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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[–] [email protected] 7 points 33 minutes ago

Yeah it's not really a secret

[–] [email protected] 3 points 27 minutes ago

Yeah, there's an entire page bitching about it on Linux Mint's website.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 hour ago

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

[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 hours ago (9 children)
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[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 hours ago

Solve the problem. Drop ubunutu

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

Debian will have snaps and flatpaks and all the same insecure black-box drek.

Given how much they violate ISO27002, I can't see them ever being run in a regs-compliant shop.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

I feel like snaps are black boxier tho.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 hours ago

Hah! Me too, exactly this.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 hours ago (2 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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

This explains situation.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 hours ago (14 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

Unfortunately it's my only option at work because my employer wants the security of Ubuntu pro

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[–] [email protected] 63 points 6 hours ago (3 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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

Not defending Ubuntu but wasn't this clarified to be Mozilla's deploying it via Snap and requesting to remove the apt installation?

Source: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2022/04/how-to-install-firefox-deb-apt-ubuntu-22-04

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 minutes ago

It was a collaboration, although I'm having trouble finding a source for who wanted it first.

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/feature-freeze-exception-seeding-the-official-firefox-snap-in-ubuntu-desktop/24210

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 6 hours ago

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

[–] [email protected] 39 points 6 hours ago (7 children)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 hours ago (1 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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[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 hours ago

Switch to Debian and you'll be fine :)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

For awhile I was getting firefox crashes in Mint all the time. Turns out it was the snap version being unstable.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

How did you get snap on mint?! 😆I once tried it as a noob and mint was always “snap bad! Don’t do this! You will regret” even on try to circumvent it 🤣

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I swear it was the default already installed. Maybe I'm misremembering.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Mint never preinstalled the snap. They package their own version of Firefox. I believe they have an agreement with Mozilla.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

Maybe it was that i had to install the snap version (or maybe flatpak?) and uninstall theirs, which fixed the crashes. I thought it was a hardware issue for awhile because it was so random.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago

Why even enable snaps? It's like asking to have headaches.

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