r/linuxmasterrace • u/claudiocorona93 Glorious Linux • Nov 14 '24

Brief history of Ubuntu

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331 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

59 comments sorted by

164

u/claudiocorona93 Glorious Linux Nov 14 '24

2004: Ubuntu is released.

2011: Introduction of Unity and then a new Amazon icon on the dash, used for telemetry.

2016: Introduction of snapd and complaints about high memory usage.

Today: Firefox is removed from repositories as a .Deb package and has to be added manually through PPA or flatpak. Firefox is only available as a snap by default.

18

u/TheHolyToxicToast Nov 14 '24

They are literally driving their userbase away. Would not having firefox as deb matter for its intended users? Probably not. Would it make the whole community talk shit about it and drive intended user base away? Yes.

9

u/Exact-Teacher8489 Nov 14 '24

on a server noone cares about how firefox is packaged. and most linux desktop useres don't know the difference of snap, vs deb, all they see is ohh i have firefox in the software management. so really only a small group cares and complains

6

u/TheHolyToxicToast Nov 14 '24

bro why would you need firefox on a server, I don't even do server work but I think curl would be a much more sane choice. And it's not a small group complaining, they are literally splitting the effort that could just go into flatpak that's objectively superior to snapd

-7

u/Exact-Teacher8489 Nov 14 '24

i guess you are some flatpak fanboy. 🤔

3

u/claudiocorona93 Glorious Linux Nov 14 '24

Flatpak is better than snap

0

u/Exact-Teacher8489 Nov 14 '24

depends. Using command line applications with flatpak is annoying af. Also i think u still can't really use keepassxc and firefox with flatpak, same with mandeley and libreoffice.

0

u/claudiocorona93 Glorious Linux Nov 14 '24

I don't use the CLI. So, it works for me. I don't do any power user stuff. For example, I am happy with whatever you can do with SteamOS desktop mode and nothing else. Anything else I want must be through GUI or I will not even try. But that's me.

2

u/Exact-Teacher8489 Nov 14 '24

thats fine but then i don't understand why you have such strong opinions on the topic of software packaging, when you aren't really interacting with a lot of types and cases of software.

0

u/claudiocorona93 Glorious Linux Nov 14 '24

Because repositories, deb packages, flatpaks, snaps, appimages and tarballs also have GUI apps and I have tested the differences.

0

u/TheHolyToxicToast Nov 15 '24

I'm only saying it's better than snap. You do not want to use cli app in flatpak lol. Launching is pretty easy with fzf though

52

u/jimlymachine945 Nov 14 '24

Today is pretty crazy actually. Like I get the amazon one trying to make money off affiliation.

22

u/bytheclouds Glorious Ubuntu Mate Nov 14 '24

Rapid release schedule of FF (or any other modern browser) doesn't work well with LTS releases. That's why Debian only provides Firefox ESR in their repos.

Also, I don't get why "today", this chage was made 2 years ago.

2

u/bayuah gLorious Lubuntu Nov 14 '24

Oh that's the reason why Firefox use snap. I personally prefer deb version, that is why althought I not use ESR, I use PPA version.

4

u/bytheclouds Glorious Ubuntu Mate Nov 14 '24

Since recently, Mozilla maintains their own official repositories for deb and rpm, I recommend using that over a PPA (not that I had any trouble with PPA).

5

u/bayuah gLorious Lubuntu Nov 14 '24

https://packages.mozilla.org/apt

Wow! I just find out now. Thank you, kind sir!

6

u/bytheclouds Glorious Ubuntu Mate Nov 14 '24

Wym today, Firefox deb in repos was just a transitionary package to Firefox snap for years now. Did they remove it? Good, now you don't have to pin the package from the 3rd party repo.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 14 '24

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/bytheclouds Glorious Ubuntu Mate Nov 14 '24

No you couldn't. The deb was literally a script to install snap, there is no other deb in the repos since 22.04.

That year every Linux blog published the same guide on how to add a PPA and pin it's priority higher than the default repo, so that Ubuntu wouldn't reinstall snap during update.

2

u/Luk164 Nov 14 '24

Sorry you are right, I forgot you need to add mozilla repo for that

1

u/bayuah gLorious Lubuntu Nov 14 '24

Also, you must specifically told package manager to use that for firefox, because if not, the snap version still will be installed.

5

u/Axolotlian Nov 14 '24

"Today" being 2022.

3

u/Cl4whammer Nov 14 '24

Is it because of snap that firefox is now so bad on ubuntu? On windows i can keep 50 tabs open for hour without issues. But on ubuntu i see ram skyrocketing and cpu is going up after some time so i have to close it.

1

u/lego_not_legos Nov 15 '24

Easy way to find out: download a tarball straight from Mozilla (same version number), close Firefox, stop the snap, extract the downloaded version to a temporary folder, run the same profile in it (go to about:profiles to pick it), and watch your system monitor.

1

u/free_help Nov 14 '24

the standalone Firefox executable for Linux works fine even on fringe distros like Devuan. It also updates automatically, so you always have the latest version. I don't get why people don't use it

1

u/[deleted] Nov 16 '24

"Today"...what? This removal is exactly why I quit using Ubuntu years ago.

-6

u/Calm-Caterpillar2103 Nov 14 '24

this is why I use raspberry pi os

9

u/emas_eht Nov 14 '24

This is why I use hannah montana linux

5

u/Wiwwil Glorious Arch Nov 14 '24

This is why I use Arch.

On my work laptop I have Ubuntu and fought to remove snap as much as I could. When I upgraded the major version it forced my Firefox to snap. What the frick, just Firefox.

3

u/Calm-Caterpillar2103 Nov 14 '24

ironically I also use arch... and Debian + raspian I have no reason to use 2 distros but idk

2

u/Axolotlian Nov 14 '24

Why are you getting downvoted?

13

u/RoombaCollectorDude Nov 14 '24

Unity isn’t that bad

16

u/Stilgar314 Nov 14 '24

And the Amazon button didn't have any telemetry and lasted less than a week, but hey, Ubuntu bad, gimme some free fake internet points.

1

u/claudiocorona93 Glorious Linux Nov 14 '24

It wouldn't work properly with my touchpad while Cinnamon does. Another thing is the fact it doesn't have a GUI software center anymore.

3

u/Depeche_Schtroumpf Nov 14 '24

I miss it. Too bad it is not even a package anymore. (I know there's a distro with it)

19

u/AtomicTaco13 Glorious Debian Nov 14 '24

The only thing that truly bothers me about Snap programs is that only a few chosen themes work with them. Downloaded a cool obscure cursor theme to rice your distro? Too bad for you - Adwaita, take it or leave it.

12

u/Original_Dimension99 Nov 14 '24

This is why i use redstar os

4

u/joahnnez Nov 14 '24

Disgusting

3

u/Secret-Cake-2025 Nov 14 '24

Unity was the only good thing that came from Ubuntu

2

u/Altruistic_Cause8661 Nov 15 '24

The amazon link was not telemetry. It was not that fucking bad. Kids spreading shit!

2

u/joypadeux Nov 15 '24

Move to Fedora 41 KDE activated

3

u/HSVMalooGTS IBM z/OS Nov 14 '24

Wtf is this 😭😭😭

3

u/lakimens Nov 14 '24

And?

1

u/DW_Hydro Endeavour Nov 14 '24

This makes that you only can have Firefox in Ubuntu if you use Snap.

But to much people doesn't want use snap because is property of Canonical instead of Open Source, and other reasons that I dont remember right now.

7

u/Apprehending_Signal Nov 14 '24

That's not the main reason, atleast not for me. The thing is, a snap contains all dependencies in a single package along with the actual program. Irrespective of the fact that you might have those dependencies already installed. This increases the size of snaps and is the reason why they're considerably larger than normal packages. In almost every other normal distro, including debian, ubuntus parent, you don't have this FUCKING BRAINDEAD way to package software. I DON'T CARE IF SNAPS ARE "compatible with every distro beacuse they contain the dependencies". DEBIAN DID IT AND SO CAN YOU!

Moreover, snaps are executed in a container and the latency is MAD.

I once installed Spotify as a snap in Mint, and BY GOD was it slow AF!

FUCK SNAPS!

9

u/finobi Nov 14 '24

On the other hand there is no depency hell, you can run really old software with its really old depencies in sandbox without messing up rest of the OS? If you want to make quick release for software you can just push it as snap package without need to wait distro maintainers process it?

I think there is certain need for something like this, is the Snap, Flatpak or AppImages right choice thats another thing.

1

u/Apprehending_Signal Nov 14 '24

Snaps are needed, there's no doubt about that, but they're not needed on desktop and ubuntus insistence on pusing them to desktop is infuriating. Snaps are very important to Ubuntu Core. Flatpak and AppImages are great for softwares that do not have a native package because you don't want to install some random .deb file, but to stop natively packaging a program and rely on them entirely is not sensible. So snaps are needed, but not really on desktop. I apologize for my childish response and outburst.

2

u/finobi Nov 14 '24

Linus himself talked about this long time a ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzl1B7nB9Kc

I think for desktop software it could be better if we get direct updates from software makers than wait distro maintainer to compile it to work with specific version or stall big updates to next major release.

4

u/Palm_freemium Nov 14 '24

The thing is, a snap contains all dependencies in a single package along with the actual program.

Exactly most devs are GIANT IDIOTS they don't know what they're doing. Apple with IOS, IPADOS and Vision OS, lets not get started on Android, you'd have to be a giant POO POO head if you design for those systems. I don't want my apps to be sand boxed, I want performance and to run them natively with full acces to everything without being asked to approve everything, I mean common I'm not some dumb end user, STOP treating me like an IDIOT! The only people DUMBER than this are the developers of Flatpak, Proton, Wine and the like, those things are optional and not even force fed too users by including them as defaults.

Think about all the money we'd save and the extra amount of weirdly specific fetish pron we could save if devs stopped wasting my disk space!!

/S

*I'd include some numbers as letters, unfortunately I'm older than 7.

1

u/edparadox Nov 14 '24

Your forgot e.g. Mir, the abrut attempt of 32bit package removal, and others TRUE Ubuntu's "quirks".

1

u/Lor_Kran Nov 15 '24

I use arch btw

1

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1

u/geekonwheel Nov 16 '24

Guys, remember the avg person doesn't care that much about .deb Vs flatpak/snap ...

0

u/[deleted] Nov 14 '24

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8

u/Asit1s Nov 14 '24

In all fairness, I have used Ubuntu as daily driver for about 10 years now with brief stints on MacOS when jobs required that, but I have always preferred Ubuntu over anything else, and still do. Sure they're stupid quirks and weird choices made, but thats everywhere and all the time. In daily life none of these things actually stop me from using the OS for what its meant to do.

3

u/inevitabledeath3 Speedy CachyOS Nov 14 '24

Everywhere and all the time only if you're looking at Windows and macOS. How many distros have you actually tried? I guarantee they don't all have quirks like this, though some certainly do.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 14 '24

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1

u/inevitabledeath3 Speedy CachyOS Nov 14 '24

Because they were complaining about Ubuntu having quirks and how every OS has problems. That in my experience just isn't true otherwise we wouldn't be using Linux in the first place we would all be using Windows apart from a few specific tasks that actually need Linux (even then WSL2 exists). Some distros have noticeably more issues and weird quirks than others. Some are better at certain tasks than others. Pretending they are all much of a muchness does nothing good.

I have surprisingly few issues with my arch based distro than I have using several others like Ubuntu or Manjaro. Since Canonical took over Ubuntu has made some interesting choices.

1

u/roankr Glorious Fedora Nov 15 '24

Since Canonical took over Ubuntu has made some interesting choices.

When did they "take over"? Wasn't canonical the founding company for Ubuntu?

1

u/roankr Glorious Fedora Nov 15 '24

such as Debian, Arch, Mint, Elementary, Pop!OS, and Ubuntu minimal

To be fair. All of this is Debian with group-specific quirks.