Ubuntu to Make Firefox Snap Default in 21.10

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2021/09/ubuntu-makes-firefox-snap-default

by underscore_ku • 5 years ago

34 36 5 years ago

omgubuntu.co.uk

luizfzs• 5 years ago

I am wondering if this will cause an increase in Firefox's market share, even though Ubuntu user base is small compared to other OSs (I'm assuming).

SemiNormal• 5 years ago

Mobile is such a huge percent of market share so I doubt if one desktop distro changing the default browser moves Firefox more than 0.5%.

Mikeb85• 5 years ago

Firefox is already default on Ubuntu. It just means they'll be moving from a .deb package to a snap package.

anuragsoni2• 5 years ago

Firefox is already the default browser on Ubuntu. This change is about the packaging of the browser used by the OS maintainers. I don't think this change will impact any use adoption metrics.

pull_my_finger• 5 years ago

Can someone "sell me" on snap? I've had nothing but trouble with it in my limited experience

snicker7• 5 years ago

It is, as far as I know, the only cross-distro package format that is designed to be cross-platform (desktop, server, IoT) and with built-in sandboxing. Moreover, it is feasible to base a distro off of snap alone (Ubuntu Core, designed for IoT).

Flatpak has sandboxing, but is only designed for desktop apps. Not server and not IoT.

Nix / Guix / AppImage does not have built-in application-level sandboxing out of the box.

m45t3r• 5 years ago

It is, as far as I know, the only cross-distro package format that is designed to be cross-platform (desktop, server, IoT) and with built-in sandboxing. Moreover, it is feasible to base a distro off of snap alone (Ubuntu Core, designed for IoT).

It is not really cross-distro though, since different from Flatpak, Snap assumes many features to be enabled for sandboxing to work (like AppArmor [1]): https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Snap#Installation. Flatpak only assumes, AFAIK, user namespaces support on Kernel.

[1]: This can be really problematic if your distro is using other MAC like SELinux, since while they're really not designed to run together.

BruiseLee• 5 years ago

Forced updates that can be delayed but not disabled.

alyandon2• 5 years ago

Don't forget:

  1) snapd action logging doesn't go to the system logs and gets purged after 72 hours - makes troubleshooting why something broke REALLY fun
  2) "snap" directory polluting your home directory

johnisgood3• 5 years ago

Or not being able to get older versions of a particular program. If it is possible, I would like to know how.

xet75• 5 years ago

You can disable all Snap updates by adding a line to /etc/hosts like this:

127.0.0.1 api.snapcraft.io

nix233• 5 years ago

Hard sell, you want to try Google Playstore...it's nearly the same ;)

xet75• 5 years ago

I really wish Google Playstore, and iOS/macOS App Stores would install apps automatically at background. Why I need to open those stores, click to update, and on Playstore even have it running at foreground to update?

Snap installs automatically, so it's modern.

Windows 11 Store, Chrome OS, and Linux Mint also can autoupdate at background.

Hopefully some day on all OSes have possibility to enable autoupdates to run at background.

pjfin1233• 5 years ago

Your desktop apps are sandboxed and can't, for example, read all of the files in your home directory.

pjfin1233• 5 years ago

Also more mature than Flatpak

xet75• 5 years ago

Snap is best for server apps. When I release new version of Wekan Open Source kanban https://wekan.github.io , it's very soon updated to all servers around the world. That is great for getting Node.js etc security updates installed fast, making all servers safe. Wekan has automatic database migrations etc for upgrading database structure. Update happens fast, only minimal downtime and then server is running newest Wekan. It has worked great for many years.

I have not found anything else that would install updates automatically fast like Snap.

And Canonical paying all that huge server infrastructure for snap updates, build servers, bandwidth, etc.

And Microsoft paying for all the repo hosting, bandwidth, etc at GitHub.

And others like Linux Foundation/CNCF, IBM, MacStadium etc providing development and build servers.

It's all standing shoulders of huge amount of giants. I could not afford all that server infra myself.

Wekan has Snap, Docker, Source and Sandstorm versions. I'm trying to figure out how to add more packaging formats, and have current packaging formats for more CPU architectures.

hbt2• 5 years ago

try running snap inside a docker container and see the gateway to hell it opens

cloudbonsai• 5 years ago

Snap actually has a lot of benefits. Developers get a streamed way of publishing Linux apps. Users get an easier access to apps, and the benefit of sandboxing.

Case: at work recently I needed to use Microsoft Teams for a business meeting. With snap, I only needed to do `snap install teams`, and voila, I could start a web meeting with my customer.

Without snap, I would have to install Teams from Microsoft's apt repo. I think this is pretty inferior to snap, because 1) It's harder to manage, 2) implicitly grants a root access on my machine to Microsoft, and 3) can break my system with package conflicts.

jsilence• 5 years ago

Maybe that will be the right time to switch to NixOS.

Have been uninstalling Snap on each Ubuntu release and will not start using it when they try to make it mandatory.

Thev00d00• 5 years ago

Migrating the single most critical pieces of software on an Ubuntu install to a package format regularly criticised as slow and buggy is a brave move.

johnisgood3• 5 years ago

It is also Canonical-centric, there is pretty much only one repository under Canonical's control and closed source, and so forth. I missed out a lot of other things, but Snap is... nope. I would rather use Flatpak if I have to choose between the two.

I mean, if you (generally speaking) have experience with package managers on Linux, then you can easily see the difference between them and Snap. Snap to me is similar to Google's Play Store, but for desktop.

sigy• 5 years ago

I will just change distros if Ubuntu doesn't start making snap an opt-in.

dcgudeman• 5 years ago

can you explain why you dislike snap?

commoner• 5 years ago

The Snap Store server is closed source and controlled only by Canonical. There is currently no fully functional FOSS reimplementation of the Snap Store server.

tssva2• 5 years ago

So now the 1st thing I do on a fresh Ubuntu install will be "snap remove firefox" instead of my usual "apt purge firefox".

nix233• 5 years ago

Why use that slug of a distro at all?

tssva2• 5 years ago

It really doesn't matter the distro. One of the first things I do with any distro which ships Firefox as the default is uninstall it.

Ubuntu to Make Firefox Snap Default in 21.10

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