A short guide on how to install Firefox from a PPA on Ubuntu 22.04 and remove the Firefox Snap. Doing this gets you a faster Firefox that can do more OOTB.
Snaps are the almost the exact same thing as Flatpaks, except for the fact that they’re stored compressed on your disk, requiring them to be decompressed before execution, which explains the slow startup time.
The Flatpak version of Firefox has the exact same problems as the Snap when it comes to some extensions. One such example is using the KeePassXC password manager with the browser extension. The extension can’t communicate with the password vault app because of sandboxing in either the Flatpak or Snap.
That’s not really the case as Flatpak is a totally different architecture. Flatpak uses bubblewrap which runs as a local use and doesn’t require the crazy complex thing called snapd. It is much cleaner and way more portable. Also it has more apps as it is way more popular and not tied to a single company.
That’s only a few reasons why Flatpak is so much better
Who even uses Snap anyway? I either use apt (or .deb) or flatpak. Snap is just the worst of both worlds…
Lots of people, often unknowingly. If you run apt install firefox on Ubuntu, you’re getting the snap version.
Only on Ubuntu
Snaps are the almost the exact same thing as Flatpaks, except for the fact that they’re stored compressed on your disk, requiring them to be decompressed before execution, which explains the slow startup time.
The Flatpak version of Firefox has the exact same problems as the Snap when it comes to some extensions. One such example is using the KeePassXC password manager with the browser extension. The extension can’t communicate with the password vault app because of sandboxing in either the Flatpak or Snap.
That’s not really the case as Flatpak is a totally different architecture. Flatpak uses bubblewrap which runs as a local use and doesn’t require the crazy complex thing called snapd. It is much cleaner and way more portable. Also it has more apps as it is way more popular and not tied to a single company.
That’s only a few reasons why Flatpak is so much better
Ah yeah, you’re right. But essentially they achieve the same thing.