Thanks for that correction then. I wasn’t conscious of that detail.
In any case, the issue remains that, if the vendor’s default repositories push for a type of package I don’t want, I either have to manually find and vet third party repositories I trust or find someone else to rely on for defaults I’m fine with.
The difference between “I want a different source for a single package, so I’ll manually select a different source for that one” and “I don’t trust Canonical to select sources I agree with anymore” is one of scale. I’m fine with manually pinning the transitional package, uninstalling it and the snap (hopefully remembering to back up my profile before realising that it also deletes user data) adding a ppa, reinstalling it and reimporting my profiles just for firefox.
But if I feel like I have to fight my distro vendor over not using their preferred package distribution system, it’s probably better to jump ship - other vendors have beautiful distros too.
(Also, “you can just use a different source” is part of the reason people prefer not to use snap, where you can’t do that)
If you’re fighting your distro vendor over the choice of packages they’re providing in their repos, then yeah, you should probably use another distro. But that’s exactly what I was saying in my original comment above. If you don’t like rpms or flatpaks, you shouldn’t be using Fedora either, since those two packaging technologies are what Fedora uses for their distribution. For me the Linux Mint developers’ hostility to snaps (which in my experience tend to be the best trade-offs for my needs) is one of the many reasons I won’t use or suggest Mint.
KDE Neon provides their own packages in their repo that add Mozilla’s apt repository for Firefox as well as setting up the preferences. In fact, here’s the file, which gets placed in /etc/apt/preferences.d/org-kde-neon-packages-mozilla-org-pin:
# SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-only OR GPL-3.0-only OR LicenseRef-KDE-Accepted-GPL# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2022 Harald Sitter <sitter@kde.org>Package:firefoxPin:releaseo=packages.mozilla.orgPin-Priority:1000Package:firefox-*Pin:releaseo=packages.mozilla.orgPin-Priority:1000Package:firefox-locale-*Pin:releaseo=packages.mozilla.orgPin-Priority:1000
The great part of KDE Neon’s approach to it is that since I do want the Firefox snap on my KDE Neon laptop, I can simply run sudo apt remove neon-repositories-mozilla-firefox firefox && sudo apt update && sudo apt install firefox to get the snapped version of Firefox.
Also, snapd keeps a snapshot of your per-revision configuration from an app for a while after you remove it. You can run snap saved to see all the current snapshots. It doesn’t remove your $SNAP_USER_COMMON directory for that snap (which is where the Firefox snap stores its profiles), so moving from the snapped Firefox to the version from apt is just a matter of moving the .mozilla directory out of ~/snap/firefox/common to ~/
Thanks for that correction then. I wasn’t conscious of that detail.
In any case, the issue remains that, if the vendor’s default repositories push for a type of package I don’t want, I either have to manually find and vet third party repositories I trust or find someone else to rely on for defaults I’m fine with.
The difference between “I want a different source for a single package, so I’ll manually select a different source for that one” and “I don’t trust Canonical to select sources I agree with anymore” is one of scale. I’m fine with manually pinning the transitional package, uninstalling it and the snap (hopefully remembering to back up my profile before realising that it also deletes user data) adding a ppa, reinstalling it and reimporting my profiles just for firefox.
But if I feel like I have to fight my distro vendor over not using their preferred package distribution system, it’s probably better to jump ship - other vendors have beautiful distros too.
(Also, “you can just use a different source” is part of the reason people prefer not to use snap, where you can’t do that)
If you’re fighting your distro vendor over the choice of packages they’re providing in their repos, then yeah, you should probably use another distro. But that’s exactly what I was saying in my original comment above. If you don’t like rpms or flatpaks, you shouldn’t be using Fedora either, since those two packaging technologies are what Fedora uses for their distribution. For me the Linux Mint developers’ hostility to snaps (which in my experience tend to be the best trade-offs for my needs) is one of the many reasons I won’t use or suggest Mint.
KDE Neon provides their own packages in their repo that add Mozilla’s apt repository for Firefox as well as setting up the preferences. In fact, here’s the file, which gets placed in
/etc/apt/preferences.d/org-kde-neon-packages-mozilla-org-pin:# SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-only OR GPL-3.0-only OR LicenseRef-KDE-Accepted-GPL # SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2022 Harald Sitter <sitter@kde.org> Package: firefox Pin: release o=packages.mozilla.org Pin-Priority: 1000 Package: firefox-* Pin: release o=packages.mozilla.org Pin-Priority: 1000 Package: firefox-locale-* Pin: release o=packages.mozilla.org Pin-Priority: 1000The great part of KDE Neon’s approach to it is that since I do want the Firefox snap on my KDE Neon laptop, I can simply run
sudo apt remove neon-repositories-mozilla-firefox firefox && sudo apt update && sudo apt install firefoxto get the snapped version of Firefox.Also, snapd keeps a snapshot of your per-revision configuration from an app for a while after you
removeit. You can runsnap savedto see all the current snapshots. It doesn’t remove your$SNAP_USER_COMMONdirectory for that snap (which is where the Firefox snap stores its profiles), so moving from the snapped Firefox to the version from apt is just a matter of moving the.mozilladirectory out of~/snap/firefox/commonto~/