this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025

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163

Is it me or Ubuntu secretly replaces DEB Firefox with Snap Firefox? (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 day ago by sourov@lemm.ee to c/linux@lemmy.ml

124 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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

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[–] shy_mia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 9 minutes ago* (last edited 9 minutes ago)

Yeah they've been doing that for a while

[–] Revan343@lemmy.ca 17 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] neomachino@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

What benifit does Mint have over Debian for anything graphical?

[–] Revan343@lemmy.ca 6 points 11 hours ago

I've just found it's more polished right out of the box. Definitely more new-user-friendly, like Ubuntu, but with Snap gutted out.

I have been using the regular Mint (based on Ubuntu), but I'm probably going to use the Debian edition next time I install a new system

[–] TxTechnician@lemmy.ml 7 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

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

OpenSUSE ftw

[–] Noble_bacon@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 hour ago

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

OpenSuse is also a great pick tho!

[–] friend_of_satan@lemmy.world 9 points 13 hours ago

Welcome to 2020, where Debian is once again your trusted distro.

[–] Quazatron@lemmy.world 22 points 16 hours ago (8 children)

Not a secret, but annoying as hell. I usually replace it with a Flatpak and uninstall Snap.

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[–] limelight79@lemm.ee 5 points 13 hours ago

I've had it happen too. In fact it is what prompted me to move away from Kubuntu.

[–] secret300@lemmy.sdf.org 36 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah it's not really a secret

[–] ritchie@lemmy.world 5 points 19 hours ago

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

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 10 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

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

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

[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 9 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Docker in a snap is too meta for me.

[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 4 points 11 hours ago

Just wait for snap 2.0 which actually runs everything inside docker containers /s

[–] Morphit@feddit.uk 51 points 23 hours ago (15 children)

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[–] zod000@lemmy.ml 25 points 22 hours ago

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

[–] Strit@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show 87 points 1 day ago (5 children)

They started doing that in a couple of years back. Saw quite a bit of backlash in the Linux news media at the time.

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[–] doubtingtammy@lemmy.ml 40 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Yes. That was the last straw for me. I switched to debian stable, and haven't looked back since

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[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 14 points 20 hours ago (6 children)

This is why i switched to Debian. It's 99% of Ubuntu, without the crap.

[–] ritchie@lemmy.world 5 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 2 points 10 hours ago

Thats... odd. The installer packages aren't really that different. When was this?

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[–] SatanClaus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 35 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Solve the problem. Drop ubunutu

[–] Mubelotix@jlai.lu 0 points 4 hours ago

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

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 61 points 1 day ago

It is one of the reasons many people turn away from Ubuntu.

[–] MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml 39 points 1 day ago (9 children)

Not secretly, no.

[–] IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz 23 points 1 day ago (3 children)

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

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[–] phar@lemmy.ml 20 points 1 day ago (16 children)

At this point, why is anyone using Ubuntu for desktop? You have soooo many options

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[–] beeng@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 19 hours ago

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

Meanwhile current snap version of Firefox is crashing on my profile

[–] LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 1 day ago

Jesus Christ this is Windows-tier insane computing behaviour from Ubuntu. Fuck Ubuntu.

[–] dbkblk@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago

Switch to Debian and you'll be fine :)

[–] accideath@lemmy.world 22 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Wasn’t that one of the main critiques of snap/ubuntu/canonical a few years ago already?

Among my personal dislike for its shade of purple, that has been my primary reason to not recommend ubuntu for a while, at least.

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