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After a Long Time, Ubuntu Shows Some Respect to Deb Packages (itsfoss.com)
submitted 1 week ago by cm0002@europe.pub to c/linux@programming.dev
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For years, many Ubuntu users have felt that traditional .deb packages were being gradually sidelined in favor of the Snap ecosystem.

It started quietly. Double-clicking a downloaded .deb file would open it in Archive Manager instead of the installer. Then came controversial changes. Apps like Chromium, Thunderbolt and Firefox began defaulting to Snap packages, even when users tried installing them via the apt command in the terminal.

It continued further as Ubuntu introduced its new Snap Store. In Ubuntu 24.04, it ignored .deb packages completely. Double-clicking a .deb file would open the App Center, but wouldn’t actually install the package and just hang there. That behavior was later reverted after I highlighted it through It's FOSS.

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[-] Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com 6 points 1 week ago

is this an Ubuntu problem that I'm too Kubuntu to understand?

[-] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Does Kubuntu not use snaps? One would think that packaging works the same across Ubuntu flavors.

[-] Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Kubuntu uses Discover instead of the Ubuntu App Center

It's really easy to avoid Snaps

[-] Janx@piefed.social 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

It's also really easy to avoid the company that made the slow, proprietary, corporate-owned Snaps default as a slap-in-face to the open-source community they depend on.

[-] lengau@midwest.social 3 points 1 week ago

Discover has long had integrated Deb, snap, and flatpak integration. Oh, and fwupd too.

[-] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Is that supposed to be good? I prefer snaps unintegrated with my debs. This very post is about how Ubuntu integrated them too eagerly.

[-] aloofPenguin@piefed.world 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

They are talking about how discover has backends for flatpak, snaps, deb, and fwupd. not that they are together in the Ubuntu sense or other, just that they can be managed in the same application. Therefore snaps in discover are completely optional

[-] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Ah, okay, sounds similar to Mint's 'Software Manager'.

this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2026
109 points (100.0% liked)

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