I ran “sudo apt install firefox” and it installed a freaking snap!
Today I learned that Ubuntu just decides to install snaps instead of the apt package.
What the hell.
> The Snap Store, also known as the Ubuntu Store, is a commercial centralized software store operated by Canonical.
and
> This is a store we can’t audit, which contains software nobody can patch. If we can’t fix or modify software, open-source or not, it provides the same limitations as proprietary software.
https://linuxmint-user-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/snap.h... https://linuxmint.com/
They go so smoothly that I always think I must have forgotten something. The only things I've learned to watch out for are networking changes, like the semi-recent interface name changes, network shares (samba protocol changes), and updates on stuff relating to encryption standards (ssh/ssl.)
But in those case I think problems are plainly that the upstream doesn't really want to support distro packaging, we had some mess because the just one version decided... to start changing the name of packages and services for no good reason.
Most of the "bad script complained on uninstall" I got from 3rd party packages, which is funny as we have people in this thread complaining its "too hard" to get the package in the distro and the exact reason for that is to have as little problems like that as possible.
I guess I could say the same for GNOME, but that's what my users are familiar with. The Ubuntu and GNOME setup works well - for now.
RHEL is probably also used more in the industry than Mint, that doesn't mean you should prefer it as desktop OS. Debian is solid, no question, but its derivatives became successful for a reason.
The RHEL desktop is quite a bit better with RHEL 9 than it was in its predecessors.
Hats off to the fine people behind Linux Mint.
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2022/04/how-to-install-firefox-d...
I don't know why they did that, and I am a bit worried I will have to abandon Ubuntu if they move more packages to snaps in the next release. But for now all you need to do is the workaround above for Firefox.
I now remember getting confused about which one to install, mentally making a note about Docker having been snap'ified, and counting one more strike (perhaps the final one) towards eradicating snap from my system.
What made you switch from macOS?
Also, the system update approach of macOS seems quite hostile to slow and/or metered connections.
- Apt installs traditional deb packages
- The software center GUI has a dropdown to pick between Flatpack & Deb, defaulting to Flatpack.
I think this is a decent setup. Apt not doing what I'm used to infuriates me, but it feels vibely fitting for a gui to default to Flatpacks.
Then install flatpak. It has chromium and Firefox.
The most popular repo 'flathub' is filled with flatpak apps that are built from manifests where they are just downloading random debs and extracting them to get the binary instead of actually building anything from source.
It's a mullet package manager.. business in the front, party in the back.
Second, while the idea of sandboxing sounds nice, when it's done to arbitrary packages that might not even be written with sandboxing in mind, all sorts of bugginess can result, in addition to a bunch of friction. E.g on Pop OS the 7zip GUI for linux is a flatpak, and 7zip might leave half made archives around if it crashes during archiving. But now you have to go find some place 8 folders deep into the root filesystem to find and delete it. All sorts of other annoying interactions with filesystems can occur with flatpak'd programs.
It just muddies the waters and makes things more complicated. It makes much more sense to just have a reasonable, flexible method of sandboxing, independent of packages, that I can apply to whatever software I want to as needed, like jails on FreeBSD.
In short, bundling sandboxing with the package manager breaks with the UNIX philosophy: it does two unrelated things, neither of them well.
On Ubuntu we shouldn't have to be forced to accept snap packaging for the browser, but we are. Canonical make a number of shit decisions, chasing some corporate dollars, and using flatpak is something you can do without rebuilding everything yourself.
I think the concept is just fundamentally flawed. I'm planning on moving back to Arch or maybe try Guix just to get away from all this Linux trying to be Windows nonsense. I don't like Windows and I think we can do better without imitating it so much, and so poorly.
It's weird, I used to think Linux would only ever get better to use, but the more mainstream distros kind of peaked around 2010 in terms of ergonomics for technically minded users. And the experience seems to have become increasingly opaque and frustrating since then, all to chase some desktop adoption that never really materialised anyway, and what do we have to show for it? Greybeards like me are unhappy, nontechnical people still find the OS chafy and inpenetrable.
That's something the package maintainer should consider.
>bundling sandboxing with the package manager
Flatpak utilizes bubblewrap for sandboxing that can be used independently. Flatpak merely provides ("packages" someone can say) the instructions for it.
Like... wtf ? They'd had to patch apt to even do that...
see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-advantage-t...
Now they've stepped onto this slippery slope, I don't intend to be on the ride with them on the way down.
You install a package called firefox that on install installs the snap and on uninstall removes it.