Yeah they've been doing that for a while
this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
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They started doing that in a couple of years back. Saw quite a bit of backlash in the Linux news media at the time.
That snap shit was so bad it made me switch to Arch.
I'm aware that when the user runs(without adding Mozilla's apt repository),
sudo apt install firefox
the snap version of Firefox is installed. But I never heard that, though APT is configured to install Firefox from Mozilla's repository, the DEB version will be uninstalled and the Snap version will be installed.
Firefox now has instructions on their "Debian-based" install section about pinning their repo over Canonical's so that doesn't happen.
Because you're right, Canonical does think so highly of their product that they will constantly attempt to undermine other options against your will.
Yes, this is known. They do the same for Chromium. If you want a browser from ubuntu, it's going to be a snap.
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I suggest Mint or straight Debian. I prefer Mint for anything graphical, Debian for headless
Why use Mint when Mx exists.
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It is one of the reasons many people turn away from Ubuntu.
They have been doing this for a while.
Would recommend you to stick to MX,Mint or if you care only about stability and not Updates debian.
Not a secret, but annoying as hell. I usually replace it with a Flatpak and uninstall Snap.
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Yes. That was the last straw for me. I switched to debian stable, and haven't looked back since
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Not secretly, no.
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.
It takes a little more than just adding a different repository to your package manager, you have to tell apt which to prefer:
echo '
Package: *
Pin: origin packages.mozilla.org
Pin-Priority: 1000
Package: firefox*
Pin: release o=Ubuntu
Pin-Priority: -1' | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/mozilla
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Definitely not you, they absolutely do this with snaps and have for a while. This was the main reason I stopped using Ubuntu.
This is why i switched to Debian. It's 99% of Ubuntu, without the crap.
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Jesus Christ this is Windows-tier insane computing behaviour from Ubuntu. Fuck Ubuntu.
At this point, why is anyone using Ubuntu for desktop? You have soooo many options
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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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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).
Switch to Debian and you'll be fine :)
It's a known and documented issue that Ubuntu does. They secretly install the Snap version, even if you tried to install the Deb package. This is an issue since years: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1345385/how-can-i-stop-apt-from-installing-snap-packages (posted 3 years and 7 months ago)
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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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I battled that for about a year and then ditched Debian based diatros altogether.
OpenSUSE ftw
You could have gone pure Debian. There are no snap shenanigans over there :)
OpenSuse is also a great pick tho!
This isn't Debian's fault! It's purely an Ubuntu/Canonical problem. Debian's only apt by default, no snap.
I've had it happen too. In fact it is what prompted me to move away from Kubuntu.
Ubuntu uses Snap as first-class method to install software. So if a piece of software is available as DEB or Snap, Ubuntu will always use Snap.
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