinstalling the snap deleted my Firefox profile. That was really unacceptable. Removing Firefox via apt doesn't wipe out ~/.mozilla Snapd is now removed and pinned with negative priority on my Ubuntu systems so it will never be installed. I'd like to find a PPA that builds vanilla Firefox but so far I've only come across ESR and Beta. I've considered switching to Chromium over this nonsense though I'll try running tarball Firefox first, I didn't realize it could update itself. Maybe Librewolf is an option too.

rando832 5y ago
Try abrowser from the Trisquel apt repo. It is a firefox rebuild with a few tweaks for privacy.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

matthewmacleod 5y ago

I generally try to keep a pretty open mind about new approaches to traditional systems, and I think it's honestly pretty obvious that there is scope for a whole new approach to distributing applications on Linux platforms. All of that said, snaps are unfortunately not a good solution. The implementation sucks, the tooling sucks, the distribution channels suck. Ubuntu Core is an abomination. The lack of ability to control updates or publish a private repository are basically unforgivable and obvious manipulations of the platform. I don't think it's possible to say too many bad things about how bad the ecosystem is generally and how poorly Canonical have behaved. The whole situation honestly sucks, because there there really is a need for a comprehensive and open solution for the challenges that the "snap" ecosystem is trying to address. All it's currently managing to do is get me off of Ubuntu as quickly as possible, which is probably not the goal.

SahAssar 5y ago

Native messaging (which I use for my password manager) is broken. Screen sharing is broken. File picking/saving is hit and miss. It takes longer to start. My list of disks in bottom is riddled with random snap mounts. This is what made me switch off ubuntu.

sm4rk0 5y ago
Whoa! That's enough showstoppers for me. Where did you switch to? When Ubuntu dropped 32-bit support, I relatively easily switched my old 32-bit netbook from Ubuntu to Debian (by changing the sources and some manual fiddling with packages). OTOH, I'm using Fedora on my work computer, just for the fun of it, and I'm really satisfied with it.
- SahAssar 5y ago
  I generally use arch now because I like tinkering. If I didn't I'd probably use either debian or fedora.

jckahn 5y ago

I get the hate against snaps. I tried really hard to give them a chance, but in my experience it’s a generally poor user experience. What I don’t get is why people feel like they need to leave Ubuntu because of it. Flatpak et al. work just as well on Ubuntu as anything else. Simply not using snaps on Ubuntu seems like a simpler solution than abandoning the distro altogether (assuming you don’t distro hop for fun).

haunter 5y ago
>What I don’t get is why people feel like they need to leave Ubuntu because of it Because how would you otherwise end up with 999 different Linux distros? I bet someone already working on the Ubuntu-sans-snap distro (if not already exist)
- timbit42 5y ago
  It's called Linux Mint.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ppseafield 5y ago
For me, snaps auto-update without my input, and apt will install snaps without telling you they're snaps. So my assumption that my computer only updates when I tell it to no longer holds.
suyjuris 5y ago
There is something to be said for leaving a platform if you do not like the direction it seems to be headed in, even if you could compensate for the issues in the short term. Otherwise you might sign up for years of incrementally increasing misery. Once Windows installed updates against their users' preference I switched my main desktop to Linux – this was a significant amount of work but has saved me a lot of frustration over the past years. Similarly, once I experienced UI stutter in Gnome and noticed that it moved towards Javascript, I switched to i3. Again, huge setup cost (e.g. I had to implement alt-tab behaviour myself), but things ran smoothly since.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

throwawaymanbot 5y ago

FrenchAmerican 5y ago

As long as LibreWolf isn't snap-only... so we should contribute to their effort by funding them, if we want them to last. "Pay your maintainers" should become the norm to all users of FLOSS. We must lobby our bosses to make regular donations to maintainers of the FOSS software used by the company. That's a purely rational business decision, not an ideological one.

rhamzeh 5y ago
The problem isn't Mozilla/Firefox in this case. It is Canonical/Ubuntu. Firefox on most other distro (debian based or otherwise) can be installed with the proper system package manager. Additionally Mozilla offers a flatpak version of Firefox which I strongly prefer over snap. It's just Canonical's disdain to anything not homegrown that's behind this move.

spyc 5y ago

One more reason to add to list "Why I recommend Debian over Ubuntu by now" (https://blog.hartwork.org/posts/why-i-recommend-debian-over-ubuntu-by-now/ https://blog.hartwork.org/posts/why-i-recommend-debian-over-...).

lproven 5y ago

I have not tried 22.04 yet, but it sounds like Ubuntuzilla may win some new users in the near future. https://sourceforge.net/p/ubuntuzilla/wiki/Main_Page/ https://sourceforge.net/p/ubuntuzilla/wiki/Main_Page/

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

robto 5y ago

I've been using NixOS for several years and one of the pain points was frequently updating software - the updates don't come out until the package definitions get updated. Last year I just started using Flatpak for those packages and it works a treat - plus, I can keep the proprietary, non-free software that I need out of my system config, which I like. Snap is a non-starter, and while I hope more software shows up properly, reproducibly packaged for Nix, Flatpak is the next best thing.

sreevisakh 5y ago
I really wish nix or guix had a flatpak export capability. Guix can already export several types of images like tarballs, docker images and squashfs images.
- balancesoggy 5y ago
  Flatpak works on guix. Just guix install it and then run the Firefox or any flatpak as usual using flatpak run
  - sreevisakh 5y ago
    That's not what I meant. I wish for guix or nix to be a way to build flatpaks.

savant_penguin 5y ago

So it's time to learn to compile Firefox from source, got it

stuntkite 5y ago

Gross. Snap can be handy but I've had so many problems with it. I don't like it becoming the defacto. Ubuntu has been good to me for a while, but more and more it seems like I gotta go find my new home. Maybe in the woods... where I build my own linux inside a pachinko machine and it calculates the time of year when I need to start preparing for the long cold winter. My partner and my children are loving and we work pretty hard and we do our best to maintain Pachintix, but sometimes forget the old standby's need of a dusting and some oil on the worm gears. One year it meant we didn't save enough grain and our goats had an out of season extra birth, it got so cold so quick that the mothers died and we were only able to save one baby. The stew we ate through that sad, hard, cold winter was bitter... emotionally... and because the baby goats were so lean. Something that kept us going was Pachintix being able to very slowly render old Sierra games to a tube oscilloscope that was for timing engines in the 50s that I adapted to render the terminal. We would all be so thrilled when we could enter our just barely two commands every day so Buck Rodgers could escape that alien night club and tell some jokes about Star Trek. To fill the time at night, I would regale my children with tales of the old shows. How one time Data started dreaming and cut Troi up like a cake but it turned out it was all fine and I forgot why. To think, all this difficult bliss was started by just how much it sucked to use Snap.