This was no accident. They want you to install apps via their walled garden snap store.
Which is by almost all means better than downloading a random crap of a package from the web because “that’s how it’s done on wondows”. Seriously, distributing software via repositories is like second most important reason the situation with malware isn’t the same on the desktop Linux market (the first being small market share). And nope, that’s not because Linux is somehow “more secure”, which it isn’t.
Ubuntu goes full enshitification… Glad I’m back to pure Debian for a long time
Yeah man. I’m on LMDE 6 and SO glad about that. No Ubuntu BS. Just pure Debian with Mint optimizations and desktop.
I’d be very surprised if the Mint team keeps the regular mint releases going instead of just going all in on LMDE
From what I’ve seen they like to take things slow. However I agree that it’s only a matter of time now. Ubuntu also plans to have the next distro LTS released as both a regular iso and a snap-only read-only version.
In other words two iso’s will be supplied and one will be immutable and every component and library will be all snaps only. This is the future they envision for Ubuntu so Mint will definitely have to move to Debian only eventually.
I’ve used plain old Debian since ~2016 and only just tried LMDE this month, it’s really nice! I prefer Gnome but the default LMDE desktop was perfectly usable and clear, and I really like that it walks the user through setting up automatic backups. I would definitely recommend it over Ubuntu now for new users.
For whatever reason, when i tried to fresh install lmde 6 two weeks ago, it absolutely refused to set up grub properly for me. Something in the installation just refused to work, despite reformatting and setting up partitions in both the automatic and manual configurations. Hopefully other new users have a smoother time than i did?
I’ve had that happen on EndeavourOS but it was because of a corrupted ISO. Have you checked checksums?
Was it a uefi thing? In the past 10 years the only fail-to-install issues I have had were related to that.
Try command line?
dpkg -i /path/to/package.deb
That’s likely an app just not installed by default for GUI
Correct, but new users don’t want to need the command line for something as simple as installing packages.
New users probably shouldn’t be installing .debs, especially if they don’t know about terminal commands. I’ve seen so many fucked up systems from people treating Linux as Windows, as in installing everything by searching for stuff on their browser, downloading an installer and installing that.
Problem is a lot of closed source software still release their software as .deb or .rpm packages that installs their repos so you can install their software from the software centre.
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Tell them to install via flatpak. Spotify, Discord and so on should be available as flatpak via Gnome Software or the KDE software center. NOW on Ubuntu, this is anyone’s guess. I’m guessing there is no flatpak support by default. Ubuntu is doing the linux community a disservice.
I’m telling them that because it is a poor idea. But preferably the system should fix user mistake and behind the scenes just install Discord from repo or flatpak, with option to bypass this behaviour for those who know what they’re doing.
Preferably these software vendors would know to guide users towards proper ways of installing stuff, but that’s not happening.
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Add a GUI desktop entry for that, assign .deb file mimetype to it, bam. A usable experience.
Or just install gdebi.
Personally prefer
apt install /path/to/package.deb
Both do the exact same thing, though.
This or aptitude is usually better because dpkg won’t install dependencies by default
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I thought that perhaps Ubuntu were done with screwing the community after they forced snaps on their users.
Just when I thought, ok that’s it what worse could they do?, then they pull this nonsense!
They really, really don’t want the user to have control of the system do they? They think we are dumb and need a walled garden experience like Apple where you only get apps from Snaps or the repo.
And frankly it’s against the principles of FOSS where the foundation is to protect user freedom.
I moved to Mint when this snaps thing made me feel up. And as soon as LMDE 6 came out I immediately switched to that .
I highly recommend everyone abandon Ubuntu and Fedora - the two Corporation backed distros - and use only 100% independent distros like LMDE or Debian or any of the others.
And if you’re using a distro that is Ubuntu or Fedora based pressure the dev to move to Debian or opensuse. Or any other independent base.
If we don’t take action as a community eventually new users will become accustomed to this BS and will never know what it’s like to use REAL Linux.
What is the problem with Fedora?
Basically it’s Red Hat which is IBM. The same Red Hat that basically making it difficult for the community to make Fedora compatible server OS’.
They consider the community free loaders.
This is basically anti Libre/FOSS in spirit.
So why should we help them improve Fedora, which eventually becomes Red Hat Enterprise, if they aren’t willing to share their server code?
Basically they have zero regard for the Linux community (user’s and Devs)
If a website stuffed a .deb into your Downloads folder and you click on it, should the default behaviour be to run it? Is there a significant pile of Ubuntu software out there that is unavailable in the apt and snap and flatpak stores? Other stores such as Steam and Epic (Heroic) are easily installable via … starting in your apt/snap/flatpak store.
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Well, that marks the first time I’ve seen anyone refer to it as “the apt store.” Thanks, I hate it.
I’m off to download some standards docs from the ieee-shop 👨🔧 🍄
A deb is not an executable. You can’t run it
And neither is a doc file, but most OSes would open up a compatible word processor.
It has pre and post-install scripts. Once you hand it off to dpkg, it can do pretty much anything.
It can install a service that will start automatically after install, so for all intents and purposes, if you click it and enter your sudo password, you might as well have run an executable.
They keep looking for trouble. Something is going to bite them in the ass one day.
Unpopular opinion, I think this should be like this if there exists a snap or a package in the repo for it. Even if this is a bug. Maybe they should make a popup educating users about how they don’t need to download installers. As for apps like discord, I believe there is a well maintained snap package available to install easily from the app center. I can’t seem to find chrome there sadly, but it is on flathub. I hope it gets a package.
I don’t agree with you on this, people are used to install app on other operating systems this way, there is a better way yes I’m not arguing this, but a lot of proprietary software is distributed this way and not on the snap store, and being ubuntu a noob friendly distro make it worse for the averange user to search the internet only to install deb packages instead of providing a user friendly interface!
Yup, I understand that people are going to search for an installer and install it that way. What I am saying is maybe they should direct users to the snap store or something if the package they are trying to install exists on there already. Pretty non intrusive way to make sure they are doing it the right way.
Edit: this is not me advocating for snaps btw. I don’t care what package manager anyone uses, as long as its not bricking your system.
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Local deb packages suck ime.
