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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[–] Revan343@lemmy.ca 3 points 27 minutes ago (1 children)

I suggest Mint or straight Debian. I prefer Mint for anything graphical, Debian for headless

[–] neomachino@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 10 minutes ago

What benifit does Mint have over Debian for anything graphical?

[–] friend_of_satan@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago

Welcome to 2020, where Debian is once again your trusted distro.

[–] limelight79@lemm.ee 4 points 2 hours ago

I've had it happen too. In fact it is what prompted me to move away from Kubuntu.

[–] Quazatron@lemmy.world 12 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Not a secret, but annoying as hell. I usually replace it with a Flatpak and uninstall Snap.

[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Agreed, not a secret, and not wanted. I uninstall Firefox and install Google Chrome from a .deb - disadvantage: you have to update it manually. Advantage: it doesn't update itself automatically.

[–] antithetical@lemmy.deedium.nl 11 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Disadvantage: you're now using a browser from the biggest ~~spy~~ ad-ware company and killed web heterogeneity.

Try: Firefox from Mozilla-Team PPA

[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 0 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Too late, they own my soul already. I have successfully resisted Meta, X, Microsoft, and any number of lesser daemons, but the one true G has shown me their light and I am unable to look away.

[–] antithetical@lemmy.deedium.nl 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

Try sunglasses? But maybe other souls can still be saved from evil..

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 8 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

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).

[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 5 points 4 hours ago

Docker in a snap is too meta for me.

[–] secret300@lemmy.sdf.org 31 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah it's not really a secret

[–] ritchie@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago

I got a notification about it when I upgraded from 20.04 LTS that they will only serve it as a snap package.

[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 12 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

This is why i switched to Debian. It's 99% of Ubuntu, without the crap.

[–] ritchie@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago

I must have hit that 1% last time. I assembled a new PC, wanted to install debian and could not get a login screen after installation. At that point I wanted something that just works. I installed Xubuntu and had the machine ready right away.

[–] beeng@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 8 hours ago (3 children)

I.... I.... I don't know why I haven't done that myself. (Am now on NixOS btw) but for work maybe I ask for Debian cloud box.

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[–] beeng@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 7 hours ago

My work cannot manage permissions well so I cannot remove snap Firefox cos its in use by another user.

Meanwhile current snap version of Firefox is crashing on my profile

[–] daggermoon@lemmy.world 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Is KDE Neon still broken? For awhile it was the only Ubuntu based distro I'd recommend. Yes, I know about Mint but no HDR or Wayland.

[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 2 points 4 hours ago

I'm reasonably happy with XFCE/Xubuntu - it's not as slick of a desktop as KDE or Gnome, and in some ways that's a great thing.

[–] zod000@lemmy.ml 20 points 10 hours ago

Definitely not you, they absolutely do this with snaps and have for a while. This was the main reason I stopped using Ubuntu.

[–] Morphit@feddit.uk 37 points 12 hours ago (14 children)
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[–] doubtingtammy@lemmy.ml 33 points 12 hours ago (4 children)

Yes. That was the last straw for me. I switched to debian stable, and haven't looked back since

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[–] SatanClaus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 32 points 12 hours ago

Solve the problem. Drop ubunutu

[–] Strit@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show 73 points 15 hours ago (5 children)

They started doing that in a couple of years back. Saw quite a bit of backlash in the Linux news media at the time.

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[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 53 points 14 hours ago

It is one of the reasons many people turn away from Ubuntu.

[–] MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml 41 points 14 hours ago (8 children)
[–] IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz 17 points 13 hours ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] phar@lemmy.ml 16 points 12 hours ago (16 children)

At this point, why is anyone using Ubuntu for desktop? You have soooo many options

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[–] notabot@lemm.ee 13 points 12 hours ago (3 children)

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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