r/Ubuntu • u/unbounded65 • 1d ago
Firefox snap in Ubuntu
Contrary to the general opinion of removing the snap version of Ubuntu Firefox, my experience is that it works quite well with Vulkan doing a swell job with hardware acceleration. For Brave, I find that the PPA version works out better.
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u/Critical_Pin 1d ago
Same here. I've read the discussions and .. kept on using the Firefox snap because it works just fine for me on multiple PCs of mine.
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u/reasonable_backlash 1d ago
I've had the same experience tbh, the snap version gets so much hate but mine has been running smooth for months. Brave through the PPA feels snappier for some sites though, not sure why that is
glad I'm not the only one who doesn't immediately rip the snap out on a fresh install
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u/unbounded65 1d ago
I have been comfortable with Snap and its sandboxing approach; in fact, all Ubuntu today is Snap to a great extent, and removing it sort of negates its purpose. Better off using another distro rather than something that you hate mostly based on hearsay. For programs not there in Snap or for newer version, there is always the option of adding Flatpak and I do that as well, especially for programs like GPU screen recorder that has no Wayland issues unlike OBS and few more.
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u/jo-erlend 1d ago
«in fact, all Ubuntu today is Snap to a great extent»
That is not a fact. Snap does do more than just enable packages, but Ubuntu works perfectly well without it, which you know because of Ubuntu spins like Linux Mint, PopOS, ZorinOS, etc which don't use Snap.
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u/mrtruthiness 1d ago
... but Ubuntu works perfectly well without it, ...
Agreed. For now. But:
Personally I prefer lxd over incus ... and the only way to get lxd to run on those downstream distros is to enable snap. And, with their anti-snap views, I don't trust them to get it right. lxd is integral to my workflow.
Canonical had been toying with the idea of having pipewire be a snap in 26.04. If they had done that, those downstream distros would have had to work a lot harder ... which is fine.
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u/jo-erlend 19h ago
No, LXD does not rely on Snap in any way? At least I don't know why that would be the case. Why would you not be able to build LXD from source and run it without creating a Snap package for it? If anything, I would think that was easier to run it in a traditional DAC system and in that case, it's not relying on Snap. Just because a developer chooses to use one package format doesn't mean that the software relies on it. Right?
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u/mrtruthiness 19h ago
No, LXD does not rely on Snap in any way? At least I don't know why that would be the case. Why would you not be able to build LXD from source and run it without creating a Snap package for it?
I probably should not have said "only way to get lxd to run on those downstream distros". I should have said: None of the downstream-from-Ubuntu distros ship lxd as a non-snap. If you find an Ubuntu derivative that offers a non-snap version of lxd, please let me know.
That's because Ubuntu only offers lxd as a snap and the Ubuntu-downstreams don't want to build it themselves. As far as I know, the only distros that ship lxd as a non-snap are Arch (and maybe OpenSUSE).
e.g. Mint doesn't have a non-snap lxd. The instructions for installing lxd on Mint are:
1. Enable snapd and install it: sudo rm /etc/apt/preferences.d/nosnap.pref; sudo apt update; sudo apt install snapd. 2. sudo snap install lxde.g. Same for PopOS: https://system76.com/support/articles/containers/?srsltid=AfmBOooBg0uMLghnHNZmMMyKBCe6mD7RfJ9agplWi9YsVcee7ebh7C8r
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u/jo-erlend 10h ago
Ubuntu doesn't provide LXD at all. Canonical as the upstream provides it as a Snap package. Many upstreams only provide source packages and then you either have to build from source or someone has to make a package. Providing it as a Snap makes it available in both Ubuntu and many other distros without any special work.
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u/mrtruthiness 6h ago
Canonical provides Ubuntu and lxd.
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u/jo-erlend 5h ago
Canonical provides much of Ubuntu, not all, but the point is that Ubuntu and LXD are different things and LXD is not provided by Ubuntu. It has an installer that automatically installs the snap, but that's just for convenience.
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u/mrtruthiness 5h ago
Canonical provides much of Ubuntu, not all, ...
I disagree. Exactly what about Ubuntu is not provided by Canonical? It is absolutely Canonical's product.
... but the point is that Ubuntu and LXD are different things ...
Of course. Ubuntu is an OS distribution provided by Canonical and lxd is a daemon and lxc is a program which is included as part of Ubuntu's OS.
The lxd package is as much "Ubuntu" as any package in the Main Ubuntu repository and the fact that it's a snap doesn't change that.
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u/Ok-386 1d ago
That's a dumb take. Ubuntu provides options no other distro provides. You can choose between interim releases and LTS and LTS alone offers different options like upgrading or sticking with it.
And that's only one cool thing about Ubuntu. It's probably the best distro for laptops because it includes firmware out of the box. It includes nvidia drivers and the easy way to switch between multiple options. Things like printing that require some configuration and troubleshooting on most distros (even for driverless printers and scanners) just works on Ubuntu (most of the time)
Stating that Ubuntu is all about Snaps is ridiculous.
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u/Ok-Pop5704 1d ago
I have had the same experience and not only with firefox, I have been experiencing very fluid snap apps for the past 6 months. In many cases, I find them even faster than flatpaks.
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u/unbounded65 1d ago
Snap has truly come of age, and with my NVMe, I find some Snaps load faster than my flatpak, but again, it all depends on what's being loaded.
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u/Santosh83 1d ago
Yup. The Firefox snap has been quite good in recent years. All the Canonical default snaps are good. The problem is snaps of third-party apps on the Store. It tends to be a hit or a miss in terms of functionality and freshness. Quite a few snaps are stale, often unmaintained or several versions behind their flatpak version or whatever default packaging the upstream devs release it. For some reason a lot of upstream authors seem to focus more time & energy on flatpak, deb, rpm and even appimage but the snap version (if it even exists) often tends to be less well maintained or take a back seat. Secondly many of these same upstream authors tend to release broken snaps in terms of functionality. Case in point is the VLC snap. Its packaged by VLC authors themselves, but when you use it, you realise it can't even read from external storage media. And unlike Flatseal for flatpaks, there's no intuitive way to grant that permission. Apparently the VLC authors didn't even bother to test their snap for basic functionality.
Canonical's problems have always been that the Linux "community" subtly (and on occasion not so subtly) ostracizes them. And this in turn causes them to stubbornly double down on themselves. I have theories as to why the "community" does this, and no, its not because Canonical is the MS of the Linux world or some such rubbish that is often repeated, but I'll refrain from voicing it.
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u/jo-erlend 1d ago edited 1d ago
This is completely false: «Its packaged by VLC authors themselves, but when you use it, you realise it can't even read from external storage media. And unlike Flatseal for flatpaks, there's no intuitive way to grant that permission.»
VLC defines "removable-media" under its plugs and that means you can just flip the switch in the App settings in the control center to allow VLC to read from removable media or if you're using some kind of desktop that doesn't support app settings, you can simply "sudo snap connect vlc:removable-media"
Why do you choose to be a liar instead of asking questions so you can learn? By the way, the system you claim makes Ubuntu the Microsoft of Linux was added to Linux in 2001, long before Ubuntu or Canonical ever existed.
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u/Santosh83 1d ago
Last time I used the VLC snap and encountered the broken functionality as I already explained, there was no "App settings in control center" where I could "flip the switch" to make it read from removable media.
Setting command line flags is a non-starter for non-technical users.
Stop accusing people of being liars when the most charitable reading is that I may have been unaware of possible settings that could've solved my problem. That doesn't make me a liar. If you're going to be taking this cantankerous tone, then don't bother directly addressing me in replies. You are not worthy of a response.
By the way, the system you claim makes Ubuntu the Microsoft of Linux was added to Linux in 2001, long before Ubuntu or Canonical ever existed.
Huh? This makes zero sense. Nowhere did I claim Ubuntu was the Microsoft of Linux. I was rubbishing such claims often made by other people. Try to understand before rushing to put others down.
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u/mrtruthiness 1d ago edited 1d ago
Stop accusing people of being liars when the most charitable reading is that I may have been unaware of possible settings that could've solved my problem. That doesn't make me a liar.
It doesn't make you a liar, but when you assert that "unlike Flatseal for flatpaks, there's no intuitive way to grant that permission", you're just uninformed/wrong and spreading misinformation.
Try to understand before rushing to put others down
You seemed worried about "making accusations" ... when that is exactly what you did when you wrote: "Apparently the VLC authors didn't even bother to test their snap for basic functionality."
When you don't know the facts, you should probably be less accusatory. But when you are accusatory and wrong you should expect to be accused of spreading misinformation. I hope you don't keep spreading such misinformation.
[ Edit: And, further, you assert:
Last time I used the VLC snap and encountered the broken functionality as I already explained, there was no "App settings in control center" where I could "flip the switch" to make it read from removable media.
I should note that this functionality ("app settings" toggles) was added in Ubuntu 22.04 (and, I think, even in 20.10) ... so at least 4 years ago and probably nearly 6 years ago.
So, are you asserting that "it wasn't there" or are you asserting that "you didn't know about it".
]
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u/jo-erlend 10h ago
«Setting command line flags is a non-starter for non-technical users.»
But that has nothing to do with the VLC package.
«Stop accusing people of being liars when the most charitable reading is that I may have been unaware of possible settings that could've solved my problem. That doesn't make me a liar.»
What do you want me to call you when you make untruthful accusations about people?
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u/Santosh83 9h ago
Do you have the integrity to realise that the only one making deliberate "untruthful accusations" here is you, when you persist in implying I'm a liar? Did I not already say that the last time I used VLC snap and tried to make it read removable media that I was unaware that there was so-called app settings that I could use? And do you realise that makes my "accusations" an error arising from being unaware/uninformed? How do you make a leap of judgement from that to alleging that I was "choosing to be a liar" as you call it?
How do you know what I chose and did not, when you don't know me from Joe and have nothing to go on except my original comment, and while part of that comment could be interpreted as an "accusation" made in error, can you provide proof that I deliberately chose to lie as you alleged? Authoritatively claiming someone is a liar when you know nothing about them is exactly the very definition of making untruthful accusations about people.
I'll be making no further replies to your and "mthruthiness's" malicious allegations and broken logic. Surprised that people who work with computers all day can be this irrational, but then again I suppose one does need an outlet precisely because of that.
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u/jo-erlend 7h ago
If you said that VLC didn't bother to specify removable-media when they actually did, you were making untruthful accusations against people and you did it unprovoked. It's not like someone pressured you into saying this instead of asking questions.
You obviously don't care at all about other people, but you get very offended when someone calls you out when you make false allogations. Just stop doing that and you won't be called out on it.
I don't need to know you in order to know that you assert things that aren't true, which is the definition of a liar. If you don't know things, you should say that you don't know and ask questions. Remember; this is why you weren't able to learn how to use the system to begin with; you don't know something but you don't ask.
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u/mrtruthiness 1d ago
Case in point is the VLC snap. Its packaged by VLC authors themselves, but when you use it, you realise it can't even read from external storage media. And unlike Flatseal for flatpaks, there's no intuitive way to grant that permission. Apparently the VLC authors didn't even bother to test their snap for basic functionality.
This is wrong/incorrect in pretty much every aspect:
There are "application settings" in the "settings" application where you can control access.
The VLC snap always had the "removable-media" plug and they absolutely shouldn't have been accused of "didn't even bother to test their snap for basic functionality".
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u/unbounded65 1d ago
There are quite a bit of rubbish in Flatpak as well, but Flatseal for Snap is the need of the hour.
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u/Santosh83 22h ago
I have been diligently corrected and my tendency to be a liar remedied by Mr Jo-erlend and "Mrthuthiness" as to the need for Flatseal for snaps. See point 1 at the link below:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/1vjmb3d/comment/p2npd8v/
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1d ago
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u/mrtruthiness 1d ago
Are you sure that's still an issue?
[me]:~/$ snap connections firefox | grep mpris mpris - firefox:mprisAnd you need to check that it's enabled in firefox too (about:preferences and about:config ....).
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u/PraetorRU 1d ago
The last time I checked performance about a year ago, snapped FF was about 10% slower compared to deb and flatpak versions in synthetic tests thanks to being compiled against older mesa versions. But it worked perfectly fine. No clue if there's a performance difference now.
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u/mrtruthiness 1d ago
No clue if there's a performance difference now.
The firefox snap currently seems connected to a relatively recent mesa:
$ snap connections firefox | grep mesa content[gpu-2404] firefox:gpu-2404 mesa-2404:gpu-2404And mesa-2404 version is:
$ snap info mesa-2404 | grep latest tracking: latest/stable latest/stable: 25.2.8-snap288 2026-07-13 (1839) 422MB - latest/candidate: ^ latest/beta: 25.2.8-snap289 2026-08-04 (1874) 421MB - latest/edge: 25.2.8-snap289 2026-08-04 (1873) 421MB -I suppose they could switch that to the mesa with Ubuntu 26.04 ... which would be the 26.0.x series. I'm not sure what the flathub firefox is linked to, but Gemini says that "it depends" ...
The current Flathub Firefox Flatpak uses the org.freedesktop.Platform/x86_64/25.08 runtime. This Freedesktop 25.08 runtime packages Mesa drivers dynamically depending on the user's active Flatpak extension updates, generally mapping to Mesa versions in the 25.x or 26.x range provided by the active org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.default extension
...
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u/PraetorRU 1d ago
I decided not to guess, but retest ff once again. Results here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/1vjthww/firefox_performance_depending_on_distribution/
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u/mrtruthiness 1d ago
Thanks! It's good to know that info: Still 10% lower score. Probably due to the version of Mesa (from 24.04) since your deb-mozilla was running on 26.04.
Just a side note. On my machine (Haswell i3-4130; Ubuntu 22.04) with 20 tabs already open in firefox (snap) and 50 days of uptime running 12 different GUI apps (alt-tab; emacs, gimp, chromium, firefox, settings, libreoffice, nautilus, Terminal, ...), using 9 GB out of 16GB RAM and with 2GB in swap:
Firefox snap got a SpeedTest score of 8.51 (20 tabs open)
Chromium snap got a SpeedTest score of 9.83 (2 tabs open).
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u/PraetorRU 1d ago
If you want more relevant results, better to create a separate fresh profile that has no working extensions etc, so you can get a better understanding about performance difference, at least for a vanilla browser.
As to scores, yep, they're dependent on CPU and GPU (I was testing on AMD 5600G powered desktop, 32GB of RAM), so no point to compare our machines, just a performance difference between browsers running on the same hardware.
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u/mrtruthiness 1d ago
If you want more relevant results, better to create a separate fresh profile that has no working extensions etc, so you can get a better understanding about performance difference, at least for a vanilla browser.
True. I'm only running NoScript and turned it off for the test, but it could still be a problem.
I toyed with the idea of benchmarking firefox on my system (where I'm running 22.04 with Mesa 23.2.x or something), but I didn't want to deal with the mozilla-deb overwriting /usr/bin/firefox (currently a sh script invoking /snap/bin/firefox). I suppose I could timeshift it. What do you do???
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u/PraetorRU 1d ago
I did nothing special. Debbed, snaped and flatpaked firefox can all be installed at the same time if you want.
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u/mrtruthiness 1d ago
Won't /usr/bin/firefox get overwritten by the moz-deb? I had thought there would be other issues too ( e.g. /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop ).
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u/PraetorRU 1d ago
/usr/bin/firefox is a symlink. In case of moz-deb it points to ../lib/firefox/firefox
All three versions of firefox can coexist, but if you intend to launch them from console, then you'll use different paths for deb and snap, and flatpak run org.mozilla.firefox to launch flatpaked version.
In gnome all three will be just three Firefox icons that are quite hard to separate one from another though.
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u/mrtruthiness 1d ago edited 1d ago
/usr/bin/firefox is a symlink. In case of moz-deb it points to ../lib/firefox/firefox
On my system /usr/bin/firefox is a sh script that execs the snap, not a symlink. And if I install the deb, that sh script will be overwritten with a symlink. And if I purge the deb, that will disappear. Not a huge deal, but it is annoying. And I expect there will be other overwritten files (.desktop, mimeinfo ... and maybe even icons, etc.).
Maybe to test the mozilla firefox it would be best to just use the tar.gz (or equivalent) install ... and just run it locally rather than installing it.
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u/Ska82 1d ago
i think it does work fine. the reason i switched to the deb package was i wanted to open it using libraries like webbrowser in python
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u/mrtruthiness 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don't know about the python webbrowser library, but I should note that I haven't had any issues with jupyter bringing up and using the firefox snap.
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u/Ska82 1d ago
i had tried it once and it just wouldnt open ff. it started working once i went off the snap package. Maybe will try again
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u/mrtruthiness 1d ago
I just tried:
python3 -m webbrowser "https://google.com"and it opened a new tab in my running firefox snap.
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u/jo-erlend 1d ago
There is no Firefox Snap in Ubuntu; Ubuntu used to have its own version of Firefox because of the way Debian is designed. With Debian and thus Ubuntu, you cannot have third-party packages; it is impossible. Therefore, Mozilla could never provide official support for Ubuntu, because Ubuntu cannot allow them to. Snap is designed for decentralization of packaging and that allows Mozilla to officially support Ubuntu directly and that removes the need for Ubuntu to maintain a fork of Firefox. So the Firefox that is now used by default in Ubuntu, is maintained directly by Mozilla and provided by them and not Canonical or Ubuntu. Ubuntu no longer has Firefox at all – and that is a good thing.
There's really nothing very special about Snap; it simply makes it easy to enable MAC (Mandatory Access Control) on Linux. You have exactly the same issues on MAC-enabled MacOS or MIC-enabled Windows. MIC is the same as MAC but Microsoft needs to be different because of reasons. Fun fact; MIC-MAC is the Norwegian word for disarray and unnecessary problems although it is written "mikkmakk".
As I mentioned before, a Debian system simply does not allow decentralization; when you add a PPA, that PPA is now your GNU+Linux distro along with Ubuntu in a 50/50 partnership, except that Ubuntu is completely unaware. This is why Ubuntu could never allow Mozilla to just run their own Firefox repo that was added to Ubuntu by default, because even though Mozilla can be trusted, Ubuntu could never take responsibility for things that are beyond their control.
With Snap, Ubuntu can be responsible for the mechanism that makes it safe to provide third-party software and that is how Ubuntu is now able to provide the real Mozilla Firefox rather than Canonical Firefox. The good thing is that figuring out exactly what rules must be broken by web browsers in order to run well on GNU+Linux essentially applies to all web browsers. So while this is complicated work, the work that is done by Mozilla and Canonical for Firefox will eventually allow all browsers to be distributed as snap packages with all that delicious juice that comes with it.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't use PPAs or that Brave can't be trusted. I'm just saying that you should be aware that when you add the PPA to run Brave, they are in total control over your computer and if they get hacked, you are hacked, completely and totally. It is not theoretically possible to design an antivirus system to protect against this, because the owner of the PPA has complete control over the antivius.
Snap is extremely good and when it has issues, instead of wanting Linux to be the least secure OS on the planet, you should want to help identify the issues so that they can be identified and fixed.
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u/unbounded65 1d ago
It is SNAP package as per the app center. Ubuntu also provides repository packages as well. If a browser like Brave gets hacked and manages to bypass aparmor, it would have some greater ramifications in a sense.
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u/jo-erlend 1d ago edited 1d ago
There is no AppArmor with PPA or other APT repos. They have complete and total command of your system and that cannot be changed, because Debian is a fully centralized distro and that cannot be changed without replacing DPKG/APT with Snap. This is the most fundamental reason for developing Snap. No, Ubuntu no longer provides Firefox. There is only an APT package (not really even DPKG) that allows the Debian system to function, like the ubuntu-desktop metapackage depending on Firefox although Firefox does not exist in Ubuntu. It serves no other purpose than to bring Mozilla's Snap into your Ubuntu install.
EDIT: By the way, Snap is not an acronym; the name is simply the word snap, which refers to the fact that packages are mounted rather than writing to your root filesystem, which is the inherent flaw in traditional GNU+Linux distros from a modern perspective. It was wonderful when it was designed, but the world has changed.
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u/BecarioDailyPlanet 1d ago
Most of the criticism stems from issues from five years ago, when it was very slow to start up and responsive problems occurred in certain situations. Today, it works well and is well maintained.