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.
> it would solve one of Linux's biggest pain points as a software developer.
Maybe true for proprietary software, but for FLOSS it is a non issue once your software has traction and gets picked up by distributions. I wrote a piece of open source in ~2002 and it is still found in pretty much all distros AND I never spend a minute in pain over packaging difficulties.
IMHO, the basic package managers work REALLY well for FLOSS. The gave me a peak into the AppStore/PlayStore(tm) experience (but then without all the spyware), waaaaay before they even existed.
> 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.
AUR is explicitly a community-driven effort. The others are packing standards, some of which (like DEB and RPM) are also used in community-driven efforts. Debian and RedHat derivatives have repositories that use DEB and RPM, respectively. There's not a lot of bike-shedding, here. Availability of functional software is a pretty big feature of Linux distributions.
And there is a big difference between those community efforts and the likes of Snap, AppImage, and FlatPack, which are developer-centric. User preferences on software distribution aren't always or even usually based on irrelvent arguments, but fundamental ones. The community efforts centralize dealing with compatibility and, to an extent, security with community standards, while the developer-centric model largely leaves this work to software developers alone. This is a meaningful distinction.
DEB is working fine for most users, for the corporate/Fedora users RPM also is good enough. Flatpak works great for GUI applications as well, it integrates nicely with most "app store" interfaces on Linux.
DEB vs RPM is an ancient debate, each comes with its pros and cons. Flatpak and Snap try to solve a different problem (sandboxing + dependency hell vs stable system-wide dependencies).
MacOS has PKG, but most software I've seen actually comes through DMG images or ZIP files. Windows has MSI, which, if you use it correctly, actually elegantly solves most problems; the features that were added to allow developers to bypass the declarative installation process are what usually breaks MSI installers.
But then modern Windows now features has packages installed through .appx, .appxbundle, .msix, .msixbundle, and plain old .exe. Windows Mobile (based on Windows CE) had .cab; Windows Phone 8/8.1 (based on Windows 8) had .xap; Windows 10 Mobile had .appx. Now Windows 11 also supports .apk files from Android!
In the end, the package method doesn't matter. Users don't care where the package comes from, they just want to install the application and run it. Deb, Flatpak, RPM and Snap all work fine from tools like Discover or GNOME Software; it really doesn't matter to normal users what kind of packaging system they use.
The thing is, none of the mainstream package formats solve the underlying problem, they just push it to a different layer.
I know what I’m saying can be regarded as “+1 different standards”, but Nix is the only truly novel approach to package management that can reliably install a huge-ass behemoth package group like Gnome, install Plasma next to it and remove both without a single garbage file laying around afterwards.
I think we really should embrace this uniquely good solution.
Indeed - and they provide separation between a stable OS (which debs are fine for) and frequent desktop app updates. I've been using Snap, Flatpak and Appimage for desktop/productivity apps (Krita, DigiKam, Spotify, Signal, calibre etc) where possible. Its been amazing getting updates in a timely fashion, sometimes straight from the developer, instead of having to wait years for the DEBs to be updated.
This is really overcomplicating it. Most mainstream end user Linux programs - including Firefox [0] - are distributed through archives you just unpack and run the binary inside, same as most Windows freeware. AppImages are just self-extracting versions of this. Most of the other formats you mention are for distro package managers - these aren't distribution formats and it's not the responsibility of the program authors to package for every distro, nor is it required for a package to be in repositories for people to run it.
Just ship an ELF binary in an archive. Include any files and libraries you need. Compile against the oldest glibc found in any system you care about supporting. That's all you need.
Comparing Windows and macOS to Linux is moot and we should stop doing it. Linux has always been and will continue to be an ecosystem driven by various communities, and expecting everyone to agree on the same standards is silly.
The sooner we all begin treating Ubuntu and Red Hat Enterprise Linux as separate Operating Systems the sooner we can all move on from the "single standard" and "Linux on Desktop" debates. As an application vendor I always find it amusing when customers ask if we support Linux. My response is no, we don't support Linux but we do support Ubuntu 18+ and RHEL 8. Linux distros are so wildly different these days, not just in software but in ideologies, that this distinction is important, and there's nothing wrong with that.
I'm willing to bet that desktop linux's market share is not going to move one way or another with any packaging format changes. The best hope currently is steam deck, which may bring a new generation of users to linux, although in a pretty limited capacity.
I would be fine with Firefox packaged as snap. If snap would have the decency of working fine with the typical configuration used in managed systems (NFS home mounts, LDAP auth and similar stuff). But it doesn't. Until that day, snap is as bad as any other deployment technique.
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.
I installed Ubuntu a few weeks ago at work because most people use it and there is some existing infrastructure around it (mostly for the target platforms, but could also be for dev machines).
I have to say that coming from Arch, it's a very Windowsy experience: lots of software has to be installed by searching for "install XYZ on Ubuntu", and following some instructions that involve scary-looking command lines that mess with cryptographic keys and add repos to my configuration, or, for a real Windows experience, install from a deb and hope you remember where you got it from when it needs an update.
I know the AUR is no more secure than that, but at least if someone makes a bogus package full of evil, it'll be flagged on that platform. If I install whatever from some random third-party repo, how will I ever know if it's gone bad?
I hope Neon (a non Ubu-family derivative of Ubuntu) is going to make a stance against snap. They can become a place of refuge for snap haters.
In the same vein I installed openSuse Thumbleweed and Fedora; as I'm looking for a way out. I hope Fedora allows me to install all opensource packages without Flatpack or I also ditch them. BTW Fedora's F35 installer has a horrible partition configurator, worst experience in two decades of installing Linux.
... 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.
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.
I couldn’t save files from Firefox to an NFS-mounted folder inside of my home directory with the snap version. I would have figured that was something that wouldn’t make it through testing.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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 .
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.
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.
I've used Fedora as my day-to-day OS for data work and web dev for the last few years. It just works with my ThinkPad, looks great (recent GNOME with Wayland is really polished) and RPMs for any tools you might need are usually available.
Any problems I have had have been with my desktop machine and I blame Nvidia 100%.
Question regarding Fedora : I tried it in a docker environment. During some googling to troubleshoot issues, several results were found on the Red Hat commercial support website (so, not accessible). I'm afraid that a good part of advanced/niche documentations and knowledge base for troubleshooting is behind Red Hat commercial support. Is that the case in practice?
Fedora is really great, but it is a bit bleeding edge in that there are lots of updates all the time. I have found Arch with an LTS kernel (I use older hardware) to be about similar in terms of stability.
Switched to Fedora after a few years of hopping from different Ubuntu-based distros and I never looked back. Only problem that's most frustrating is Wayland.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
>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)
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
AussieWog93|4 years ago
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.
cies|4 years ago
Maybe true for proprietary software, but for FLOSS it is a non issue once your software has traction and gets picked up by distributions. I wrote a piece of open source in ~2002 and it is still found in pretty much all distros AND I never spend a minute in pain over packaging difficulties.
IMHO, the basic package managers work REALLY well for FLOSS. The gave me a peak into the AppStore/PlayStore(tm) experience (but then without all the spyware), waaaaay before they even existed.
robert_foss|4 years ago
At the same time snap packages have serious downsides for end users.
nulbyte|4 years ago
AUR is explicitly a community-driven effort. The others are packing standards, some of which (like DEB and RPM) are also used in community-driven efforts. Debian and RedHat derivatives have repositories that use DEB and RPM, respectively. There's not a lot of bike-shedding, here. Availability of functional software is a pretty big feature of Linux distributions.
And there is a big difference between those community efforts and the likes of Snap, AppImage, and FlatPack, which are developer-centric. User preferences on software distribution aren't always or even usually based on irrelvent arguments, but fundamental ones. The community efforts centralize dealing with compatibility and, to an extent, security with community standards, while the developer-centric model largely leaves this work to software developers alone. This is a meaningful distinction.
jeroenhd|4 years ago
DEB vs RPM is an ancient debate, each comes with its pros and cons. Flatpak and Snap try to solve a different problem (sandboxing + dependency hell vs stable system-wide dependencies).
MacOS has PKG, but most software I've seen actually comes through DMG images or ZIP files. Windows has MSI, which, if you use it correctly, actually elegantly solves most problems; the features that were added to allow developers to bypass the declarative installation process are what usually breaks MSI installers.
But then modern Windows now features has packages installed through .appx, .appxbundle, .msix, .msixbundle, and plain old .exe. Windows Mobile (based on Windows CE) had .cab; Windows Phone 8/8.1 (based on Windows 8) had .xap; Windows 10 Mobile had .appx. Now Windows 11 also supports .apk files from Android!
In the end, the package method doesn't matter. Users don't care where the package comes from, they just want to install the application and run it. Deb, Flatpak, RPM and Snap all work fine from tools like Discover or GNOME Software; it really doesn't matter to normal users what kind of packaging system they use.
kaba0|4 years ago
I know what I’m saying can be regarded as “+1 different standards”, but Nix is the only truly novel approach to package management that can reliably install a huge-ass behemoth package group like Gnome, install Plasma next to it and remove both without a single garbage file laying around afterwards.
I think we really should embrace this uniquely good solution.
musingsnort|4 years ago
dTal|4 years ago
Just ship an ELF binary in an archive. Include any files and libraries you need. Compile against the oldest glibc found in any system you care about supporting. That's all you need.
[0] https://download-installer.cdn.mozilla.net/pub/firefox/relea...
rkv|4 years ago
The sooner we all begin treating Ubuntu and Red Hat Enterprise Linux as separate Operating Systems the sooner we can all move on from the "single standard" and "Linux on Desktop" debates. As an application vendor I always find it amusing when customers ask if we support Linux. My response is no, we don't support Linux but we do support Ubuntu 18+ and RHEL 8. Linux distros are so wildly different these days, not just in software but in ideologies, that this distinction is important, and there's nothing wrong with that.
bubblethink|4 years ago
ale42|4 years ago
0xdeadb00f|4 years ago
This is why my daily driver isn't Ubuntu (or Debain, because I also hate apt - it also sucks).
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
0xbadc0de5|4 years ago
lioeters|4 years ago
How to Fix Firefox Crashes on Ubuntu 21.10+ 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.
branon|4 years ago
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|4 years ago
philliphaydon|4 years ago
adhesive_wombat|4 years ago
I have to say that coming from Arch, it's a very Windowsy experience: lots of software has to be installed by searching for "install XYZ on Ubuntu", and following some instructions that involve scary-looking command lines that mess with cryptographic keys and add repos to my configuration, or, for a real Windows experience, install from a deb and hope you remember where you got it from when it needs an update.
I know the AUR is no more secure than that, but at least if someone makes a bogus package full of evil, it'll be flagged on that platform. If I install whatever from some random third-party repo, how will I ever know if it's gone bad?
Also, PKGBUILDs are just so easy.
jsilence|4 years ago
Strongly eyeing NixOS and patiently awaiting real work experience from a co-worker who already did the plunge.
MattPalmer1086|4 years ago
gs17|4 years ago
cies|4 years ago
In the same vein I installed openSuse Thumbleweed and Fedora; as I'm looking for a way out. I hope Fedora allows me to install all opensource packages without Flatpack or I also ditch them. BTW Fedora's F35 installer has a horrible partition configurator, worst experience in two decades of installing Linux.
ale42|4 years ago
spaniard89277|4 years ago
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.
wj|4 years ago
compsciphd|4 years ago
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|4 years ago
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.
sm4rk0|4 years ago
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/19620...
codethief|3 years ago
> 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 .
SahAssar|4 years ago
This is what made me switch off ubuntu.
sm4rk0|4 years ago
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.
jeffparsons|4 years ago
petepete|4 years ago
Any problems I have had have been with my desktop machine and I blame Nvidia 100%.
smackeyacky|4 years ago
stockerta|4 years ago
antpls|4 years ago
approxim8ion|4 years ago
0xbadc0de5|4 years ago
slategruen|4 years ago
speedgoose|4 years ago
NGRhodes|4 years ago
account42|4 years ago
matthewmacleod|4 years ago
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.
robto|4 years ago
sreevisakh|4 years ago
jckahn|4 years ago
suyjuris|4 years ago
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.
ppseafield|4 years ago
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
haunter|4 years ago
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)
kkfx|4 years ago
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|4 years ago
In short: what are you talking about?
nicolaslem|4 years ago
pabs3|4 years ago
https://www.ghacks.net/2022/03/17/each-firefox-download-has-...
rohanrd-xyz|4 years ago
watchdogtimer|4 years ago
tannhaeuser|4 years ago
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|4 years ago
stuntkite|3 years ago
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.
GNOMES|4 years ago
spyc|4 years ago
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
New_California|4 years ago
savant_penguin|4 years ago
aero-glide2|4 years ago
stewbrew|4 years ago
rhamzeh|4 years ago
Hopefully soon I'll move off Ubuntu to greener pastures. Fedora Silverlight seems particularly intriguing.
FrenchAmerican|4 years ago
"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|4 years ago
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.
lproven|4 years ago
https://sourceforge.net/p/ubuntuzilla/wiki/Main_Page/
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
jjgreen|4 years ago
fransje26|4 years ago
They are committed to continue distributing Firefox as a .deb package, following upstream as closely as possible.
https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4244
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
encryptluks2|4 years ago
throwawaymanbot|4 years ago
[deleted]