[lubuntu-users] What happened?? apt freezes during dist-upgrade in kinetic??

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Sun, 2022-09-04 at 10:38 -0700, Fritz Hudnut wrote:
> [snip] running kinetic this morning and executed "apt update && apt
> dist-upgrade" [snip]
> FireFox disappeared from the internet menu [snip]

Hi,

Firefox is not provided by the apt repositories.

It's a "Transitional package - firefox -> firefox snap", see
https://packages.ubuntu.com/kinetic/firefox , IOW the snap related
upgrade process is providing Firefox.

The "bin" provided by this package actually is a script, at least the
jammy package's Firefox script starts with:

"#!/bin/sh
if ! [ -x /snap/bin/firefox ]; then
    echo "" >&2
    echo "Command '$0' requires the firefox snap to be installed." >&2
    echo "Please install it with:" >&2
    echo "" >&2
    echo "snap install firefox" >&2
    echo "" >&2
    exit 1
fi"

IMO the snap enforcement is the beginning of the end of Ubuntu flavours.
Fortunately my everyday Linux is the rolling release Arch Linux. Ubuntu
flavours were my long term support emergency Linux installs, but now I
try to find a long term support replacement for Ubuntu flavours.

Snaps are an Ubuntu only thingy. Other distros provide the snap
infrastructure, but they are not supporting it. I also dislike
alternatives, such as flatpak, but those at least enjoy a minimum of
acceptance, while there's absolutely no acceptance for snaps outside of
Ubuntu flavours.

Regards,
Ralf