Couldn’t the same argument be made for any distro? They give you what they put in their repos. If you want a deb package, use the mozillateam PPA (which is built on Canonical’s hardware, same as Mozilla’s snap of it).
the difference is that the folder/package structure for other package manager is open and well known
everyone can host their own i.e. apt, pacman or Flatpak repository with little effort
the required folder/package structure for snaps is no longer open and you cannot change the default snap repository either easily
The package structure for snaps is very much open, as is the API for a snap store. There was for a long time an open source snap store implementation, but it died out due to lack of interest by others in actually hosting their own stores, which to me says a lot about whether people actually want to host their own repo or just want to use it as a way to complain.
IIRC, the issue was that - unless you take steps to explicitly prevent it - Ubuntu would occasionally reinstall the snap version. I don’t remember the details, been a while since I had to dance that dance, but I recall it being one of the things that put me off snap in particular, Ubuntu in general and sparked my search for a different distro.
I’m now on Nobara, a Fedora-based gaming-oriented distro maintained by GloriousEgroll (who also maintains the popular Proton-GE)
Like with any time you’re trying to select a specific source for a package, you need to set apt configuration to prefer that source. It’s standard apt behaviour with a standard way to configure it.
Correct me there, but wasn’t the “select source” thing intended to be about different deb sources?
The issue is that what you expect to be a deb package manager ends up redirecting to snap anyway. It’s not a different source, it’s a different system. If I have to manually take steps to avoid using the distro vendor’s default sources because they just redirect to a system I don’t want to use, I might as well look for a different vendor.
It’s literally a choice between what deb you want to get. One is a transitional package that installs a different package on the system (in this case the snap) as Debian transitional packages have done for decades, and the other is a third party package that provides the app rather than the transitional package. Just as when there was the ffmpeg vs. libav split, if you don’t want the transitional package to be installed and you want your third-party package from a different repository, you have to tell apt that.
Thanks for that correction then. I wasn’t conscious of that detail.
In any case, the issue remains that, if the vendor’s default repositories push for a type of package I don’t want, I either have to manually find and vet third party repositories I trust or find someone else to rely on for defaults I’m fine with.
The difference between “I want a different source for a single package, so I’ll manually select a different source for that one” and “I don’t trust Canonical to select sources I agree with anymore” is one of scale. I’m fine with manually pinning the transitional package, uninstalling it and the snap (hopefully remembering to back up my profile before realising that it also deletes user data) adding a ppa, reinstalling it and reimporting my profiles just for firefox.
But if I feel like I have to fight my distro vendor over not using their preferred package distribution system, it’s probably better to jump ship - other vendors have beautiful distros too.
(Also, “you can just use a different source” is part of the reason people prefer not to use snap, where you can’t do that)
If you’re fighting your distro vendor over the choice of packages they’re providing in their repos, then yeah, you should probably use another distro. But that’s exactly what I was saying in my original comment above. If you don’t like rpms or flatpaks, you shouldn’t be using Fedora either, since those two packaging technologies are what Fedora uses for their distribution. For me the Linux Mint developers’ hostility to snaps (which in my experience tend to be the best trade-offs for my needs) is one of the many reasons I won’t use or suggest Mint.
KDE Neon provides their own packages in their repo that add Mozilla’s apt repository for Firefox as well as setting up the preferences. In fact, here’s the file, which gets placed in /etc/apt/preferences.d/org-kde-neon-packages-mozilla-org-pin:
# SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-only OR GPL-3.0-only OR LicenseRef-KDE-Accepted-GPL# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2022 Harald Sitter <[email protected]>Package:firefoxPin:releaseo=packages.mozilla.orgPin-Priority:1000Package:firefox-*Pin:releaseo=packages.mozilla.orgPin-Priority:1000Package:firefox-locale-*Pin:releaseo=packages.mozilla.orgPin-Priority:1000
The great part of KDE Neon’s approach to it is that since I do want the Firefox snap on my KDE Neon laptop, I can simply run sudo apt remove neon-repositories-mozilla-firefox firefox && sudo apt update && sudo apt install firefox to get the snapped version of Firefox.
Also, snapd keeps a snapshot of your per-revision configuration from an app for a while after you remove it. You can run snap saved to see all the current snapshots. It doesn’t remove your $SNAP_USER_COMMON directory for that snap (which is where the Firefox snap stores its profiles), so moving from the snapped Firefox to the version from apt is just a matter of moving the .mozilla directory out of ~/snap/firefox/common to ~/
Couldn’t the same argument be made for any distro? They give you what they put in their repos. If you want a deb package, use the mozillateam PPA (which is built on Canonical’s hardware, same as Mozilla’s snap of it).
the difference is that the folder/package structure for other package manager is open and well known
everyone can host their own i.e. apt, pacman or Flatpak repository with little effort
the required folder/package structure for snaps is no longer open and you cannot change the default snap repository either easily
The package structure for snaps is very much open, as is the API for a snap store. There was for a long time an open source snap store implementation, but it died out due to lack of interest by others in actually hosting their own stores, which to me says a lot about whether people actually want to host their own repo or just want to use it as a way to complain.
IIRC, the issue was that - unless you take steps to explicitly prevent it - Ubuntu would occasionally reinstall the snap version. I don’t remember the details, been a while since I had to dance that dance, but I recall it being one of the things that put me off snap in particular, Ubuntu in general and sparked my search for a different distro.
I’m now on Nobara, a Fedora-based gaming-oriented distro maintained by GloriousEgroll (who also maintains the popular Proton-GE)
Like with any time you’re trying to select a specific source for a package, you need to set apt configuration to prefer that source. It’s standard apt behaviour with a standard way to configure it.
Correct me there, but wasn’t the “select source” thing intended to be about different deb sources?
The issue is that what you expect to be a deb package manager ends up redirecting to snap anyway. It’s not a different source, it’s a different system. If I have to manually take steps to avoid using the distro vendor’s default sources because they just redirect to a system I don’t want to use, I might as well look for a different vendor.
And so I did
It’s literally a choice between what deb you want to get. One is a transitional package that installs a different package on the system (in this case the snap) as Debian transitional packages have done for decades, and the other is a third party package that provides the app rather than the transitional package. Just as when there was the ffmpeg vs. libav split, if you don’t want the transitional package to be installed and you want your third-party package from a different repository, you have to tell apt that.
Thanks for that correction then. I wasn’t conscious of that detail.
In any case, the issue remains that, if the vendor’s default repositories push for a type of package I don’t want, I either have to manually find and vet third party repositories I trust or find someone else to rely on for defaults I’m fine with.
The difference between “I want a different source for a single package, so I’ll manually select a different source for that one” and “I don’t trust Canonical to select sources I agree with anymore” is one of scale. I’m fine with manually pinning the transitional package, uninstalling it and the snap (hopefully remembering to back up my profile before realising that it also deletes user data) adding a ppa, reinstalling it and reimporting my profiles just for firefox.
But if I feel like I have to fight my distro vendor over not using their preferred package distribution system, it’s probably better to jump ship - other vendors have beautiful distros too.
(Also, “you can just use a different source” is part of the reason people prefer not to use snap, where you can’t do that)
If you’re fighting your distro vendor over the choice of packages they’re providing in their repos, then yeah, you should probably use another distro. But that’s exactly what I was saying in my original comment above. If you don’t like rpms or flatpaks, you shouldn’t be using Fedora either, since those two packaging technologies are what Fedora uses for their distribution. For me the Linux Mint developers’ hostility to snaps (which in my experience tend to be the best trade-offs for my needs) is one of the many reasons I won’t use or suggest Mint.
KDE Neon provides their own packages in their repo that add Mozilla’s apt repository for Firefox as well as setting up the preferences. In fact, here’s the file, which gets placed in
/etc/apt/preferences.d/org-kde-neon-packages-mozilla-org-pin:# SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-only OR GPL-3.0-only OR LicenseRef-KDE-Accepted-GPL # SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2022 Harald Sitter <[email protected]> Package: firefox Pin: release o=packages.mozilla.org Pin-Priority: 1000 Package: firefox-* Pin: release o=packages.mozilla.org Pin-Priority: 1000 Package: firefox-locale-* Pin: release o=packages.mozilla.org Pin-Priority: 1000The great part of KDE Neon’s approach to it is that since I do want the Firefox snap on my KDE Neon laptop, I can simply run
sudo apt remove neon-repositories-mozilla-firefox firefox && sudo apt update && sudo apt install firefoxto get the snapped version of Firefox.Also, snapd keeps a snapshot of your per-revision configuration from an app for a while after you
removeit. You can runsnap savedto see all the current snapshots. It doesn’t remove your$SNAP_USER_COMMONdirectory for that snap (which is where the Firefox snap stores its profiles), so moving from the snapped Firefox to the version from apt is just a matter of moving the.mozilladirectory out of~/snap/firefox/commonto~/