Related:
How to Fix Firefox Crashes on Ubuntu 21.10+ https://www.mikekasberg.com/blog/2022/03/21/how-to-fix-firef...
> ..The snap version of Firefox currently suffers from several problems that can lead to a bad user experience, including crashes.
Their recommendation is to backup everything (bookmarks, settings), remove the snap, and install via apt or self-contained zip.
I don't like this at all. The Firefox snap has really bad crashing issues, and the filesystem sandbox makes using the file picker confusing especially for my nontechnical family members.
I tried using the snap, I really gave it an honest attempt, and it stinks. The final straw was when removing and reinstalling the snap deleted my Firefox profile. That was really unacceptable. Removing Firefox via apt doesn't wipe out ~/.mozilla
Snapd is now removed and pinned with negative priority on my Ubuntu systems so it will never be installed.
I'd like to find a PPA that builds vanilla Firefox but so far I've only come across ESR and Beta.
I've considered switching to Chromium over this nonsense though I'll try running tarball Firefox first, I didn't realize it could update itself. Maybe Librewolf is an option too.
I don’t think I’ll ever use ubuntu again. The continued forcing of snap is killing it for me.
... on our systems we removed snapd on purpose, because we only have problems with it (we have NFS-mounted homes, and many snap packages don't work in this configuration)... now Firefox on snap doesn't sound good for us.
I'll take a counter approach. it makes sense to install firefox via snap.
firefox breaks if you overwrite its files. therefore installing "normall" via dpkg is bad while firefox is in use (especially on a multi user system). running via a container ensures that the existing running processes don't break while allowing you to upgrade and have any new instance get the new version.
there are reasons to dislike snap, but the usage of containers (even as simply a packaging mechanism, not any form of isolation) can improve user experience.
> Canonical and Mozilla are working together to make the firefox snap the only supported package in Ubuntu, thus deprecating the deb package in the archive.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/19620...
Native messaging (which I use for my password manager) is broken. Screen sharing is broken. File picking/saving is hit and miss. It takes longer to start. My list of disks in bottom is riddled with random snap mounts.
This is what made me switch off ubuntu.
I've been hearing good things about modern Fedora as an alternative "boring" operating system. Maybe now is the time to make the switch.
Conversely Linux Mint has agreed for Mozilla to provide debs directly for Mint. https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4244
I generally try to keep a pretty open mind about new approaches to traditional systems, and I think it's honestly pretty obvious that there is scope for a whole new approach to distributing applications on Linux platforms.
All of that said, snaps are unfortunately not a good solution. The implementation sucks, the tooling sucks, the distribution channels suck. Ubuntu Core is an abomination. The lack of ability to control updates or publish a private repository are basically unforgivable and obvious manipulations of the platform. I don't think it's possible to say too many bad things about how bad the ecosystem is generally and how poorly Canonical have behaved.
The whole situation honestly sucks, because there there really is a need for a comprehensive and open solution for the challenges that the "snap" ecosystem is trying to address. All it's currently managing to do is get me off of Ubuntu as quickly as possible, which is probably not the goal.
I've been using NixOS for several years and one of the pain points was frequently updating software - the updates don't come out until the package definitions get updated. Last year I just started using Flatpak for those packages and it works a treat - plus, I can keep the proprietary, non-free software that I need out of my system config, which I like. Snap is a non-starter, and while I hope more software shows up properly, reproducibly packaged for Nix, Flatpak is the next best thing.
I get the hate against snaps. I tried really hard to give them a chance, but in my experience it’s a generally poor user experience. What I don’t get is why people feel like they need to leave Ubuntu because of it. Flatpak et al. work just as well on Ubuntu as anything else. Simply not using snaps on Ubuntu seems like a simpler solution than abandoning the distro altogether (assuming you don’t distro hop for fun).
Another good reason to ditch a distro once honest, well done, but things change, now just a distro that push commercial crap. It's not a bold statement, snap, flatpack, appimage exists ONLY for commercial purposes.
The FLOSS world works with
- devs :: who write and publish code without the need to support any specific distro, packaging etc, many also package for their own favorite distro but that's a mere choice, many others just manually build their own code to have is hyper-fresh;
- packagers :: who package "upstream" code, some are distro core developers who package system things, others more or less casual packagers who package various software they use/need/like. They all provide patches as needed, ideas, well done bugreports to devs, they are not "a burden" but the core of the model, the ones who provide quality testing and reporting to devs, something no end-users do without a tremendous background noise, something no commercial software devs can get, the key to hi quality of FLOSS;
- generic users :: who profit from a complete distro, the one that fist their need most, offering casual bugreports, ideas, background noise as any casual user do, but filtered by distro community itself and distro packager the best kind of "data lake" that matched to packages form the best kind of automated expert system;
"modern" app-only packages serve a sole purpose: cut the packagers, cut off the distro variety pushing distros to mere cargo ship of apps, well separating "code producer" to "customers", something harmful for FLOSS but vital for commerce, the sole way a proprietary software house to stay afloat without the need to give code to a community, without the need of a community that help, of course, but also demand and pretend useful features and not anti-users lock-in.
IMVHO FSF should write a formal statements: supporting those limited and limiting (they can't work at system level) package systems means supporting commercial crap against FLOSS so distro who choose them must be considered Troy Horses in the FLOSS land. Unfortunately FSF receive too many funds by some interested party so I doubt that happen and that's another good reason to discuss the actual FLOSS sorry state reviving classic models from usenet to email-based development, modernized in UI/frontends terms for young devs, with modern video-tutorials etc, but pushed as much as possible to teach people the FLOSS model not the commercial model in disguise.
For me the best way to run Firefox on Debian based system is to download the compiled tar and extract it somewhere in my home dir. This way I get update through Firefox itself (like on Windows/MacOS).
I'll be the first one to moan that browsers have become way too complex beasts. What's left of the idea that a browser is a (moderately complex) commodity item to view docs on the web bundled with your O/S of choice? Now we must update our browsers more frequently than the fscking web pages.
I understand why they do it - as browsers have become kitchen sinks, their API surface has become enormous. But at the same time, the stuff you actually want to read on the web is really getting few and far between, making constant x GiB browser updates uneconomical from an information theory standpoint, so to speak. Especially with FF updates in the habit to require restarts (why?) at the worst possible points in time for me.
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.
Biggest grip with Snaps is the longer start times. Otherwise I personally enjoy the auto updating of my applications.
One more reason to add to list "Why I recommend Debian over Ubuntu by now" (https://blog.hartwork.org/posts/why-i-recommend-debian-over-...).
Very bad, snap is crap.
So it's time to learn to compile Firefox from source, got it
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.
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.
I have not tried 22.04 yet, but it sounds like Ubuntuzilla may win some new users in the near future.
Euch, so what happens in Mint/Ubuntu which has so-far avoided this snap nastiness?
Some of the best projects come from Ubuntu employees... after they quit from the toxic culture and can finally think for themselves.
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/Mac system, no issues.
On Linux, an OS with 3% market share, there are more competing standards to count: Deb, RPM, snap, FlatPak, AUR, AppImage and probably a dozen other semi-popular ones. Every individual user has their opinion (and they'll voice it!) as to which standard is the best. At best, this leads to God knows how many man-hours of duplicated work packaging and QAing. At worst, it leads to the dev abandoning the thought of Linux altogether.
Linux on Desktop simply can't move forward by continued bike-shedding over frankly irrelevant details. Even if the only rationale for a standard is "Because Mike Shuttleworth said so, and he got a phone call from Mandela in space", that's a massive improvement over the current status quo.