this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
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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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[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 hours ago

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

OpenSUSE ftw

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

What benifit does Mint have over Debian for anything graphical?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 hours ago

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

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 hours ago (6 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 hours ago

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

[–] [email protected] 8 points 12 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).

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Docker in a snap is too meta for me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago

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

[–] [email protected] 34 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah it's not really a secret

[–] [email protected] 4 points 14 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.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 19 hours ago (15 children)
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[–] [email protected] 14 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 15 hours ago (4 children)

I.... I.... I don't know why I haven't done that myself. (Am now on NixOS btw) but for work maybe I ask for Debian cloud box.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 14 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago

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

[–] [email protected] 41 points 19 hours ago (4 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 17 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.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Solve the problem. Drop ubunutu

[–] [email protected] 1 points 25 seconds ago

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

[–] [email protected] 85 points 22 hours 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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[–] [email protected] 57 points 21 hours ago

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 14 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

[–] [email protected] 43 points 21 hours ago (8 children)
[–] [email protected] 21 points 20 hours 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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[–] [email protected] 18 points 19 hours ago (16 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Is KDE Neon still broken? For awhile it was the only Ubuntu based distro I'd recommend. Yes, I know about Mint but no HDR or Wayland.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago

I'm reasonably happy with XFCE/Xubuntu - it's not as slick of a desktop as KDE or Gnome, and in some ways that's a great thing.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 19 hours ago (3 children)

I suspect that what's happened is you installed the apt version, then at some point upgraded it and there was a version in the main repo that had a higher version number and installed the snap version. If two repositories both have a package with the same name, and no other rules in place, the higher version number wins.

If that is the case, you need to pin the firefox package to the mozilla repository. You can find more details here: https://wiki.debian.org/AptConfiguration

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 21 hours ago

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

[–] [email protected] 18 points 21 hours ago

Switch to Debian and you'll be fine :)

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