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Firefox now only available via snap on Ubuntu

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Re: Firefox now only available via snap on Ubuntu

#141

Post by dataangel »

cies wrote: post #52
AussieWog93 wrote: post #32

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…

> 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 fo…

Having N distributions repeat almost identical packaging work on different schedules and sometimes falling many versions behind is not a "non issue". You're excusing something Linux is genuinely bad at. I say this as someone using it personally and professionally for 12+ years.

Re: Firefox now only available via snap on Ubuntu

#142

Post by aragilar »

dataangel wrote: post #141
cies wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 fo…

Having N distributions repeat almost identical packaging work on different schedules and sometimes falling many versions behind is not a "non issue". You're excusing something Linux is genuinely bad at. I say this as someone using it personally and professionally for 12+ years.

Sure some distros have many derivatives, but it's not obvious to me that you can stop that (see Android for a different open-source ecosystem, and how fractured that is), nor that is always a bad thing, as it allows experimentation which can flow up to the parents.

I'm not sure though "almost identical packaging work" is accurate, maybe that applies to Debian and Fedora (and their derivatives), but Gentoo and Nix are examples of doing something quite different (not to mention the different embedded distros), and so the "duplicate work" is anything but that.

Re: Firefox now only available via snap on Ubuntu

#143

Post by pabs3 »

xcdzvyn wrote: post #90
pabs3 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are downloading the tarball from Mozilla, then you are affected by this telemetry: https://www.ghacks.net/2022/03/17/each-firefox-download-has-...

I don't think that's the case; the telemetry is part of the installer, not the installed binary (that the tarball would contain)

The article says the download id is transmitted to Mozilla on first run, so it must be part of the installed binary?

However, the article does say the Mozilla FTP site doesn't have the download id.

Re: Firefox now only available via snap on Ubuntu

#144

Post by cies »

aragilar wrote: post #142
dataangel wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having N distributions repeat almost identical packaging work on different schedules and sometimes falling many versions behind is not a "non issue". You're excusing something Linux is genuinely bad at. I say this as someone using it personally and professionally for 12+ years.

Sure some distros have many derivatives, but it's not obvious to me that you can stop that (see Android for a different open-source ecosystem, and how fractured that is), nor that is always a bad thing, as it allows experimentation which can flow up to the parents. I'm not sure though "almost identical packaging work" is accurate, maybe that applies to Debian and Fedora (and their derivatives), but Gentoo and Nix are…

Also I was replying to:

> it would solve one of Linux's biggest pain points as a software developer.

Not the pain of the distro-people. That may be mitigated with a universal standard of snap or flatpak.

Re: Firefox now only available via snap on Ubuntu

#145

Post by forgotpwd16 »

sph wrote: post #84
jckahn wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this comment demonstrates the parent’s point.

Before every distro had their own package management system and repository. Then 99% went with Flatpak, except one, Ubuntu with their own proprietary solution called snap. It's not the same thing. We have a decent (yeah not perfect, I'll spare commenters the effort of posting that same old tired flatpak rebuttal) cross distro packaging solution, but Canonical always wants to play different and not collaborate with th…

What 99%? Fedora, Mint, eOS, Pop use Flatpak. Ubuntu (and derivatives other than aforementioned ones) and Solus use Snap. In every other distro, including but not limited to popular ones like Debian, SUSE, Slackware, Arch, Void, Gentoo, both are optional. Neither Flatpak nor Snap is standard.

Re: Firefox now only available via snap on Ubuntu

#146

Post by ale42 »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #32

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…

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.

Re: Firefox now only available via snap on Ubuntu

#147

Post by rhamzeh »

FrenchAmerican wrote: post #106

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.

The problem isn't Mozilla/Firefox in this case. It is Canonical/Ubuntu.

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.

Re: Firefox now only available via snap on Ubuntu

#148

Post by rhamzeh »

aero-glide2 wrote: post #35

Snap/flatpack is one of the best things to happen to Linux desktop. I no longer have to worry about messed up installs and missing dependencies.

I love flatpak. I consider snap to be just bloatware I have to wipe of my system on installation.

Hopefully soon I'll move off Ubuntu to greener pastures. Fedora Silverlight seems particularly intriguing.

Re: Firefox now only available via snap on Ubuntu

#149

Post by rhamzeh »

Spivak wrote: post #108
Karunamon wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you want Firefox or some other apps where the deb package is a thin frontend around a snap install command.

Fair criticism, but wouldn't you be installing the Flatpak versions of those apps anyway? I get the loss of the distro-provided builds but in abstract I can't find some fundamental reason distros can't drop packages from their repos.

I'd rather a package report as `does-not-exist` and suggest I install it from snap over it installing it silently from snap without my input

Re: Firefox now only available via snap on Ubuntu

#150

Post by stuntkite »

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.

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