Another issue with snaps

[Jonathan N. Little]

Okay Canonical, how come your snap version of Firefox does not
automatically upgrade when other packages do and the deb version did?
How does this improve security if non-techies are blithely surfing the
internet with outdated browsers?

I have converted a number of folks to Ubuntu years ago to wean them off
of running unsupported Windows XP. All was good. Many who have never
installed an OS were are to upgrade their systems to new LTS versions
unassisted (and unwittingly!) But got a call from one that websites were
flagging her as using an outdated browser. Yep, her version was v127.0
and was the snap version in 24.04 LTS. Probably the first version when
she upgraded to 24.04. Do you now have to run command line

sudo snap refresh firefox

periodically in order to keep firefox patched? How is this
nubie-friendly? Normally I would use the deb PPA which does keep firefox
up to date.

[stepore]

Post by Jonathan N. Little
Okay Canonical, how come your snap version of Firefox does not
automatically upgrade when other packages do and the deb version did?
How does this improve security if non-techies are blithely surfing the
internet with outdated browsers?

https://snapcraft.io/docs/managing-updates

[Jonathan N. Little]

Post by stepore

Post by Jonathan N. Little
Okay Canonical, how come your snap version of Firefox does not
automatically upgrade when other packages do and the deb version did?
How does this improve security if non-techies are blithely surfing the
internet with outdated browsers?

https://snapcraft.io/docs/managing-updates

That is what I thought too, but didn't on the ladies laptop. I have two
laptops on 24.04, the Thinkpad has the deb version, the EliteBook has
the snap version. The EliteBook was one version off. I didn't disable
the default updating...just saying

[Joerg Walther]

Post by Jonathan N. Little
Okay Canonical, how come your snap version of Firefox does not
automatically upgrade when other packages do and the deb version did?

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS here, Firefox version is 135.0.1, which is the most
recent version from 18 Feb, it was installed automatically, no snap
refresh command was involved. So is there something blocking your update
mechanism?

-jw-

[Jonathan N. Little]

Post by Joerg Walther

Post by Jonathan N. Little
Okay Canonical, how come your snap version of Firefox does not
automatically upgrade when other packages do and the deb version did?

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS here, Firefox version is 135.0.1, which is the most
recent version from 18 Feb, it was installed automatically, no snap
refresh command was involved. So is there something blocking your update
mechanism?
-jw-

Don't think so. I manually updated the snap version on my EliteBook from
134.0 to now 135.0.1. I will see if it updates to the next version on
its own.

[Bud Frede]

Post by Jonathan N. Little

Post by Joerg Walther

Post by Jonathan N. Little
Okay Canonical, how come your snap version of Firefox does not
automatically upgrade when other packages do and the deb version did?

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS here, Firefox version is 135.0.1, which is the most
recent version from 18 Feb, it was installed automatically, no snap
refresh command was involved. So is there something blocking your update
mechanism?
-jw-

Don't think so. I manually updated the snap version on my EliteBook from
134.0 to now 135.0.1. I will see if it updates to the next version on
its own.

Snaps have been updating promptly for me so far, including FFox. I get a
notification on the desktop when there's a new version available and it
tells me I can exit FFox to have it applied immediately.

I'm kind of on the fence with snaps. I don't think they're that
worthwhile because they're kind of proprietary to Canonical. As such,
they don't help developers reduce the number of packaging formats they
have to support. It might be better if Canonical would just suck it up
and support flatpak instead since that seems to be getting mindshare.

Given that snaps are more or less limited to Ubuntu at this time, I
think that I'd prefer they just go back to using deb packages. Those
always worked fine, apps started up faster, and my impression was that
they used less disk and RAM too.

Maybe there's some advantage to snaps that I'm missing? (Other than
trying to lock developers and users into the Ubuntu ecosystem...)

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

As such, they don't help developers reduce the number of packaging
formats they have to support.

Open-source developers don’t have to support any packaging formats. They
leave packaging up to maintainers for the specific distros.

[rbowman]

Post by Joerg Walther
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS here, Firefox version is 135.0.1, which is the most
recent version from 18 Feb, it was installed automatically, no snap
refresh command was involved. So is there something blocking your update
mechanism?

My Ubuntu 24.10 has 131.0.2-1 but

snap refresh --time
timer: 00:00~24:00/4
last: 2024-09-25
hold: forever
next: 12 days ago, at 16:03 MST (but held)

I ran 'snap refresh --unhold'

snap refresh --time
timer: 00:00~24:00/4
last: today at 11:38 MST
next: today at 12:27 MST

However an explicit 'snap refresh firefox' shows

error: cannot refresh "firefox": snap "firefox" has running apps
(firefox), pids:
5016,5217,5231,5329,5489,5547,693521,1054791,1054984,1055117

I have seen this before with Thunderbird when upgrading. If the app is
running snap will not refresh it.

killall firefox
***@kropotkin:~$ snap refresh firefox
firefox 135.0.1-1 from Mozilla✓ refreshed

I seldom reboot or close running applications. I may have put the refresh
on hold since it doesn't really work and fails silently.