How to set priority for a PPA. I.e. using Firefox without SNAPD

[claydoh]

compared to tens of minutes from the PPA

Yes, the PPA servers don't have mirrors like the regular repos have, so those on the other side of the globe, as well as the equator, might see more slowdowns than most.

I'd blame it on Kubuntu's PPAa taking up all the resourced building and packaging everything, but apparently it isn't the busiest one out there atm
Oops, it is again this week
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+ppas

[jlittle]

[B]You could always consider installing it manually.

I've found the mozilla team PPA too slow on occasion, to the point where I've had to stop the download during apt full-upgrade. So I'm trying the manual install approach; a bother setting up and moving the profile, but seems good. The download completes in less than a second, maybe coming from some cache somewhere, compared to tens of minutes from the PPA.

[claydoh]

lol, I mostly meant the FF snap.

I haven't seen this happen myself, or seen others with similar issues in my regular travels so far. But no one tests this sort of thing anyway.
Obviously neon won't have to worry about this for a couple of years.

[Snowhog]

Now you can ditch Snap etc if you want.

Nah. As I discovered on my laptop when I followed Oshunluvrs 'guide', if you completely remove snap from your system, it can result in system update failure (recoverable if you know what you are doing) when a snap dependency comes in and therefore, snapd is expected, but because it isn't present, well....

[claydoh]

That's what it needs to be.
Now you can ditch the FF Snap etc if you want.

[Snowhog]

So I purged firefox then updated the package cache and installed firefox. Now we have:

paul@paul-virtualbox:~$ apt policy firefox
firefox:
  Installed: 105.0.1+build1-0ubuntu0.22.04.1~mt1
  Candidate: 105.0.1+build1-0ubuntu0.22.04.1~mt1
  Version table:
     1:1snap1-0ubuntu2 500
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy/main amd64 Packages
 *** 105.0.1+build1-0ubuntu0.22.04.1~mt1 550
        500 https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/mozillateam/ppa/ubuntu jammy/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
​

[claydoh]

So, you probably need to uninstall the firefox deb, then see what the policy changes to. I am guessing that it will magically look more like mine, except for the installed status:

$ apt policy firefox
firefox:
Installed: 105.0.1+build1-0ubuntu0.22.04.1~mt1
Candidate: 105.0.1+build1-0ubuntu0.22.04.1~mt1
Version table:
1:1snap1-0ubuntu2 500
500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy/main amd64 Packages
*** 105.0.1+build1-0ubuntu0.22.04.1~mt1 550
500 https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/mozillateam/ppa/ubuntu jammy/main amd64 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Then installing FF again should install the PPA one, assuming the correct one is now the Candidate

While you can keep both the Snap and the deb installed at the same time, there is no real or logical reason to do so. Uninstalling the snap eliminated the minor default-browser confusions I was seeing while testing over a couple of days.

[Snowhog]

What does apt policy firefox show after running an apt update?

paul@paul-virtualbox:~$ apt policy firefox
firefox:
  Installed: 1:1snap1-0ubuntu2
  Candidate: 1:1snap1-0ubuntu2
  Version table:
 *** 1:1snap1-0ubuntu2 500
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     105.0.1+build1-0ubuntu0.22.04.1~mt1 550
        500 https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/mozillateam/ppa/ubuntu jammy/main amd64 Packages
​

[claydoh]

It won't replace or fix you having the current Ubuntu deb/snap, though when there is a new FF it should replace the 'fake' deb. I think?? The Snap itself will of course remain.

What does apt policy firefox show after running an apt update?

This is why they have been getting the mozzillateam PPA added to Focal users before the upgrade to Jammy becomes official. That way, Neon upgraders never get the Ubuntu deb/snap to begin with.
You are still in Neon pre-release territory

Things worked as expected on a test upgrade for me.

The current pre-release ISO (dated the 29th) has the PPA deb version installed already.

[Snowhog]

So I'm confused (what's new, eh?). I'm running KDE neon User Edition 5.25. Firefox is installed, but it's the snap version:

1:1snap1-0ubuntu2 (Transitional package > firefox > firefox snap).

I'm fully up to date. There is no non-snap firefox package identified in Muon Package Manager, but the Firefox PPA was created during a full-upgrade I ran on Sept 29th:

Selecting previously unselected package neon-repositories-launchpad-mozilla.
(Reading database ... 206976 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../neon-repositories-launchpad-mozilla_0.1+p22.04+trelease+git20220929.1203_all.deb ...
Unpacking neon-repositories-launchpad-mozilla (0.1+p22.04+trelease+git20220929.1203) ...
Setting up neon-repositories-launchpad-mozilla (0.1+p22.04+trelease+git20220929.1203) ...
+ . /etc/os-release
+ PRETTY_NAME=KDE neon 5.25
+ NAME=KDE neon
+ VERSION_ID=22.04
+ VERSION=5.25
+ VERSION_CODENAME=jammy
+ ID=neon
+ ID_LIKE=ubuntu debian
+ HOME_URL=[URL]https://neon.kde.org/[/URL]
+ SUPPORT_URL=[URL]https://neon.kde.org/[/URL]
+ BUG_REPORT_URL=[URL]https://bugs.kde.org/[/URL]
+ PRIVACY_POLICY_URL=[URL]https://kde.org/privacypolicy/[/URL]
+ UBUNTU_CODENAME=jammy
+ [ ! -e /etc/apt/sources.list.d/org.kde.neon.net.launchpad.ppa.mozillateam.list ]
+ grep --quiet --extended-regexp -r --include=*.list ^deb\s.+[URL="http://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/mozillateam/ppa/ubuntu"]ppa.launchpadcontent.net/mozillateam/ppa/ubuntu[/URL] /etc/apt/sou
rces.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d
+ cat
+ grep --quiet --extended-regexp -r --include=*.list ^deb\s.+[URL="http://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/mozillateam/ppa/ubuntu"]ppa.launchpadcontent.net/mozillateam/ppa/ubuntu[/URL] /etc/apt/sou
rces.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d
+ apt-get indextargets
+ grep --quiet --extended-regexp ^Repo-URI:.+[URL="http://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/mozillateam/ppa/ubuntu"]ppa.launchpadcontent.net/mozillateam/ppa/ubuntu[/URL]
+ apt-get update
Hit:1 [URL]http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu[/URL] jammy InRelease
0% [Waiting for headers] [Connecting to [URL="http://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/"]ppa.launchpadcontent.net[/URL] (185.125.190.52)] [Connecting to [URL="http://ppa.launchpad.net/"]ppa.launchpad.net[/URL] (185.
                                                                                                                        
Hit:2 [URL]http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu[/URL] jammy-security InRelease
0% [Waiting for headers] [Connecting to [URL="http://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/"]ppa.launchpadcontent.net[/URL] (185.125.190.52)] [Connecting to [URL="http://ppa.launchpad.net/"]ppa.launchpad.net[/URL] (185.
                                                                                                                        
Hit:3 [URL]http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu[/URL] jammy-updates InRelease
                                                                                                                        
Hit:4 [URL]http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu[/URL] jammy-backports InRelease                  
Hit:5 [URL]http://ppa.launchpad.net/utappia/stable/ubuntu[/URL] jammy InRelease                                                  
Get:6 [URL]https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/mozillateam/ppa/ubuntu[/URL] jammy InRelease [23.8 kB]                                
Get:7 [URL]http://archive.neon.kde.org/user[/URL] jammy InRelease [104 kB]
Get:8 [URL]https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/mozillateam/ppa/ubuntu[/URL] jammy/main amd64 Packages [33.8 kB]
Fetched 162 kB in 1s (118 kB/s)                              
Reading package lists... Done

​

[claydoh]

And despite this, from time to time some background process replaced my APT version with the snap version.

I think the proper method to prevent this in the first place is to set the pin in the 500s?

Neon have added the PPA to replace the Snap for their 22.04 build, and have actually pushed this change to 20.04 ahead of this, so there aren't any issues with the release upgrade.
They used a pin-priority of 550, though i don't think this is any different from using 900, if I read the docs correctly. (Which is highly unlikely )
https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages...erences.5.html

So,. my guess is that Ubuntu and Mozilla are simply releasing their Snap and associated deb sometimes before the mozillateam PPA do
But then again, I also thought that the 'o' in release o=LP-PPA-mozillateam indicated to only get the specified packagename from the specified repo to begin with, so even unattended upgraded wouldn't be breaking basic apt configuration?

In any case, many thanks for the tip!!

I will be watching to see if this sort of thing happens in the future

[Derbeth]

This is not working for me, it keeps ninja installing the snap version of firefox. I'm trying "sudo apt-mark hold snapd" to see if this will prevent it re-installing without my knowledge. This bag of ****e is behaving like some sort of virus.

I had a similar problem: apt policy firefox showed the correct configuration: that mozillateam PPA has a higher priority than the snap. And despite this, from time to time some background process replaced my APT version with the snap version.

What worked for me is blocking unattended-updates from touching 'firefox' package. Edit /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades and make sure you have something like:

Unattended-Upgrade::Package-Blacklist {
    // The following matches all packages starting with linux-
//  "linux-";
        "firefox";

[GreyGeek]

Note that the PPA may give a beta release of Firefox. Presently one gets version 100.

104.0 on KDE Neon fully updated. oshunluvr's settings come with KDE Neon at no extra charge!

[Beerislife]

How about adding the Linux Mint repo to get Firefox as well as some other Mint goodies?

[bweinel]

Unfortunately, Canonical seems to be bent upon rushing snap applications into their operating systems despite the associated problems (which they neglected to find and fix before the LTS release.)

Automatically porting existing Firefox profiles from the default location over to the sand boxed Firefox application location was one that became apparent immediately after an upgrade to 22.04. I had to do it manually.

I ran across another issue yesterday where snapd sand boxed Firefox (again!) is unable to access /usr/share/* files, which is a requirement for some applications (Gimp in this case) in order to reach their help and documentation folders. It looks like they left that sub-directory out of the default path setup for snapd sand boxed Firefox application when compiling the snap. Looks like a bug report to upstream is in order.

Grrrrr.....

cheers,
bill