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Comment by the_af | Hacker News Reader

> Like Linux Mint is doing the same? There is no control being lost by using Ubuntu versus Mint.

If I understood the issue correctly (and I may very well be mistaken!) the problem Mint has with Canonical is that Ubuntu has "hijacked" (for lack of a better term) some apt packages so that they now actually install snapd and the snap. So you think you're opting out of snap, but when you use apt to install Chromium you end up using snap anyway.

If I understand correctly, this is Mint's main complaint: that Ubuntu seems to be hijacking apt packages with snap.

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There is no apt package with Chromium.

https://ubuntu.com/blog/chromium-in-ubuntu-deb-to-snap-trans...

Canonical couldn't afford the maintenance costs for it. On Ubuntu distributions it's either the snap or you have to create some weird frankendeb aspect by pulling from Debian.

They explained it better than I would.

In other cases, I don't think of a case where apt installs snaps over apt. I think the only priority for the decision choice was based on most recent version. Although this aspect I am slightly unclear.

Oh. If there is no Chromium apt package, isn't the following from TFA (lwn) misleading?

> The problem was the decision to change the Ubuntu chromium-browser APT package itself upstream in Ubuntu. Previously, that package would simply install Chromium directly. With the change, it would instead install the Snap package-management tools first and then install the Snap equivalent of the Chromium package — without making it clear to the user what was happening.

There is a Chromium package in the Ubuntu apt repositories, which installs Chromium through snap.

I just use the Chrome apt repository from Google which seems simpler all around.

And yet they have all the time in the world to spend on an invasive daemon that pulls updates OTA without user consent. Plus all the other bullshit they've tried (Mir, unity, juju or whatever it's called). Thankfully Debian is still true to the game.

There is no apt package with chromium, but there is an apt package name 'chromium-browser'.

https://packages.ubuntu.com/focal/chromium-browser

In previous versions of ubuntu, that package would install chromium, as one would expect.

In recent versions of ubuntu, this package is a stub that installs snapd, and then snapd installs chromium.

There is a substantial difference between those two things. Users that try to install chromium through an open package management system are being pushed to Canonical's proprietary store.

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