https://www.linuxadictos.com/en/We-knew-it%2C-we-expected-it-and-it-is-already-in-the-daily-build-of-Ubuntu-Thunderbird%2C-only-available-as-a-Snap.html
The open secret has been confirmed: Thunderbird will be offered as a snap package in Ubuntu 24.04 when its stable version arrives.
If only. It’d be a real April fool’s if Canonical announced they were abandoning snap and throwing their supory behind flatpak.
Having other 180° turnarounds in mind, e.g. Unity, which was nice on a netbook, or their display server (I don't recall its name), would it be that surprising if this was real news? This makes it a really good April Fool's joke.
Their display server is Mir. They first chose Wayland. Everyone was excited and started putting their weight behind it. Then their NIH syndrome kicked in and they declared Mir, claiming that Wayland has a lot of deficiencies. Wayland devs contested it and explained why their complaints were wrong. But Canonical never bothered to reply. This irked everyone else and they stayed with Wayland. Eventually, Mir failed to achieve its goal and Canonical decided to convert it to just another Wayland compositor.
Canonical has wasted so much dev time trying to reinvent the wheel, only to go back to using the thing everyone else is using years later.
Funny you should mention it:
“After the initial resistance, some Linux users have started liking Snap, just as few people got attached to Unity. This is a scary situation for us. From Ubuntu One to Unity and Mir, we have abandoned projects in the past. We can do it again for the greater good.”
Read the article, it’s really fun.
This thread is full of wonderful workarounds. It reads just like windows forums.
Just stop using canonicals crap.
You could at least put the command in a spoiler or add a /s to make sure some random new user doesn’t follow the advice
If a noob follows this command without checking, they deserve such a lesson.
Just saying.
I don't use Ubuntu but I threw it on a laptop to give to my dad.
He's a very basic tech user he basically needed a web browser and somewhere to backup/view his photos off his phone, And even he ran into issue with snaps!
I tried to switch everything over to flatpak but the OS just kept pushing back trying to reinstall SnapD until I ran some script off Github, It's the exact "I know better than you" bullshit that pushed me away from Windows.
If you really want everything to go on flatpak why not just use Debian + GNOME? No bullshit and you'll be able to have flathub inside the GNOME software "store".
I didn't want to reinstall the whole OS on my Dads laptop since he already has all his stuff on it.
But I'll probably go Debian if he ever lets me do it.
I meant flatpak, I have a bad habit of replacing words I'm typing with words I'm thinking
the ppa for 24.04 is live and you can still deb version of the app on it. by type: cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/nosnap.pref
Package: snapd Pin: release a=* Pin-Priority: -10 EOF Change the /etc/apt/preferences.d/mozilla Package: * Pin: origin packages.mozilla.org Pin-Priority: 1000
Package: Thunderbird* Pin: release o=Ubuntu Pin-Priority: -1
you can grab the ppa and no more snap
Then I'll be on the last deb until it no longer works. I'm not going down the proprietary snap route.
Debian, Fedora, and OpenSUSE all offer excellent alternatives depending on your reasons for staying.
I am on Debian and Pop. However, if they're dropping the deb distribution, what does that mean for the non Ubuntu folk? Maybe I've misunderstood it all?
Ubuntu is (mostly) based on Debian. This is simply a move by Ubuntu to further push their own packaging platform which is effectively proprietary at this time. Debian's own packaging will remain unchanged.
Excellent. Then it doesn't matter to me at least. Thank you for the reply.
Still, i don't trust, nor like the concept of the proprietorial snap system.
They must be trying to set themselves up to be purchased.
Who cares?
Ubuntu is a shell of what it once was. They're not going to make Snap optional, they need to justify its existence by releasing everything as snaps with no alternative so you have to use it.
Or, just use Debian if you like Debian-style distros?
Or, wait for it - this is gonna sound a bit radical but hear me out - give Fedora a try? Flatpak instead and unlike Debian Stable has packages from this century
Inb4 btw I use Arch
like Debian Stable has packages from this century
You can set up Debian 12 to use Flatpak. I use it and it works well.
Yes, you can sideload apps from this century into Debian and run them in an isolated environment with dependencies also from this century :)
Tbh I'm surprised that the Debian kernel is new enough to support cgroups /s
Hey now, I'm an Arch user but Debian stable was protected from the XZ backdoor due to the release delay.
Everything is going to snap in Ubuntu. It's why I don't use it 🤷
It even recently made my life very difficult because something I did recently only worked on chromium non-snap, but ubuntu provides no easy way to use the non-snap version. Most frustrating experience on that distro ever. Unfortunately, it can't be replaced as it's on a relative's computer...
I run Ubuntu on my home servers, simply because I always used it, resources and help are plentiful and it's well documented. I thought.
Took me a while to realize that after moving to a new machine and upgrading to 22.04 docker was installed as a fucking snap and a bunch of my apps didn't work because of that. I got it all running now, but every VM and LXC I'll install going forward will be running Debian instead. Fuck this annoying shit.
Edit: Or I might try out Mint Mate, since it's what I know best (aka Ubuntu) without snaps. What would you guys recommend for a basic homelab?
you can still use chromium no snap https://askubuntu.com/questions/1386738/how-to-install-chromium-from-the-linux-mint-repositories-in-ubuntu
Yeah, I was sitting next to the laptop's owner who was in a hurry and already huffing and puffing. Didn't want to mess up their system by pinning stuff and installing certs or running into issues with "repository not found" issues. In the end, switching to another computer was much faster.
Ugh had a similar experience at work related to the chromium package. In our case it had to do with the arm64 build of chromium in an environment that can't run snaps (docker), so we were pretty much entirely without a solution.
Serious question, genuinely curious; Beyond more recent package versions, why do people choose Ubuntu over plain Debian? Debian has been exceptionally stable for me, pushes no proprietary BS, and is as easy to intall and setup as any other distro I've used. Plus, for the average computer user, all the packages are recent enough that things should work as expected.
I think looking nicer is very subjectve. I personally prefer default Gnome over Ubuntu's tweaks. However silent grub makes complete sense. Word vomit every boot does look very hack-ish if you arent used to it.
because I googled what distro to use and ubuntu was the one I picked randomly and I can't be fucked to change it
I assume I am a prototypical user in that regard.
I tried Debian recently (with Cinnamon, since I don't like Gnome), but I found it was lacking some polish and niceties that I get from Linux Mint. I do use LMDE instead of the Ubuntu base though.
Totally understandable, QOL and creature comforts are important. To be fair, I'm personally the type of user who prefers a spartan system that I can then tailor to my needs, rather than lots of features OOTB. To each their own I suppose.
My response to that is
Not Anymore
In the sense that woth Debian 12, proprietary drivers are included OOTB, so at this point, even that is no longer an argument against Debian.
I will say this, I have a newer laptop that required manually installing a realtek wifi driver. I'm fine with that, but I know not everyone is, and I know it's already included in more up to date distros (Arch needed no setup on the same laptop, I'd imagine it's the same story with Ubuntu being more recent). So I get not wanting to go with Debian, I just used it as a base example of a "purer" OS. I guess Mint might have been a better alternative to use for my specific questiom.
The same reason people buy the cereal their grocer places at eye-level, and buy their cars from the stealer: marketing
Any app that can be sandboxed, should. Especially apps that are parsing random data from the internet.
I stand corrected. All programs should have access to anything, anywhere, and be linked to liblzma just in case if some arbitrary file is compressed. Thank you for setting me straight.
Initially I followed this route to avoid Snap version provided by Ubuntu.
Later I just downloaded Tar package from Mozilla, and update it manually.
In short, I just abandoned deb/snap/flatpak altogether.
Betterbird is the solution. It just works and the system tray icon is a welcome addition. No more needing to use Birdtray for that.