this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
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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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[–] Morphit@feddit.uk 35 points 9 hours ago (1 children)
[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca -4 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

From a security standpoint? Not even close. From a software-release validation requirement, not even in the same galaxy. If they look the same, it's only due to Clarke's law.

[–] Baaahb@feddit.nl 7 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

You are missing the attribution. The person you are replying to is making a joke that Canonical says they are the same, not that they are actually the same.

[–] hedgehog@ttrpg.network 3 points 5 hours ago

Clearly they’re cosplaying as a Canonical engineer whose internal explanation and pleas for them to not take this approach fell upon deaf ears /j

[–] Morphit@feddit.uk 7 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

In Ubuntu they are the same. firefox version 1:1snap1-0ubuntu5 is a deb that literally runs the command snap install firefox in the preinst script. Check line 77 in firefox-1snap1/debian/firefox.preinst in the source tarball: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/1:1snap1-0ubuntu5

There's no magic there.

[–] IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org -3 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

That is not the same thing as "snap and apt Firefox are the same". They just hijacked apt to force snap in.

[–] Morphit@feddit.uk 8 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

So both commands do the same thing... right? I'm not saying snap and apt are the same in general.

[–] IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah for sure, I read your comment as excusing canonical screwing with user intent but I see that's not what you meant.

[–] Morphit@feddit.uk 1 points 3 hours ago

Yeah, I really dislike snap and have puppet clean it out and add in the real mozilla repo for me. If I wanted sandboxed apps I'd probably look at flatpak but I think there's still work to be done there also.

[–] Baaahb@feddit.nl 4 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

You are missing the attribution. The person you are replying to is making a joke that Canonical says they are the same, not that they are actually the same.

[–] Morphit@feddit.uk 1 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

Well, yes, except Canonical have made them actually do the same thing in the case of Firefox. I'm not aware of any other packages that have the deb install just run the snap install.

[–] Baaahb@feddit.nl 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Yep, I am agreeing with you. The statement was never snap and deb are identical, its that canonical is making them do identical things.

[–] Morphit@feddit.uk 1 points 3 hours ago

Yeah, I just liked that bit of the meme. In the prank the meme is based on, they really are the same.

[–] mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Morphit@feddit.uk 1 points 5 hours ago

Yup, apt install chromium-browser calls snap install chromium. Looks like thunderbird is the same. There's a fwupd-snap deb but fwupd seems to be the default.