A while ago I saw a retweet to a tweet from It's FOSS, who in turn mentions as a source OMG! Free!, which has left me in shock, freaking out, I couldn't believe it. And I still can't. Canonical is taking controversial steps in the latest versions of Ubuntu: in 20.04 it removed the GNOME software store to leave its Snap Store in a clear move to force us to use its snap packages. But this was not the first ugly step he took, as Chromium disappeared from the official repositories years ago. Now there is another controversial and more painful movement, since it involves Firefox.
The next-gen packages have their good points, but also some negative points. For starters, they contain core software and dependencies in one package, making them heavier. Also, or if not ask Scribus and GIMP, they may not communicate as well with the rest of the operating system. Snap packages are like this, and from now on, all Ubuntu ISO images will arrive with the Snap version Firefox installed by default.
Firefox on Snap, no option to install DEB version?
The change will be official coinciding with the launch of Ubuntu 21.10 Impish Indri, and they have made it clear that it will not affect the official flavors. The main question that remains is whether it will be possible to install the DEB or APT version from the terminal or by installing the GNOME software center, something that I think will be the case because for flavors it will exist, but I could be wrong.
In the case that a version like the current one cannot be installed, I would use the binaries, as we explained a couple of years ago here Ubunlog. For everything else, and although It is said that Mozilla has proposed the change, I don't like it at all.
Why don't they explain to Canonical what freedom means in the world of free software.
It seems to me that the day they explained that at school, they missed class.
And the freedom of the user where I am, because that is what is proclaimed in the world of free software, and one of my freedoms is to choose the browser I want with the file format that I want to install without being imposed on me.
And for more, if Firefox has been losing market share, with this from Canonical they are not doing it much favor.
The good thing is that I left Ubuntu and switched to Mint, and there is still freedom in Mint ...
Well, it turns out that Canonical offers you a great product and above all totally free, it offers you FREE nothing more and nothing less than an entire operating system, with which you can do absolutely everything and if you want to pack Firefox in snap, then Pack it up and that's it and if you don't like it, well look, as you say, this is free and open source, so why don't you make your own distro? Do you know why you don't do it? Well, it's very easy, because making a distro, even if it's based on, has a job that you won't see me. I use xubuntu and I don't give a damn if they pack it in snap or what posh they do, what I see is that xubuntu works wonderfully, that's it, we really like to complain, when they GIVE US ECHO ALL, and on top It works as a thousand wonders.
It had already been seen with Chromium and the Mint theme [Clem was right] ...
Canonical is known to want to force Snap at all costs:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23052108
This can cause people to stop using Firefox and their quota remains silent ... sad