I honestly don't see a reason why should Ubuntu make it easy to install downloaded deb files. People who know the risks will just use apt on the command line. People who download random files spotify-1.2.3.deb from the internet are really better served by sandboxed snap package.
Ubuntu is mostly aimed at the less experienced user, so it seems OK in that context. I just hope that kind of thing doesn't spread to other distros. If Debian did this, I'd be pretty irritated.
Don't agree with this. All of googles apps come via debs (chrome, google earth, etc), as does microsofts (edge, vscode) and numerous other big name applications. They then use the deb to add their apt repository and from then on they are self updating. Deb is actually a great way of distributing an app other than via an app store, and it seems Ubuntu clearly want to kill that.
Why are you disappointed?
This is just obviously what canonical wants and has been continually pushing for.
Also, the situations in which manually installing a .deb is a good idea are extremely rare. It just is an all around bad idea. That this is unintuitive to Windows users is true, but also an incredibly weak argument.
There are plenty of apps that I install from .deb files:
Slack, Parsec, Steam, Chrome, etc.
There are more, but the point is if you go on their websites and click download you get a deb package. Sure a Flatpak or a Snap would be better, but consider the audience of Ubuntu and these apps. If it isn't intuitive it's a fail. App distributors need to get on board and start shipping things that aren't Debian packages.
An elitist attitude and inability to consider others' perspectives renders the whole conversation moot from the start. Sorry, but I won't entertain the debate when the premise is established in blind negativity.
I am only elitst in the sense that I believe that if you are going to drive a car you should know what the steering wheel does.
Installing .deb's is the equivalent of only ever staying in first gear "because it works". Honestly NOT telling people they are messing up would make me feel worse.
That sounds like a much better experience for new users. Ideally it would simply tell users "No! Running installers from 'totally legit website' is not supported". Either add the respective repo or tell the devs to get added to the official repos.
That is also a good recommendation for other OSs. If it is not on the app store, play store or in winget, it might as well not exist and you are not missing out (if it were any good, someone would have packaged it by now).
I moved all my systems to Debian about a year ago. I didn't have a big problem with snaps, just kind of irritated by them, just like the MOTDs when logging in via SSH that would sometimes mysteriously change from time to time, often nagging to upgrade to Ubuntu Pro (because I was running 20.04 in 2023).
I had to manually set up sudo and unattended-upgrades, otherwise in my experience and uses, Debian is Ubuntu.
Same here. I used Debian back in the 90s, switched to Ubuntu for more regular releases, but the ads from apt were the final annoyance. Debian 12 has been excellent.
> ... the so-called bug for us, the public, is most likely a feature crafted by them, Canonical folks.
> Otherwise, Ubuntu developer won't say that they "didn't have capacity to work on it".
What the developer actually said was they didn't have the capacity to work on it for that version, but that it would be a priority for the next cycle. Did they not read the second part of that sentence, or are they choosing to ignore it, or what?
Right, but this is an OS breaking bug. Not a desired superfluous feature. Not having capacity to work on it means they are okay with releasing a distro with OS breaking bugs; or lying. Either is a bad look.
No, it isn't. It is breaking a feature you should never use and which is actually better left broken. They should just fix it by giving a message to the user that he shouldn't do that.
The idea that people should only install software from a walled garden is absurd. It is a smartphone-ism (re: sideloading doublespeak). I can't imagine only being able to run the few software packages available in repos. Probably a fourth of my userspace on a typical linux desktop is self compiled or debs from random places on the net.
Terrible way to run a system. Most distro contain all the software you need in repos.
Package managers are some of the greatest thing about smartphones. It is trivial to install and keep up to date all your software. They also aren't walled gardens at all. You are free to add repos all you want.
Also smartphone package manager precede desktop package managers. It just was a good idea.
> Most distro contain all the software you need in repos.
Most software in the world is not packaged but I get that everyone has different tastes and ways of doing things. It's like how I'm fine with my car's defaults; it takes me places, I don't change it or add parts (like most people don't). My computers I do customize though.
Sure and if you know what you are doing and accept the risks its a fine thing to do, but it isn't a good idea to actually encourage that behavior in new users.
The argument I have seen here that it is the way new users want to install software, so that should be the way to do it. But encouraging users towards bad behavior, because you don't want to force them to learn anything new, is completely unhelpful. If the user doesn't accept that he has to learn the new Operating System and has to find alternatives to his software (like ditching chrome for chromium) he will never be happy.
I think you missed some of the context/point behind the reference.
The bug was reported when it first came up in 23.10, a non-LTS release. The previous non-LTS release is a final proving ground for an LTS release. They had an opportunity to fix it from 23.10 until the release of their next LTS, and chose not to.
There won't be an LTS for 2 more years, so this regression is likely stuck there (It worked fine prior to 23.10, even supported snaps).
If Canonical hadn't been forcing snaps down everyone's throat for the past several years, and continually ignoring all of the negative feedback they get over it, it might have been a different story, but on the back of everything we've seen from them over the years, it reeks of "deliberate choice", and it's really hard not to see this as a deliberate break rather than accidental.
Canonical have unfortunately reached trust thermocline stage with everything related to snaps.
It's almost like they're slowly increasing the friction for other packaging formats (flatpak, deb) other than snaps. Bubblewrap, the sandboxing tool for Flatpak, is broken out of the box on 24.04: https://etbe.coker.com.au/2024/04/24/ubuntu-24-04-bubblewrap...
This quote below, is really fucking dumb. A GNU+Linux distribution should absolutely never ever do this. GNU+Linux is not only not Windows, it should not adopt the very stupid patterns native to the mind of a Windows user. The guy who wrote this article should fuck off back to Windows.
"
You ask me if it is possible to use popular tools like Chrome on Ubuntu. I say yes. Just download it from the official website and install it by double-clicking like you do it with exe files in Windows."
I'm also beyond disappointed with 24. I've been clinging on to 18 for dear life for some time now. 24 is buggy as all hell.The iso was suspiciously large for an Ubuntu image, that should have been the first red flag. Nothing works correctly. I can't get a single Deb to install. The snap store just hangs on a search indefinitely. I even went and had lunch and came back . Still searching. The snap store wants to update itself but can't because it's open . Hit or miss mostly miss trying to install debs from cli ...its a polished turd. They made the ui snappy so people feel like its an improvement. I'm not a Linux master but I'm also not a noob. I've always had a really hard time getting Debian to install on raid but I'm hearing good things about 12 I'm going to give it another go because 24 is just muff cabbage. If im unable to get Debian to be agreeable perhaps I'll try 20 or 22 && maybe come back to 24 when 26 is Lts and they have some time to work on it .Push notifications. For everything, why do you need a notification that my terminal is open . Why is that even a thing why would the devs even continplate it might take so long to open a cli window that I may need to be reminded that it's finally open. Is I better the paying for window and dealing with all of the intrusive bs going on. Maybe .. if you don't have things to get done and have time to spend working on the environment enough to just be stable. Muff cabbage, clown shoes, pift and rabble
36 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 98.4 ms ] threadCould the author get more overly dramatic?
Also, the situations in which manually installing a .deb is a good idea are extremely rare. It just is an all around bad idea. That this is unintuitive to Windows users is true, but also an incredibly weak argument.
Slack, Parsec, Steam, Chrome, etc.
There are more, but the point is if you go on their websites and click download you get a deb package. Sure a Flatpak or a Snap would be better, but consider the audience of Ubuntu and these apps. If it isn't intuitive it's a fail. App distributors need to get on board and start shipping things that aren't Debian packages.
Which, again, is a terrible habit. Why you are using Chrome at all is truly confounding me
> it isn't intuitive it's a fail.
It shouldn't be intuitive, is is a terrible thing to do and basic UI design tells you that doing terrible things should be hard.
If you lack the technical competence to correctly install a package you should NOT be using that operating system.
>App distributors need to get on board and start shipping things that aren't Debian packages.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with Deb package. The issue is with you downloading and installing them, which for many reasons is a terrible idea.
Installing .deb's is the equivalent of only ever staying in first gear "because it works". Honestly NOT telling people they are messing up would make me feel worse.
If you aren't willing to listen to me listen to Debian: https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian
That is also a good recommendation for other OSs. If it is not on the app store, play store or in winget, it might as well not exist and you are not missing out (if it were any good, someone would have packaged it by now).
I had to manually set up sudo and unattended-upgrades, otherwise in my experience and uses, Debian is Ubuntu.
First time I'm hearing of this and just barf
> Otherwise, Ubuntu developer won't say that they "didn't have capacity to work on it".
What the developer actually said was they didn't have the capacity to work on it for that version, but that it would be a priority for the next cycle. Did they not read the second part of that sentence, or are they choosing to ignore it, or what?
No, it isn't. It is breaking a feature you should never use and which is actually better left broken. They should just fix it by giving a message to the user that he shouldn't do that.
Package managers are some of the greatest thing about smartphones. It is trivial to install and keep up to date all your software. They also aren't walled gardens at all. You are free to add repos all you want.
Also smartphone package manager precede desktop package managers. It just was a good idea.
Synaptic existed over 20 years ago[1]. This is before the first smartphone ever existed.
1. https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~synaptic-developers/synaptic/t...
Most software in the world is not packaged but I get that everyone has different tastes and ways of doing things. It's like how I'm fine with my car's defaults; it takes me places, I don't change it or add parts (like most people don't). My computers I do customize though.
The argument I have seen here that it is the way new users want to install software, so that should be the way to do it. But encouraging users towards bad behavior, because you don't want to force them to learn anything new, is completely unhelpful. If the user doesn't accept that he has to learn the new Operating System and has to find alternatives to his software (like ditching chrome for chromium) he will never be happy.
The bug was reported when it first came up in 23.10, a non-LTS release. The previous non-LTS release is a final proving ground for an LTS release. They had an opportunity to fix it from 23.10 until the release of their next LTS, and chose not to.
There won't be an LTS for 2 more years, so this regression is likely stuck there (It worked fine prior to 23.10, even supported snaps).
If Canonical hadn't been forcing snaps down everyone's throat for the past several years, and continually ignoring all of the negative feedback they get over it, it might have been a different story, but on the back of everything we've seen from them over the years, it reeks of "deliberate choice", and it's really hard not to see this as a deliberate break rather than accidental.
Canonical have unfortunately reached trust thermocline stage with everything related to snaps.
" You ask me if it is possible to use popular tools like Chrome on Ubuntu. I say yes. Just download it from the official website and install it by double-clicking like you do it with exe files in Windows."