Snapless Ubuntu
Snapless Ubuntu
Not sure what others are doing to use Ubuntu (23.04) without snaps, but this is what I am doing:
- for Firefox I found a guide here
- for chromium I am actually using the Linux Mint packages (which work absolutely fine), and I have just set up a small repository I can add to apt:
deb [arch=amd64 allow-insecure=yes] http://snapless.cmeerw.net victoria upstream
- this just syncs from Linux Mint and only republishes chromium in the Packages file (with downloads redirected to a Linux Mint mirror). BTW, I am not signing these...
What are others doing?
Running Debian. Snapless and Ubuntuless Ubuntu
I switched two of our boxes over to Debian "Bookworm". And so far, I am completely happy with the change. On desktop, it's still a little rough around the edges, and a few oddities need to be ironed out here and there, but that's nothing compared with the ocean of pain that were snaps for me and my company.
Still a little nostalgic, though, after 17 years of Ubuntu 🫠
Snapless Ubuntu is called Linux Mint, no guide needed.
but it's limited to Ubuntu LTS versions
True but it depends on your usecase- of you need all the fancy new stuff and want to move on quickly you should go another route instead of fucking around with forced software you do not want. Maybe Debian testing or Fedora? If you do not care about the newest stuff I guess Mint is a perfect fit.
Just use debian testing or unstable.
This.
I just went from Arch to Debian 12 Bookworm. Running the stable branch, but so far most of the packages are rather recent. Kernel is 6.1 instead of 6.4, but I could switch to the Testing or Unstable branch to get the "bleeding edge" packages/kernels if I need to. But honestly so far it's been a real pleasure to use. Everything is just working and is stable.
Debian 12 was just released. Compare it to Arch even six months from now and see how current the packages are. Then compare it again in 18 months.
I am a happy Arch user but I must admit the constant kernel updates can seem a bit much. An experiment I have considered is moving to Debian 12 and using distrobox to get access to Arch repos and the AUR. I would use the Debian stuff as much as possible but for anything missing or anything that I really need to be more current, I could just fall back to the Arch repos.
It could be the best of both worlds.
Debian testing works fine for me.
My solution is using a distro that doesn't try to force snaps on me.
If you want the ubuntu base, why not use mint?
Mint would be based on Ubuntu 22.04, but I'd like to have something more up-to-date. I believe all other .deb based distros have the same issue that they are not as up-to-date as Ubuntu 23.04?
None of them are like arch where you can read news about an update and find that you just have it installed already.
Given you're on ubuntu and therefore not at the bleeding edge anyways, it won't be a big difference. My personal choice for stuff that just needs to work is debian. I carry debian LTS with the full KDE pack on my ventoy and it's been great. I also heard very good things about testing and Sid, but I haven't tried them myself.
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I just use Linux Mint :)
So you're using Mint with extra steps.
I am using a single package from Mint, the rest is Ubuntu 23.04. Mint would otherwise be based on Ubuntu 22.04?
Yes, Mint 21.x is based on Jammy.
Unless you get LMDE which goes back even more to be based on Debian directly.
Feels like you don't want to use Ubuntu.
Ubuntu is going the way of snap-only and it might as well pick an Ubuntu-based GNOME distro. There's a bunch out there, but PopOS can be pretty easily stripped down to a vanilla GNOME system. You could even just modify Mint and install GNOME on top of that.
How about VanillaOS? That's an Ubuntu (soon to be debian) based plain GNOME system with support for a range of packaging formats.
You could also go for Manjaro GNOME edition, but not as stable.
Zorin is cool but not as barebones for a GNOME spin.
Pop!_OS is "Snapless". Our Firefox builds come directly from Mozilla in the deb format.
Sure, but what about your chromium builds? (as mentioned in my post, replacing the firefox snap with a firefox deb is easy enough on Ubuntu, chromium is the more difficult one to deal with)
Chromium is better served through third parties like Vivaldi. Or by Chrome from Google. Most of which offer debs. We recommend Firefox though.
This may be useful for you (Especially if you use KDE Plasma) : Automated script to remove all traces of Snap, including reinstalling a standalone version of Firefox.
Switched to Linux Mint. But not because of Snaps but rather RAM usage. Mint is lighter and faster. On cold boot it uses just 745mb versus 1.6GB on Ubuntu Gnome.
I don't mind Snaps but I also won't go out of my way to install it because there is no must-have snap that I need.
I love mint. I use it everywhere. You wouldn't recognize it anywhere I use it though. I customize the hell out of it. Right now I got this retro Ubuntu thing going on, running Unity DE and no snaps. not that I'm wholly against them, I just don't have them.
You can just download the firefox tarball from their own site. And that will just update itself.
If I were going to do snapless Ubuntu, I'd probably just install Mint. It seems a lot easier.
Of course, since I use Fedora I don't have to worry about any of that nonsense. I gave up on Ubuntu years ago.
Moving to a different distro :) Experimenting with nixos right now, already got native Firefox working :)
NixOS is amazing. I use it as a daily currently, but I haven't yet unlocked the full power of Nix.
My solution is to use MX, based on Debian. All packages came as .deb so a simple sudo apt install firefox is working.
I do nothing.
- I use the Firefox snap. It takes like 800 extra milliseconds to start up on my 10y old laptop and it moves my profile dir. It otherwise impacts my life not at all and is just fine. If it ever bothers me, there PPAs, flatpak, or a dozen other ways to install Firefox that are all perfectly simple.
- I install other stuff from flatpaks or PPAs or using docker.
The angst around snap is inscrutable to me. There are 30 million easy ways to install software and they all work on Ubuntu. There is nothing in my life that's easier to ignore than snap.
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Tell me more about why I care that snap is setting up loop devices and not that docker is setting up virtual ethernet devices and nftables chains. System tools do system things, news at 11.
I say again, this impacts my life not at all and there is nothing easier to ignore than snap.
I'm basically doing the same, but those "pending update, close the app to avoid disruptions" popups are kind of disrupting.
... those "pending update, close the app to avoid disruptions" popups are kind of disrupting.
I don't exactly disagree that it's slightly irritating but:
- No one declares war on an operating system the way snap haters have over a "restart to update" message. It's an irritation, but it's not an irritation proportional to the response snap gets out of people.
- Restarting to enable an update or complete an update is not something unique to snap. Except for a tiny number of very advanced live-patching systems like the one some kernel updaters use, every updater either nags you to shutdown to do the update, nags you to restart to finish the update, or doesn't nag you and the update just doesn't take effect till you restart (apt falls in this category and it's not unambiguously better than nagging because you're silently vulnerable when security patches are shipped until you restart). So again, this is just an extremely unremarkable thing that tons of updaters deal with similarly.
Oh, you seem to be looking for Debian. https://www.debian.org/