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.
Question: Is this going to also apply to Linux Mint and other Ubuntu/Debian cousin distros?
Linux Mint specifically excludes the snap store due to the many criticisms people have already mentioned here. Doc refers to version 20, but I believe it’s still the same in the current version. Not sure about other ubuntu-based distros though.
https://linuxmint-user-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/snap.html
Worth mentioning that Mint has LMDE (Linux Mint - Debian Edition), a version of Mint based on Debian instead of Ubuntu as a fallback for if/when Canonical starts doing stupid shit
The mint folks are gonna eye this whole development carefully. Personally I’d be more surprised if ten years from now Mint was still based on Ubuntu instead of Debian.
I don’t think this will affect them really. Mint already packages Firefox themselves.
Cool! Is there or will there be any sort of transformation package or script to easily convert an existing Mint installation to LMDE?
There is not and it’s not likely, they are two different distributions that happen to use deb packages. It’s sort of like installing rpm and expecting to upgrade Ubuntu to Fedora. Maybe you could do it if you fight enough, but it’s less effort to just install Fedora.
Ubuntu-based Mint isn’t going anywhere, they just maintain them both.
Not Debian. But mint needs to patch this out manually