I just tried to upgrade Ubuntu and I suddenly see that new packages want to be installed; snapd and firefox. I don’t need Firefox because I’m already using Firefox-ESR as a deb and I certainly don’t need snaps.
Why is Ubuntu doing this? I get it you like snaps but I don’t, so don’t try to force install it. I had to use apt-mark hold
to block the install of snapd and firefox. This is also not an isolated incident. I just checked Reddit and someone made a thread 8 hours back regarding the same issue.
This thing is giving me Microsoft vibes.
at this point a lot of people who don’t like Snaps just ditched Ubuntu for something else like Linux Mint or Debian
otherwise you will be constantly fight against your distro maintainers with every upgrade
My advice: time to move on. Ubuntu has been like that for a while and they have plans to go even further, so move to Debian, which is basically Ubuntu without the issues. Even Firefox-ESR is the default in Debian.
I also recommend Fedora if OP wants a similar “just works” experience as Ubuntu.
Been using it for a while now on my desktops/laptops with no issues.
Every *buntu has been forced to comply, they took longer but now they are all aligned in this “Snap-it-all, don’t support Flatpak” approach.