this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025

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181

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

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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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[–] shy_mia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Yeah they've been doing that for a while

[–] Revan343@lemmy.ca 24 points 18 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 17 hours ago (1 children)

What benifit does Mint have over Debian for anything graphical?

[–] Revan343@lemmy.ca 8 points 17 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 16 hours ago (1 children)

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

OpenSUSE ftw

[–] Noble_bacon@lemmy.ml 3 points 8 hours 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 11 points 19 hours ago

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

[–] Quazatron@lemmy.world 25 points 22 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 7 points 19 hours ago

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

[–] secret300 38 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah it's not really a secret

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[–] Morphit@feddit.uk 57 points 1 day ago (15 children)

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[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 11 points 23 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 10 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Docker in a snap is too meta for me.

[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 4 points 17 hours ago

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

[–] Strit@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show 91 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 44 points 1 day 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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[–] zod000@lemmy.ml 26 points 1 day ago

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

[–] SatanClaus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 39 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Solve the problem. Drop ubunutu

[–] Mubelotix@jlai.lu -1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] SatanClaus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 hours ago

I like my operating system to work for me not against me. So no. I'll just never use their shitty spin of Linux and rely on someone that makes a quality distro. Not one that forced it's users to use their pile of shit proprietary nonsense.

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

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

[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 15 points 1 day ago (9 children)

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

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[–] MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml 42 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 21 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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[–] LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 1 day ago

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

[–] notabot@lemm.ee 15 points 1 day 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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[–] 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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[–] dbkblk@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago

Switch to Debian and you'll be fine :)

[–] beeng@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 day 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

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