7 ms·

Ubuntu: “How are we improving Firefox snap performance?”

38 points by ForHackernews 4y ago

eptcyka 4y ago
The question I had was more about how exactly does using snap help users? I have only ever fought with it.
raffraffraff 4y ago
Switched to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed after over a decade of Ubuntu. Love it. No snaps.
DiJu519 4y ago
All i know is my downloads folder moved under ~/*/snap/Firefox and i don't like it lol.
- wpietri 4y ago
  Right? From some snap-installed app I'll save something to /tmp, not be able to find it, and then have to go on a safari trying to figure out where my file went. It really gives me the impression that the effort is mainly about achieving some sort of theoretical or business goal, with user experience being secondary.
  - matkoniecz 4y ago
    > the effort is mainly about achieving some sort of theoretical or business goal snap app store is proprietary and controlled by Canonical
blfr 4y ago
> Effortless updates: browsers receive frequent updates and, with the snap, users are able to receive security patches from Mozilla more quickly than with other software distribution methods. I don't see how snap is faster than apt/.deb. More importantly, apt would update a running Firefox which you can restart later. With snap, Firefox is not updated until you close Firefox and run `snap refresh`.
- mort96 4y ago
  Probably because it requires less testing from Canonical. With snaps, Mozilla is wholly responsible for the entire distribution; they build a snap with specific library versions, test it, then ship it to users. With traditional packaging, Firefox uses system libraries, which means Canonical has to do additional testing to make sure Firefox still works with Ubuntu's library versions. And yeah, you could probably fix that by shipping debs with a statically linked Firefox, but that's not how apt packaging is traditionally done. At least that's my understanding of things.
  - reedciccio 4y ago
    Debian does all the tests for Firefox and doesn't complain about it. Canonical made a shit decision to accept snap on such a crucial piece of software, it's not ready for prime time.
    - mort96 4y ago
      And the only version of Firefox I can see in Debian Stable's (and Testing's) package list is Firefox ESR 91. That's exactly the situation Canonical wants to avoid. The current version of Firefox is 104, and even the current version of Firefox ESR is 102.
      - watashiato 4y ago
        https://packages.debian.org/sid/firefox https://packages.debian.org/sid/firefox Many disagree with this stance, but Testing is in an awkward position and I generally steer people away from using it over Stable or Sid because you get downsides of both without the strengths of either. I blame Debian with shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to communicating this. Testing is not a happy middle-ground, it's a test bed for stable. Staying on Sid gives you essentially a rolling release like Arch and it's plenty "stable" for regular desktop use and should anything break you'll get the fix (usually) faster than on testing. Sorry for going on a bit of a rant under your post, but I run into this on the regular.
funOtter 4y ago
This is from May/June
ajvs 4y ago
> A part of this is due to the inherent nature of sandboxing I've got no problems with my sandboxed Flatpak Firefox. > Why did we choose to make Firefox a snap? All pros are shared with Flatpak. What is the value add for users here, that couldn't be gained by using Flatpak instead? Because it certainly isn't your proprietary app store.
lostdog 4y ago
I updated to 22.04, and Firefox performance fell through the floor. There's a ~500ms delay on scrolling now. I'm going to remove snap from my system and see if things improve, but overall 22.04 is a big disappointment.
blagie 4y ago
Snap is the one reason I most don't want to update Ubuntu, but sandboxing the browser in particular (and email client) is the one place where Snap makes a lot of sense to me (as do subsystems like SELinux). My key problems is that I care less about Firefox being snappy as it not making the rest of my system slow: - I don't know what bug X has, but application should not be able to commender my mouse cursor. I've seen bugs in Firefox+Ubuntu multiple times that feel like they might have security implications. - A web page should not be able to use 100% of a CPU. There should be some kind of hard limit, perhaps with burst performance as well - Related to the above, a background tab shouldn't drain my battery if I'm on a laptop. I don't want to give random web pages 100% of my CPU. - Firefox should not be able to keep sucking RAM. I have hundreds of GB of swap, primarily so I don't need to worry to Firefox/Chrome/etc. memory usage/leaks. That's crazy. - Firefox should not be able to suck GPU resources. This is a place I'm convinced there are issues with security implications. GPU drivers are engineered for performance and not stability, and there are edge cases. - Less relevant to my system, disk usage is an issue on many smaller devices, with offline storage in browsers. - Bandwidth limits for pages would be nice too, for both 5G bandwidth and battery. I'd love to see richer benchmarks. Even if not optimized, I'd feel better if Ubuntu / Mozilla were actively aware / looking at these sorts of things. I'd also like someone to think through concrete ways in which snap helps my security. Firefox can overwrite arbitrary files on my system (save-as -> pick one of your files). That's convenient for me, and for an attacker. An open sandbox doesn't help much. I'd love to see a holistic mile-high view where someone thinks through resource usage (across different types of resources), convenience, and security). Implementing snap without that type of homework seems premature. As a footnote, a lot of the issues might be solved with copy-on-write, both with regards to performance and memory.
- enriquto 4y ago
  > I'd love to see a holistic mile-high view where someone thinks through resource usage (across different types of resources), convenience, and security). Implementing snap without that type of homework seems premature. I agree. Process sandboxing should be independent from program packaging and distribution. It should be a core feature of your operating system (and it already is!) and not controlled in any way by the people who distribute the software: mozilla, canonical, etc. If you decide to sandbox some program, like firefox, or gimp, or inkscape, it should be easy, and out of control of other people. You get to decide the amount of resources that you want to give the app, and not the app developers themselves! Why this is not obvious to everybody is beyond me. Unfortunately, both snap and flatpack fail to use this sane approach, and try to shoehorn unrelated stuff like package distribution, dependency packaging, and app stores to this simple problem.
donmcronald 4y ago
The whole Snap thing is a great example of why Linux will never become mainstream. The idea is ok, but the implementation leaves a ton of collateral damage that breaks a lot of things. For example, I installed Ubuntu 22.04 (in a VM) and installed VNC server so I could access it remotely. Surprise! Firefox and Chromium (snaps) don’t work. So one of the things I rely on is broken and I bet it’s going to stay broken for a long time. It’s been like that for 20 years. VNC is old and boring and the devs creating things like SystemD, Snaps, etc. don’t care if they break it because they think their “progress” is more important than having a working system. Semi related, why are all the Remote Desktop solutions on Linux so awful?
- klysm 4y ago
  And before snap and systemd were introduced, it would never reach mainstream because it was bad and difficult to use.
- blfr 4y ago
  Because most Linux users use ssh for remote work.
- ainar-g 4y ago
  > The whole Snap thing is a great example of why Linux will never become mainstream. A generalization too broad, as pretty much no other distro except Ubuntu uses it. If anything, it's more emblematic of Canonical's neverending desire to reinvent the world and the NIH syndrome. > Semi related, why are all the Remote Desktop solutions on Linux so awful? I've never had any issues with plain old X forwarding over SSH. As long as you have compression enabled, performance for most applications is fine.
  - donmcronald 4y ago
    The distro doesn’t matter. There’s always some advancement that’s considered so important that breaking existing apps is viewed as tolerable collateral damage by the devs.
- jcelerier 4y ago
garciansmith 4y ago
Firefox as a snap (the default in 22.04) was so awfully slow starting up. Removed it and am using a .deb again made everything better. I'm really not sure why they pushed when there were clearly so many issues with it. Instructions to install a .deb and prevent the snap from installing: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2022/04/how-to-install-firefox-deb-apt-ubuntu-22-04 https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2022/04/how-to-install-firefox-d...
wpietri 4y ago
I was open to the snap stuff when I first heard about it. It sounds like a decent idea. But at this point I try to install everything I care about in a non-snap way, as I've had so many bad experiences, so many small things not working. Do other people have the same reaction after trying to live with it?
- matkoniecz 4y ago
  Android Studio is snap installed and seems to work everything else had bizarre issues caused directly by snap
  - matkoniecz 4y ago
    Update: USB ports in docking station stop working when Android Studio is running. I have not confirmed that Snap is at fault but that is my bet.
rubicks 4y ago
Stories like this are a big reason I'm fleeing to Debian.
- matt_attack 4y ago
  Or Mint!
  - timbit42 4y ago
    Linux Mint (2,056 hits) has more page hits than Ubuntu (1,183) or Debian (911) on DistroWatch.com. If anyone knows a more authoritative source of distro popularity, please reply.
    - yorwba 4y ago
      Google Trends puts interest in Ubuntu at about half of interest in Linux, while Linux Mint is way down below Debian and CentOS: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=%2Fm%2F0fpzzp,%2Fm%2F03x5qm,%2Fm%2F02996,%2Fm%2F03x_8t,%2Fm%2F0278lsn https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=%2Fm%2F0fpzzp,%2F... Could all be an artefact of the way Google classifies searches into topics, though.
41b696ef1113 4y ago
The forced Snap-ification of Firefox pushed me from Ubuntu into another distro (Pop OS). A decade ago, Ubuntu offered real usability improvements (working Wifi, what?!) compared to the competition. Now, the various Linux flavors all work approximately the same. If Ubuntu is looking for positive differentiation, Snap is not it.
- enriquto 4y ago
  Notice that you can still use ubuntu with plain firefox and no snap at all on your system. First thing I do on a new ubuntu install is to remove snap and other clutter. It's still a plain debian totally under your control, after all.
  - bkallus 4y ago
    Why not just use plain Debian, then?
    - enriquto 4y ago
      For a new install, sure. But so often in my lab we get computers with "ubuntu preinstalled" and stuff.
- ainar-g 4y ago
  It wouldn't be as infuriating if Snap weren't such an awful product, both for the user and for the developer. Just off the top of my head: 1. Sometimes it will warn you when uninstalling a snap will break other snaps; most of the time it doesn't. I removed some snap recently, and Firefox stopped launching. 2. The snapcraft CLI is awful. No way to disable colours, no man pages, no proper error codes, etc. 3. Every time you need some non-trivial piece of functionality, you have to go to ask Canonical for permission. The permission is, most of the time, granted relatively easily, but still. 4. The plug (permission, basically) system is confusing. The documentation is sparse and often doesn't actually answer, which plug you need. And you pretty much have to install snappy-debug (using snap, of course!) to find out approximately, which plug you'd need to add. Thru Canonical, of course. See 3. 5. No way to have your own instance of snap store. If you want to find out, why the upload fails or if the plug will work properly, you have to actually upload a snap to the actual Snap™ Store®. 6. Firefox cannot access /tmp/. A truly baffling thing. The day Mark&co. finally realize that this thing won't work, no matter how many things they force into snap, is the day I will start a three-day party, heh.
mistrial9 4y ago
both `libssl` and Firefox are in snapd containers, with mysterious voodoo cant-turn-it-off remote management settings too. First move ? remove each container one at time, starting with the complex ones and the base last, then `snapd` completely, then the caches; complete by installing stock distro `libssl` and your browser of choice (or two). here's hoping that, similar to the desktop snafu, Ubuntu/MSFT realize that forced (user-hostile) defaults are not the only possible way forward here.
rcarmo 4y ago
Anecdotally, this came about as I was trying Fedora 36 and I just moved my Linux desktop and laptop to it and never looked back. I just don't like Snap (or Flatpak, but less so, since it actually seems to work without breaking desktop integration). Whenever I do need to use an Ubuntu desktop, I now install MS Edge or Epiphany instead.
bogwog 4y ago
A better way to improve performance would be to switch to Flatpak. I used to be indifferent to the whole flatpak vs snap situation, since IMO either one is better than the traditional method of using the system package manager for everything. But now that I've had Firefox snap forced upon me by my distro, I've strongly switched over to the Flatpak camp. Snaps do literally everything worse than Flatpaks, offer a worse user experience, and they use a closed-source server for the backend. I've been a loyal Ubuntu user for over a decade, but this Snap thing is making me seriously consider jumping ship to another distro.
- bkuehl 4y ago
  I moved from Ubuntu to Mint mainly because of Snap. I couldn't take it anymore. Couldn't be happier.
  - jimhefferon 4y ago
    I have Mint (you mean Ubuntu Mint?). Firefox is in a snap.
    - doodlesdev 4y ago
      He means Linux Mint [0], a fork of Ubuntu with a fork of Gnome and snaps disabled by default. Is there even an Ubuntu Mint? You are probably confusing it with another name. [0]: https://linuxmint.com/ https://linuxmint.com/
    - masklinn 4y ago
      There is no such thing as Ubuntu mint. And while linux mint derived from Ubuntu, the snap service is disabled by default while iirc system utilities (like the software manager) are provided as flatpaks.
      - imwillofficial 4y ago
        Careful saying there is no such thing, this is Linux, somebody will up and make it out of spite. I mean, there is a Hannah Montana Linux
lbhdc 4y ago
Mozilla publishes a PPA for firefox if you want to install the snap free variant. https://launchpad.net/%7Emozillateam/+archive/ubuntu/ppa https://launchpad.net/%7Emozillateam/+archive/ubuntu/ppa
- bhearsum2 4y ago
  This is not from Mozilla. The "Mozilla team" here means "the people maintaining Mozilla related packages". (I work on the Firefox install/update system, and previously CI & release systems.)
  - mdaniel 4y ago
    I know Mozilla isn't the litigious sort, but I would strongly suggest getting Ubuntu to either stop using the name "mozillateam" or put some monster disclaimer on that page and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam because neither of them indicate it's not Mozillians making those changes
  - lbhdc 4y ago
    Good to know, this seemed like it was something that was put out by mozilla.
tkuraku 4y ago
The performance issues are already a solved problem with flatpak. Seems there are fundamental issues with the design of snaps for desktop applications compared to flatpak.
- tkuraku 4y ago
  Ubuntu use to be a go to for me, but lately I'd rather opt for debian or RHEL for a more stable sensible experience.
amelius 4y ago
After upgrading to Ubuntu 22.04 I tried to install an older version of Kicad, because that version is the one all my colleagues are using and I didn't want to run into compatibility issues. Long story short, Snap said I couldn't have that :(
sebow 4y ago
Snap is garbage for being the default option for software. It's good at some things, but this is not one of those.
ok123456 4y ago
sudo apt uninstall snapd
tlhunter 4y ago
I download and install the developer edition of Firefox from the Firefox website, extracting the tarball to /opt/Firefox, and add a menu entry to the KDE launcher. Takes a little more effort at first but afterwards it's smooth sailing. It even self updates!
- ainar-g 4y ago
  It's pretty stable, too. In a few years I've been using it, there were just two major issues. One could be fixed by removing an addon, and the other was fixed within a day.
pphysch 4y ago
I recently installed Ubuntu 22.04 on one of my workstations, and the system was missing a critical package that, when missing, prevented the default snap Firefox (or any other sandboxed browser) from using system application handlers. Couldn't even upload files to any website because that requires communication with the system file browser. A less technical user would never figure this out and Ubuntu would be unusable for them in a work environment (inability to interact with email attachments being a non-starter).
treve 4y ago
My main issue with the move to Snap is not performances, it's all the bugs. Coincidentally I just wrote about this yesterday: https://evertpot.com/firefox-ubuntu-snap/ https://evertpot.com/firefox-ubuntu-snap/
matkoniecz 4y ago
Is there some good Linux alternative not obsessed with snap and chance to have a proprietary app store in Linux? For me it is as bad as when Canonical put ads in start menu ( https://www.howtogeek.com/126995/how-to-disable-the-amazon-search-ads-in-ubuntus-unity-dash/ https://www.howtogeek.com/126995/how-to-disable-the-amazon-s... ) Huh, that was Ubuntu 12.10. I wonder who will appear in Ubuntu 32.
gosukiwi 4y ago
Not a linux user really, why does everyone hates snapd?
- enriquto 4y ago
  It creates a folder ~/snap on your home directory. That should amass enough hate for everybody.
- timbit42 4y ago
  Read the comments here.
- MattPalmer1086 4y ago
  It's slow to start up. It prevents you from installing the version of something you want. It updates on its own schedule. It has numerous bugs relating to the sandboxing that prevents apps from fully working properly. It mucks with your home folder structure...
davb 4y ago
An honest benchmark would include the non-snap startup times for each of their test platforms. That said, the performance issues aren’t as bad as the fact that it’s unusable on machines with NFS home directories mounted with root_squash (as documented [0] by someone at another institution). We’re a University CS dept with a few hundred lab machines and have been using Ubuntu for the past decade or so, but fighting against the increasing snapification every LTS is frustrating. Next LTS we’ll probably just switch to another distro. Most of our users don’t really care which distro they use - they just want Linux with NFS home, a browser, JetBrains, VS Code and a Bash shell with access to our standard compiler and tool collection Our HPC team recently switched from Centos to Alma - though I’m more inclined to stay with a Debian derivative (or more likely Debian itself). [0] https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/SnapsVersusNFSHomedirs https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/SnapsVersusNF...
noam_compsci 4y ago
I just know Mark is reading every message in here and going to take it out on his product team Monday morning
okamiueru 4y ago
Some of comments here seem a bit of an overreaction to me. And that's coming from someone who recently switched away from using Ubuntu. I don't like snaps, and it was annoying. But, getting rid of it takes like 5 minutes, or 1 if you don't have to Google how. Remove each snap package until there are none left, purge snapd, install Firefox in any other way you feel like. And that's it. I've since moved to Arch, and I'm much happier. But snap was not the reason.
LittlePeter 4y ago
snap is the new systemd I dunno, I am only slightly inconvenienced by it, not enough to run apt uninstall snap though.
dxuh 4y ago
I was actually one of the people that thought snaps and flatpaks are the future of Linux desktop computing, because they isolate software and they make distribution much easier. But since Ubuntu 22 switched to the Firefox snap I am not sure if I think that anymore. I have been using Ubuntu many years ago (when the version was still in single digits), then didn't use it for a while and then started using it again with the release of Ubuntu 18. Since I started using it again I have been recommending it to everyone every chance I got, but I think it's not worth anyone's time anymore. After updating to Ubuntu 22, almost everything broke. When I pressed the super button to "zoom out" and see all my windows and then clicked on a window to switch to it, about a third of the time the screen turned grey, the whole shell crashed and I had to wait a few seconds for it to come back. Another third of the time it just did nothing. When I close Nautilus (the file browser) it crashes about half of the time (and still does to this day). In Firefox dragging tabs to my bookmark folders did not work if you drag the tab to the bookmark bar of the same window. You had to drag it to another window's bookmark bar (took me a while to figure that out too). It still happens sometimes. The right-click menu was themed incorrectly (had a different color than anything else). But the worst thing were the downloads. You could not download to any other folder but ~/Downloads. Not even subfolders! And If you did download to a subfolder after a few seconds it would slow down the whole application to an absolute crawl, where scrolling was non-interactive and switching tabs took seconds. If you then abort the download and download with Chromium instead (also a snap), Firefox freezes completely until the download is finished in Chromium, after which Firefox unfreezes. What kind of sandboxing is that? And yes, this was reproducible. I cannot even imagine the kind stuff they are building there and I have no trust in it anymore. I realize I got hit unusually hard, but this is supposed to be an LTS release and it's a total mess. Now that many of the problems have been fixed, what's left is also an OS I do not enjoy anymore. Firefox is nagging me that it needs to be updated all the time. Because when I close Firefox and shutdown my computer for the day, I always forget to run "snap refresh" after closing Firefox. It doesn't update it before you start it again or after you have closed it, but if you dare run it again, without having updated it, it will complain with a Desktop notification. It's so, so bad. Also I run "snap update" every time, before I need to check the help text again to see that it is "refresh". Snap is probably the only program I have ever encountered that calls updating "refresh"ing. Also Ubuntu is now telling me constantly that I need to "restart and update your computer" IN THIS ORDER. Now I need to reboot every couple of days to install updates. In the YEARS before, I just got a popup where I could press "update", while the system was running and restart whenever I felt like it. Are we Windows now? On my Laptop I already switched to PopOS (I won't even try to interpunctuate that silly name correctly) and if I have the time and can risk wasting a few days, I will upgrade my desktop machine to PopOS too.
chunkyks 4y ago
The fancy security boundary thing totally broke smart cards. The blast radius on this Firefox snap thing overall just infuriates me.
unsafecast 4y ago
Performance isn't even the only problem. A few weeks ago, my mother (who uses Ubuntu) asked “Why did inkscape just discard every change I did?”. I went and checked what's going on, and apparently the snap version just doesn't open any file dialogue. She hit Ctrl-S to save and (very understandably) assumed it saved it. Well she lost 3 hours of work. Installing the debian package fixed it, and, as a bonus, it started following the system theme and stuff. Such subtle bugs are everywhere. I don't even know where to begin investigating it, and frankly, I don't care enough. Snap is a bad, overcomplicated piece of technology that deserves to die.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  Even if you don't investigate it, I wonder if you should file a bug? "Snaps causing data loss" should either light a fire under Canonical or provide a very easy indicator of their priorities.
  - matkoniecz 4y ago
    > I wonder if you should file a bug should? no. That takes some time, and noone is obligated to help Canonical with their disastrous project designed to push proprietary app store
Arcuru 4y ago
I would have preferred to see more of the underlying data from these benchmarks, but it sounds like they've been pretty thorough in this investigation. I'm especially impressed they tested on such a wide range of hardware, not everybody does that and it helps find bad corner cases for more users. Kudos to the team working on this.
wooque 4y ago
The best way they could improve Firefox snap performance is to ditch snap altogether. It's win win situation. They are trying to forcefully push something that no one wants or needs and that is frankly inferior to Flatpak.
albertopv 4y ago
"In the snap, we bundle 98 language packs which unfortunately take quite a while to copy into the user directory" 98 language packs, is it normal Firefox?
morekozhambu 4y ago
Octabrain 4y ago
Well, given the consensus on hating Snap, this is gonna be controversial but: I think snaps are a great idea that simply needs to be refined. Positive things I see: - It gives much more flexibility to Canonical in terms of introducing changes in the system. It might mean that they can also simplify the maintenance of the distro and focus in other much more important areas. - It gives the developer much more control over the release and distribution process. - It allows to use newer versions of the software were before you had to stick in some cases with very old ones provided from the repo or go and spend a couple of hours reading and compiling the new version yourself - It integrates well with command line apps, thing that Flatpak doesn't do natively. - The process of creating a Snap is fairly trivial. A simple easy to grasp yaml file pretty much that you can place in your repo. - It provides better security by sandboxing the app and allows granular permisology via plugs. Things to refine/improve: - Speed. It is something I haven't noticed myself, but I heard people complaining about this many times. - Allow users to pick an specific version from a history of releases for a given app. In an ideal world, newer version would mean always "better" and therefore, upgrading automatically to the most recent one would be desirable, but we all here know that this is not the case and sometimes you just need to use a few releases back one. - The Snap store. There are two things I don't like: 1. The backend is not open source. 2. It is a central place controlled by Canonical. In my opinion, Canonical should make the backend available for others for allowing them to make their own stores if they want and Canonical should focus in the added value of their own (e.g providing malware scaning, payment processors, CI/CD, stats etc) Overall, I am not a Ubuntu user myself but I can understand, from a technical point of view why Canonical is trying to push for this. Unfountunatly, they are not Apple and they operating in a comunity of users that do not deal very well with impositions and pretensions from a company (and cheers to that). Having said that, I would recomend to the comunity in general to try not to be that toxic, negative and argumentative. At this point, I seriously think the worst enemy of the GNU/Linux is the comunity itself. IMHO, we should be more constructive, less arrogant and less ideological. The amount of hate I've seen towards Canonical, Snap, Systemd, Gnome and what not is simply bonkers.

38 points by ForHackernews 4y ago

eptcyka 4y ago

The question I had was more about how exactly does using snap help users? I have only ever fought with it.

raffraffraff 4y ago

Switched to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed after over a decade of Ubuntu. Love it. No snaps.

DiJu519 4y ago

All i know is my downloads folder moved under ~/*/snap/Firefox and i don't like it lol.

wpietri 4y ago
Right? From some snap-installed app I'll save something to /tmp, not be able to find it, and then have to go on a safari trying to figure out where my file went. It really gives me the impression that the effort is mainly about achieving some sort of theoretical or business goal, with user experience being secondary.
- matkoniecz 4y ago
  > the effort is mainly about achieving some sort of theoretical or business goal snap app store is proprietary and controlled by Canonical

blfr 4y ago

> Effortless updates: browsers receive frequent updates and, with the snap, users are able to receive security patches from Mozilla more quickly than with other software distribution methods. I don't see how snap is faster than apt/.deb. More importantly, apt would update a running Firefox which you can restart later. With snap, Firefox is not updated until you close Firefox and run `snap refresh`.

mort96 4y ago
Probably because it requires less testing from Canonical. With snaps, Mozilla is wholly responsible for the entire distribution; they build a snap with specific library versions, test it, then ship it to users. With traditional packaging, Firefox uses system libraries, which means Canonical has to do additional testing to make sure Firefox still works with Ubuntu's library versions. And yeah, you could probably fix that by shipping debs with a statically linked Firefox, but that's not how apt packaging is traditionally done. At least that's my understanding of things.
- reedciccio 4y ago
  Debian does all the tests for Firefox and doesn't complain about it. Canonical made a shit decision to accept snap on such a crucial piece of software, it's not ready for prime time.
  - mort96 4y ago
    And the only version of Firefox I can see in Debian Stable's (and Testing's) package list is Firefox ESR 91. That's exactly the situation Canonical wants to avoid. The current version of Firefox is 104, and even the current version of Firefox ESR is 102.
    - watashiato 4y ago
      https://packages.debian.org/sid/firefox https://packages.debian.org/sid/firefox Many disagree with this stance, but Testing is in an awkward position and I generally steer people away from using it over Stable or Sid because you get downsides of both without the strengths of either. I blame Debian with shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to communicating this. Testing is not a happy middle-ground, it's a test bed for stable. Staying on Sid gives you essentially a rolling release like Arch and it's plenty "stable" for regular desktop use and should anything break you'll get the fix (usually) faster than on testing. Sorry for going on a bit of a rant under your post, but I run into this on the regular.

funOtter 4y ago

This is from May/June

ajvs 4y ago

> A part of this is due to the inherent nature of sandboxing I've got no problems with my sandboxed Flatpak Firefox. > Why did we choose to make Firefox a snap? All pros are shared with Flatpak. What is the value add for users here, that couldn't be gained by using Flatpak instead? Because it certainly isn't your proprietary app store.

lostdog 4y ago

I updated to 22.04, and Firefox performance fell through the floor. There's a ~500ms delay on scrolling now. I'm going to remove snap from my system and see if things improve, but overall 22.04 is a big disappointment.

blagie 4y ago

Snap is the one reason I most don't want to update Ubuntu, but sandboxing the browser in particular (and email client) is the one place where Snap makes a lot of sense to me (as do subsystems like SELinux). My key problems is that I care less about Firefox being snappy as it not making the rest of my system slow: - I don't know what bug X has, but application should not be able to commender my mouse cursor. I've seen bugs in Firefox+Ubuntu multiple times that feel like they might have security implications. - A web page should not be able to use 100% of a CPU. There should be some kind of hard limit, perhaps with burst performance as well - Related to the above, a background tab shouldn't drain my battery if I'm on a laptop. I don't want to give random web pages 100% of my CPU. - Firefox should not be able to keep sucking RAM. I have hundreds of GB of swap, primarily so I don't need to worry to Firefox/Chrome/etc. memory usage/leaks. That's crazy. - Firefox should not be able to suck GPU resources. This is a place I'm convinced there are issues with security implications. GPU drivers are engineered for performance and not stability, and there are edge cases. - Less relevant to my system, disk usage is an issue on many smaller devices, with offline storage in browsers. - Bandwidth limits for pages would be nice too, for both 5G bandwidth and battery. I'd love to see richer benchmarks. Even if not optimized, I'd feel better if Ubuntu / Mozilla were actively aware / looking at these sorts of things. I'd also like someone to think through concrete ways in which snap helps my security. Firefox can overwrite arbitrary files on my system (save-as -> pick one of your files). That's convenient for me, and for an attacker. An open sandbox doesn't help much. I'd love to see a holistic mile-high view where someone thinks through resource usage (across different types of resources), convenience, and security). Implementing snap without that type of homework seems premature. As a footnote, a lot of the issues might be solved with copy-on-write, both with regards to performance and memory.

enriquto 4y ago
> I'd love to see a holistic mile-high view where someone thinks through resource usage (across different types of resources), convenience, and security). Implementing snap without that type of homework seems premature. I agree. Process sandboxing should be independent from program packaging and distribution. It should be a core feature of your operating system (and it already is!) and not controlled in any way by the people who distribute the software: mozilla, canonical, etc. If you decide to sandbox some program, like firefox, or gimp, or inkscape, it should be easy, and out of control of other people. You get to decide the amount of resources that you want to give the app, and not the app developers themselves! Why this is not obvious to everybody is beyond me. Unfortunately, both snap and flatpack fail to use this sane approach, and try to shoehorn unrelated stuff like package distribution, dependency packaging, and app stores to this simple problem.

donmcronald 4y ago

The whole Snap thing is a great example of why Linux will never become mainstream. The idea is ok, but the implementation leaves a ton of collateral damage that breaks a lot of things. For example, I installed Ubuntu 22.04 (in a VM) and installed VNC server so I could access it remotely. Surprise! Firefox and Chromium (snaps) don’t work. So one of the things I rely on is broken and I bet it’s going to stay broken for a long time. It’s been like that for 20 years. VNC is old and boring and the devs creating things like SystemD, Snaps, etc. don’t care if they break it because they think their “progress” is more important than having a working system. Semi related, why are all the Remote Desktop solutions on Linux so awful?

klysm 4y ago
And before snap and systemd were introduced, it would never reach mainstream because it was bad and difficult to use.
blfr 4y ago
Because most Linux users use ssh for remote work.
ainar-g 4y ago
> The whole Snap thing is a great example of why Linux will never become mainstream. A generalization too broad, as pretty much no other distro except Ubuntu uses it. If anything, it's more emblematic of Canonical's neverending desire to reinvent the world and the NIH syndrome. > Semi related, why are all the Remote Desktop solutions on Linux so awful? I've never had any issues with plain old X forwarding over SSH. As long as you have compression enabled, performance for most applications is fine.
- donmcronald 4y ago
  The distro doesn’t matter. There’s always some advancement that’s considered so important that breaking existing apps is viewed as tolerable collateral damage by the devs.
jcelerier 4y ago

garciansmith 4y ago

Firefox as a snap (the default in 22.04) was so awfully slow starting up. Removed it and am using a .deb again made everything better. I'm really not sure why they pushed when there were clearly so many issues with it. Instructions to install a .deb and prevent the snap from installing: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2022/04/how-to-install-firefox-deb-apt-ubuntu-22-04 https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2022/04/how-to-install-firefox-d...

wpietri 4y ago

I was open to the snap stuff when I first heard about it. It sounds like a decent idea. But at this point I try to install everything I care about in a non-snap way, as I've had so many bad experiences, so many small things not working. Do other people have the same reaction after trying to live with it?

matkoniecz 4y ago
Android Studio is snap installed and seems to work everything else had bizarre issues caused directly by snap
- matkoniecz 4y ago
  Update: USB ports in docking station stop working when Android Studio is running. I have not confirmed that Snap is at fault but that is my bet.

rubicks 4y ago

Stories like this are a big reason I'm fleeing to Debian.

matt_attack 4y ago
Or Mint!
- timbit42 4y ago
  Linux Mint (2,056 hits) has more page hits than Ubuntu (1,183) or Debian (911) on DistroWatch.com. If anyone knows a more authoritative source of distro popularity, please reply.
  - yorwba 4y ago
    Google Trends puts interest in Ubuntu at about half of interest in Linux, while Linux Mint is way down below Debian and CentOS: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=%2Fm%2F0fpzzp,%2Fm%2F03x5qm,%2Fm%2F02996,%2Fm%2F03x_8t,%2Fm%2F0278lsn https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=%2Fm%2F0fpzzp,%2F... Could all be an artefact of the way Google classifies searches into topics, though.

41b696ef1113 4y ago

The forced Snap-ification of Firefox pushed me from Ubuntu into another distro (Pop OS). A decade ago, Ubuntu offered real usability improvements (working Wifi, what?!) compared to the competition. Now, the various Linux flavors all work approximately the same. If Ubuntu is looking for positive differentiation, Snap is not it.

enriquto 4y ago
Notice that you can still use ubuntu with plain firefox and no snap at all on your system. First thing I do on a new ubuntu install is to remove snap and other clutter. It's still a plain debian totally under your control, after all.
- bkallus 4y ago
  Why not just use plain Debian, then?
  - enriquto 4y ago
    For a new install, sure. But so often in my lab we get computers with "ubuntu preinstalled" and stuff.
ainar-g 4y ago
It wouldn't be as infuriating if Snap weren't such an awful product, both for the user and for the developer. Just off the top of my head: 1. Sometimes it will warn you when uninstalling a snap will break other snaps; most of the time it doesn't. I removed some snap recently, and Firefox stopped launching. 2. The snapcraft CLI is awful. No way to disable colours, no man pages, no proper error codes, etc. 3. Every time you need some non-trivial piece of functionality, you have to go to ask Canonical for permission. The permission is, most of the time, granted relatively easily, but still. 4. The plug (permission, basically) system is confusing. The documentation is sparse and often doesn't actually answer, which plug you need. And you pretty much have to install snappy-debug (using snap, of course!) to find out approximately, which plug you'd need to add. Thru Canonical, of course. See 3. 5. No way to have your own instance of snap store. If you want to find out, why the upload fails or if the plug will work properly, you have to actually upload a snap to the actual Snap™ Store®. 6. Firefox cannot access /tmp/. A truly baffling thing. The day Mark&co. finally realize that this thing won't work, no matter how many things they force into snap, is the day I will start a three-day party, heh.

mistrial9 4y ago

both `libssl` and Firefox are in snapd containers, with mysterious voodoo cant-turn-it-off remote management settings too. First move ? remove each container one at time, starting with the complex ones and the base last, then `snapd` completely, then the caches; complete by installing stock distro `libssl` and your browser of choice (or two). here's hoping that, similar to the desktop snafu, Ubuntu/MSFT realize that forced (user-hostile) defaults are not the only possible way forward here.

rcarmo 4y ago

Anecdotally, this came about as I was trying Fedora 36 and I just moved my Linux desktop and laptop to it and never looked back. I just don't like Snap (or Flatpak, but less so, since it actually seems to work without breaking desktop integration). Whenever I do need to use an Ubuntu desktop, I now install MS Edge or Epiphany instead.

bogwog 4y ago

A better way to improve performance would be to switch to Flatpak. I used to be indifferent to the whole flatpak vs snap situation, since IMO either one is better than the traditional method of using the system package manager for everything. But now that I've had Firefox snap forced upon me by my distro, I've strongly switched over to the Flatpak camp. Snaps do literally everything worse than Flatpaks, offer a worse user experience, and they use a closed-source server for the backend. I've been a loyal Ubuntu user for over a decade, but this Snap thing is making me seriously consider jumping ship to another distro.

bkuehl 4y ago
I moved from Ubuntu to Mint mainly because of Snap. I couldn't take it anymore. Couldn't be happier.
- jimhefferon 4y ago
  I have Mint (you mean Ubuntu Mint?). Firefox is in a snap.
  - doodlesdev 4y ago
    He means Linux Mint [0], a fork of Ubuntu with a fork of Gnome and snaps disabled by default. Is there even an Ubuntu Mint? You are probably confusing it with another name. [0]: https://linuxmint.com/ https://linuxmint.com/
  - masklinn 4y ago
    There is no such thing as Ubuntu mint. And while linux mint derived from Ubuntu, the snap service is disabled by default while iirc system utilities (like the software manager) are provided as flatpaks.
    - imwillofficial 4y ago
      Careful saying there is no such thing, this is Linux, somebody will up and make it out of spite. I mean, there is a Hannah Montana Linux

lbhdc 4y ago

Mozilla publishes a PPA for firefox if you want to install the snap free variant. https://launchpad.net/%7Emozillateam/+archive/ubuntu/ppa https://launchpad.net/%7Emozillateam/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

bhearsum2 4y ago
This is not from Mozilla. The "Mozilla team" here means "the people maintaining Mozilla related packages". (I work on the Firefox install/update system, and previously CI & release systems.)
- mdaniel 4y ago
  I know Mozilla isn't the litigious sort, but I would strongly suggest getting Ubuntu to either stop using the name "mozillateam" or put some monster disclaimer on that page and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam because neither of them indicate it's not Mozillians making those changes
- lbhdc 4y ago
  Good to know, this seemed like it was something that was put out by mozilla.

tkuraku 4y ago

The performance issues are already a solved problem with flatpak. Seems there are fundamental issues with the design of snaps for desktop applications compared to flatpak.

tkuraku 4y ago
Ubuntu use to be a go to for me, but lately I'd rather opt for debian or RHEL for a more stable sensible experience.

amelius 4y ago

After upgrading to Ubuntu 22.04 I tried to install an older version of Kicad, because that version is the one all my colleagues are using and I didn't want to run into compatibility issues. Long story short, Snap said I couldn't have that :(

sebow 4y ago

Snap is garbage for being the default option for software. It's good at some things, but this is not one of those.

ok123456 4y ago

sudo apt uninstall snapd

tlhunter 4y ago

I download and install the developer edition of Firefox from the Firefox website, extracting the tarball to /opt/Firefox, and add a menu entry to the KDE launcher. Takes a little more effort at first but afterwards it's smooth sailing. It even self updates!

ainar-g 4y ago
It's pretty stable, too. In a few years I've been using it, there were just two major issues. One could be fixed by removing an addon, and the other was fixed within a day.

pphysch 4y ago

I recently installed Ubuntu 22.04 on one of my workstations, and the system was missing a critical package that, when missing, prevented the default snap Firefox (or any other sandboxed browser) from using system application handlers. Couldn't even upload files to any website because that requires communication with the system file browser. A less technical user would never figure this out and Ubuntu would be unusable for them in a work environment (inability to interact with email attachments being a non-starter).

treve 4y ago

My main issue with the move to Snap is not performances, it's all the bugs. Coincidentally I just wrote about this yesterday: https://evertpot.com/firefox-ubuntu-snap/ https://evertpot.com/firefox-ubuntu-snap/

matkoniecz 4y ago

Is there some good Linux alternative not obsessed with snap and chance to have a proprietary app store in Linux? For me it is as bad as when Canonical put ads in start menu ( https://www.howtogeek.com/126995/how-to-disable-the-amazon-search-ads-in-ubuntus-unity-dash/ https://www.howtogeek.com/126995/how-to-disable-the-amazon-s... ) Huh, that was Ubuntu 12.10. I wonder who will appear in Ubuntu 32.

gosukiwi 4y ago

Not a linux user really, why does everyone hates snapd?

enriquto 4y ago
It creates a folder ~/snap on your home directory. That should amass enough hate for everybody.
timbit42 4y ago
Read the comments here.
MattPalmer1086 4y ago
It's slow to start up. It prevents you from installing the version of something you want. It updates on its own schedule. It has numerous bugs relating to the sandboxing that prevents apps from fully working properly. It mucks with your home folder structure...

davb 4y ago

An honest benchmark would include the non-snap startup times for each of their test platforms. That said, the performance issues aren’t as bad as the fact that it’s unusable on machines with NFS home directories mounted with root_squash (as documented [0] by someone at another institution). We’re a University CS dept with a few hundred lab machines and have been using Ubuntu for the past decade or so, but fighting against the increasing snapification every LTS is frustrating. Next LTS we’ll probably just switch to another distro. Most of our users don’t really care which distro they use - they just want Linux with NFS home, a browser, JetBrains, VS Code and a Bash shell with access to our standard compiler and tool collection Our HPC team recently switched from Centos to Alma - though I’m more inclined to stay with a Debian derivative (or more likely Debian itself). [0] https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/SnapsVersusNFSHomedirs https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/SnapsVersusNF...

noam_compsci 4y ago

I just know Mark is reading every message in here and going to take it out on his product team Monday morning

okamiueru 4y ago

Some of comments here seem a bit of an overreaction to me. And that's coming from someone who recently switched away from using Ubuntu. I don't like snaps, and it was annoying. But, getting rid of it takes like 5 minutes, or 1 if you don't have to Google how. Remove each snap package until there are none left, purge snapd, install Firefox in any other way you feel like. And that's it. I've since moved to Arch, and I'm much happier. But snap was not the reason.

LittlePeter 4y ago

snap is the new systemd I dunno, I am only slightly inconvenienced by it, not enough to run apt uninstall snap though.

dxuh 4y ago

I was actually one of the people that thought snaps and flatpaks are the future of Linux desktop computing, because they isolate software and they make distribution much easier. But since Ubuntu 22 switched to the Firefox snap I am not sure if I think that anymore. I have been using Ubuntu many years ago (when the version was still in single digits), then didn't use it for a while and then started using it again with the release of Ubuntu 18. Since I started using it again I have been recommending it to everyone every chance I got, but I think it's not worth anyone's time anymore. After updating to Ubuntu 22, almost everything broke. When I pressed the super button to "zoom out" and see all my windows and then clicked on a window to switch to it, about a third of the time the screen turned grey, the whole shell crashed and I had to wait a few seconds for it to come back. Another third of the time it just did nothing. When I close Nautilus (the file browser) it crashes about half of the time (and still does to this day). In Firefox dragging tabs to my bookmark folders did not work if you drag the tab to the bookmark bar of the same window. You had to drag it to another window's bookmark bar (took me a while to figure that out too). It still happens sometimes. The right-click menu was themed incorrectly (had a different color than anything else). But the worst thing were the downloads. You could not download to any other folder but ~/Downloads. Not even subfolders! And If you did download to a subfolder after a few seconds it would slow down the whole application to an absolute crawl, where scrolling was non-interactive and switching tabs took seconds. If you then abort the download and download with Chromium instead (also a snap), Firefox freezes completely until the download is finished in Chromium, after which Firefox unfreezes. What kind of sandboxing is that? And yes, this was reproducible. I cannot even imagine the kind stuff they are building there and I have no trust in it anymore. I realize I got hit unusually hard, but this is supposed to be an LTS release and it's a total mess. Now that many of the problems have been fixed, what's left is also an OS I do not enjoy anymore. Firefox is nagging me that it needs to be updated all the time. Because when I close Firefox and shutdown my computer for the day, I always forget to run "snap refresh" after closing Firefox. It doesn't update it before you start it again or after you have closed it, but if you dare run it again, without having updated it, it will complain with a Desktop notification. It's so, so bad. Also I run "snap update" every time, before I need to check the help text again to see that it is "refresh". Snap is probably the only program I have ever encountered that calls updating "refresh"ing. Also Ubuntu is now telling me constantly that I need to "restart and update your computer" IN THIS ORDER. Now I need to reboot every couple of days to install updates. In the YEARS before, I just got a popup where I could press "update", while the system was running and restart whenever I felt like it. Are we Windows now? On my Laptop I already switched to PopOS (I won't even try to interpunctuate that silly name correctly) and if I have the time and can risk wasting a few days, I will upgrade my desktop machine to PopOS too.

chunkyks 4y ago

The fancy security boundary thing totally broke smart cards. The blast radius on this Firefox snap thing overall just infuriates me.

unsafecast 4y ago

Performance isn't even the only problem. A few weeks ago, my mother (who uses Ubuntu) asked “Why did inkscape just discard every change I did?”. I went and checked what's going on, and apparently the snap version just doesn't open any file dialogue. She hit Ctrl-S to save and (very understandably) assumed it saved it. Well she lost 3 hours of work. Installing the debian package fixed it, and, as a bonus, it started following the system theme and stuff. Such subtle bugs are everywhere. I don't even know where to begin investigating it, and frankly, I don't care enough. Snap is a bad, overcomplicated piece of technology that deserves to die.

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
Even if you don't investigate it, I wonder if you should file a bug? "Snaps causing data loss" should either light a fire under Canonical or provide a very easy indicator of their priorities.
- matkoniecz 4y ago
  > I wonder if you should file a bug should? no. That takes some time, and noone is obligated to help Canonical with their disastrous project designed to push proprietary app store

Arcuru 4y ago

I would have preferred to see more of the underlying data from these benchmarks, but it sounds like they've been pretty thorough in this investigation. I'm especially impressed they tested on such a wide range of hardware, not everybody does that and it helps find bad corner cases for more users. Kudos to the team working on this.

wooque 4y ago

The best way they could improve Firefox snap performance is to ditch snap altogether. It's win win situation. They are trying to forcefully push something that no one wants or needs and that is frankly inferior to Flatpak.

albertopv 4y ago

"In the snap, we bundle 98 language packs which unfortunately take quite a while to copy into the user directory" 98 language packs, is it normal Firefox?

morekozhambu 4y ago

Octabrain 4y ago

Well, given the consensus on hating Snap, this is gonna be controversial but: I think snaps are a great idea that simply needs to be refined. Positive things I see: - It gives much more flexibility to Canonical in terms of introducing changes in the system. It might mean that they can also simplify the maintenance of the distro and focus in other much more important areas. - It gives the developer much more control over the release and distribution process. - It allows to use newer versions of the software were before you had to stick in some cases with very old ones provided from the repo or go and spend a couple of hours reading and compiling the new version yourself - It integrates well with command line apps, thing that Flatpak doesn't do natively. - The process of creating a Snap is fairly trivial. A simple easy to grasp yaml file pretty much that you can place in your repo. - It provides better security by sandboxing the app and allows granular permisology via plugs. Things to refine/improve: - Speed. It is something I haven't noticed myself, but I heard people complaining about this many times. - Allow users to pick an specific version from a history of releases for a given app. In an ideal world, newer version would mean always "better" and therefore, upgrading automatically to the most recent one would be desirable, but we all here know that this is not the case and sometimes you just need to use a few releases back one. - The Snap store. There are two things I don't like: 1. The backend is not open source. 2. It is a central place controlled by Canonical. In my opinion, Canonical should make the backend available for others for allowing them to make their own stores if they want and Canonical should focus in the added value of their own (e.g providing malware scaning, payment processors, CI/CD, stats etc) Overall, I am not a Ubuntu user myself but I can understand, from a technical point of view why Canonical is trying to push for this. Unfountunatly, they are not Apple and they operating in a comunity of users that do not deal very well with impositions and pretensions from a company (and cheers to that). Having said that, I would recomend to the comunity in general to try not to be that toxic, negative and argumentative. At this point, I seriously think the worst enemy of the GNU/Linux is the comunity itself. IMHO, we should be more constructive, less arrogant and less ideological. The amount of hate I've seen towards Canonical, Snap, Systemd, Gnome and what not is simply bonkers.