this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
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Not secretly, no.
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.
It takes a little more than just adding a different repository to your package manager, you have to tell apt which to prefer:
echo '
Package: *
Pin: origin packages.mozilla.org
Pin-Priority: 1000
Package: firefox*
Pin: release o=Ubuntu
Pin-Priority: -1' | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/mozilla
Since when this became a known thing? I'm aware that the snap version is installed when the user is trying to install the deb version of Firefox by running,
sudo apt install firefoxBut I never heard that the installed DEB version of Firefox is replaced by Snap version of Firefox.
The deb version is a pointer to the snap in their repos. Nothings being replaced, it no longer exists. The deb version of Firefox in Ubuntu repos is a wrapper that installs snap and has no binaries in it. Has been for 3 years or so.
It's more than that. Ubuntu copies the Debian repos and then applies their own changes on top. Debian has a native (DEB) Firefox package, so Ubuntu specifically has to remove it for every new version.
At least a few years. I switched to Linux a year ago and that was a huge consideration for me when choosing Debian over Ubuntu.
Well then you haven't been following it closely. As someone else said, the reason is simple: the Snap version is more recent (like it or not) and in Ubuntu
aptis configured to take into account Snap packages.Canonical added an epoch prefix to the firefox version number. Because that epoch (1) is higher than the implicit default (0), the official ubuntu dummy package is always considered to be a higher version than the official Mozilla package. apt doesn't look at snap packages, it installs the deb, but the ubuntu deb just runs
snap install firefoxand basically nothing else.Exactly. Enough with the inane conspiracism.