Where to go in order to try to persuade Ubuntu to offer two versions of chromium?

[HippoMan]

What is the best way to try to persuade the powers that be at Ubuntu to offer two versions of chromium: a snap-based version and a non-snap-based version?

I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 20.04 from 18.04, and my long-standing software which makes use of chromium no longer works, because Ubuntu's offered chromium is now snap-based, and some of that software references URL's such as file:///opt/path/to/somewhere, and on my system, I have /opt mounted in /etc/fstab as a separate filesystem.

I know how to change that software, but it consists of lots of needless, time-consuming work that involves changing mounts, scripts, and various user procedures.

That work is onerous and mostly useless, because its only purpose would be to modify my system to accomodate Ubuntu's decision to force all of us to use a snap version of chromium.

I have worked around this crippling of chromium by disabling the snap version of that package and installing the non-snap version from a PPA. However, ideally, I believe that Ubuntu should offer two versions of chromium in its repos: (1) the default version which is built on top of snap; (2) the legacy, non-snap version which we could optionally install instead.

There are a number of forums and places for discussion that are offered by Ubuntu, and I'm not sure which is the best place to go in order to try to persuade Ubuntu to offer these two versions of chromium. Thank you in advance for any pointers.

[slickymaster]

Thread moved to Ubuntu, Linux and OS Chat.

[HippoMan]

I am new to all these Ubuntu-related forums, so thank you very much for correcting my post by moving it to the proper forum.

[ajgreeny]

I do not think you will manage to get Canonical/Ubuntu to change their minds about packaging for chromium abd this forum is certainly not the place but there are already some PPA repos which can be used to install chromium; I am currently using https://launchpad.net/~saiarcot895/+...u/chromium-dev and it works very well, but there are other PPAs available such as the beta version at https://launchpad.net/~saiarcot895/+.../chromium-beta

You can enable one or other of these following the instructions at those sites but you will have to accept the risk (I believe very small) of the PPA packages being risky to your system.

I note also that Linux-Mint is itself creating a .deb version of chromium which may be installable in Ubuntu though I have never tried it so this would be up to you to see if it works. You may have to download the chromium packages from Mint and install them manually as I have no information about adding Mint repos to Ubuntu; might be worth a longer search on that.

[HippoMan]

There are some PPA repos which can be used to install chromium; I am currently using https://launchpad.net/~saiarcot895/+...u/chromium-dev and it works very well, but there are other PPAs available such as the beta version at https://launchpad.net/~saiarcot895/+.../chromium-beta

You can enable one or other of those following the instructions at those sites but you will have to accept the risk (I believe very small) of the packages being risky to your OS.

I note also that Linux-Mint is itself creating a .deb version of chromium which may be installable in Ubuntu though I have never tried it so this would be up to you to see if it works. You may need to download the chromium packages from Mint and install them manually as I have no information about adding Mint repos to Ubuntu; might be worth a longer search on that.

Thank you very much. Coincidentally, that's the exact PPA I went to in order to replace the snap-based chromium with the traditional version, and it's working.

And now I'll be checking that Linux Mint .deb package. Thank you for that reference, as well. I'll report my results back here.

What I'm hoping for here is to find a way to try to persuade Ubuntu to offer both the snap and non-snap versions of chromium, so we don't have to utilize PPA's or packages from other distros.

[ayesc0tty89]

I do not think you will manage to get Canonical/Ubuntu to change their minds about packaging for chromium abd this forum is certainly not the place but there are already some PPA repos which can be used to install chromium; I am currently using https://launchpad.net/~saiarcot895/+...u/chromium-dev and it works very well, but there are other PPAs available such as the beta version at https://launchpad.net/~saiarcot895/+.../chromium-beta

You can enable one or other of these following the instructions at those sites but you will have to accept the risk (I believe very small) of the PPA packages being risky to your system.

I note also that Linux-Mint is itself creating a .deb version of chromium which may be installable in Ubuntu though I have never tried it so this would be up to you to see if it works. You may have to download the chromium packages from Mint and install them manually as I have no information about adding Mint repos to Ubuntu; might be worth a longer search on that.

No arm64 builds thanks though.

[TheFu]

What I'm hoping for here is to find a way to try to persuade Ubuntu to offer both the snap and non-snap versions of chromium, so we don't have to utilize PPA's or packages from other distros.

Bring them 10 clients with 100K+ paid support systems each who won't sign the contract without a non-snap chromium packing solution. But I seriously doubt that Canonical is packaging Chromium. I think the google Chromium team is behind it.

Canonical is a business. Money talks.

Snap deployments are strategic goals for Canonical, so by necessity, they may not entertain any other option for a number of years.

In the meantime, you do know that we can run the version of chromium contained inside the snap package, but without the snap confinement or settings, right?

$ more ~/bin/chromium.sh
#!/bin/bash
/snap/chromium/current/usr/lib/chromium-browser/chrome $* &

Unfortunately, chromium internal code is blocking the use of my preferred sandbox, firejail. I haven't done the research to figure out the new firejail profile settings needed for chromium as provided by the snap package, to work. There is still a chromium for 16.04 that doesn't use a snap and it runs fine inside a firejail.

[CatKiller]

There are a number of forums and places for discussion that are offered by Ubuntu, and I'm not sure which is the best place to go in order to try to persuade Ubuntu to offer these two versions of chromium. Thank you in advance for any pointers.

The reasons for having chromium as a snap are well-documented and widely publicised.

Ubuntu development discussions happen on Discourse.

[HippoMan]

[ ... etc. ... ]
In the meantime, you do know that we can run the version of chromium contained inside the snap package, but without the snap confinement or settings, right?

$ more ~/bin/chromium.sh
#!/bin/bash
/snap/chromium/current/usr/lib/chromium-browser/chrome $* &

Thank you! I didn't realize that I can do this. I think that this solves my problem.

[ayesc0tty89]

Bring them 10 clients with 100K+ paid support systems each who won't sign the contract without a non-snap chromium packing solution. But I seriously doubt that Canonical is packaging Chromium. I think the google Chromium team is behind it.

Canonical is a business. Money talks.

Snap deployments are strategic goals for Canonical, so by necessity, they may not entertain any other option for a number of years.

In the meantime, you do know that we can run the version of chromium contained inside the snap package, but without the snap confinement or settings, right?

$ more ~/bin/chromium.sh
#!/bin/bash
/snap/chromium/current/usr/lib/chromium-browser/chrome $* &

Unfortunately, chromium internal code is blocking the use of my preferred sandbox, firejail. I haven't done the research to figure out the new firejail profile settings needed for chromium as provided by the snap package, to work. There is still a chromium for 16.04 that doesn't use a snap and it runs fine inside a firejail.

Just want to post and say thanks for this workaround! SNAP with Chromium is horrible and slow but this makes things so much better.
Even hardware acceleration on an RPI4 is working with it. it does NOT with snap.

SO thank you!