What use to be the PPA that allowed Ubuntu users to use native .deb packages for Firefox has recently changed to the same meta package that forces installation of Snap and the Firefox snap package.
I am having to remove the meta package, then re-uninstall the snap firefox, then re-uninstall Snap, then install pin the latest build I could get (firefox_116.0.3+build2-0ubuntu0.22.04.1~mt1_arm64.deb) to keep the native firefox build.
I’m so done with Ubuntu.
For me it’s the fact that Ubuntu forcefully shove snap into my system when I want the normal deb install with
apt
. I’m sure snap has gone better over the years but this is something that I absolutely hate. When I want to use snap/flatpak, I can usesnap/flatpak install
, and when I sayapt install
it should be deb install as it’s supposed to be as a Debian variant. Linux tools has always been known for doing exactly what is told, whereas what Ubuntu is recently doing is the opposite of itI mean the alternative would be to just stop providing the package at all I guess? Like it seems they want to switch to snap.
I think that would be a higher integrity move for sure. The issue of course is how to migrate existing users. If they just remove the deb, many users will just stay on the old version forever. They may never know the snap version even exists.
I get the problem. I just hate their solution.
I believe apt has the ability to “redirect” or “inform” the user on prompt. They could just show a message that says it’s no longer available for this LTS version, and let them use snap or flatpak instead