this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025
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A lot of "beginner friendly" distros are Ubuntu based though, so while not strictly requiring you to use snaps, it might install Firefox as a flatpak though, which doesn't have the privileges to do drag and drop when I last used a flatpak based browser.
You can correct me if I am wrong of course, as I truly don't know if it is still a thing or if I just installed the flatpak. I didn't understand the limitations back then.
I wouldn't know if this is still a thing. You are right about the integration problem of snaps/flatpak, it is specifically bad on Ubuntu because Ubuntu goes out of their way to shove snaps on you and hide the fact. Case in point Firefox, if you want a non snap version you have to jump through a lot of hoops, or at least was like this when a last installed Ubuntu for my wife laptop, it was the 22.04 I think.
In any case that is Ubuntu specific, but a shame none of the least because like you said, Ubuntu and derivatives are the more popular beginner friendly distros. but if I recall correctly some derivatives do remove snap so you don't have to deal with it and its problems.
Flatseal helps with managing flatpak perms, but yeah it's not at all intuitive
Right, but we are talking about the average user. One who only needs a browser. They wouldn't even think about flatpak/snap/appimage, and would probably look at you like you are insane if you said those in the same sentence as "Your browser is a flatpak/snap/appimage, so it doesn't have the permissions it needs to allow drag and drop".
I am a Linux fan, but I hadn't really paid much attention to snaps/flataks/appimages, had mostly been a Debian-based distro user in my younger years, so knew about debs and tars (bleh) and of course apt, but I mostly daily drove windows for a long time.
Came back to the Linux world on a whim on my extra old laptop to give it new life (same thing I had done back when I was like 12) -(EDIT: remembered) bounced around between distros like Fedora, popos, etc but ended up with EndevourOS as I knew I wanted to try an Arch based distro, it didn't run as well as I'd liked and I messed up some package on AUR so I ended up wiping that after a few months and tried out Bazzite, very different then I was used to and is the only reason I've actually learned about appimages/flatpaks.
Then I turned my old gaming PC into a proxmox box, set up Ubuntu server and started playing around with docker (which made way more sense after getting to know container based programs from Bazzite).
Anyway, no point to be made there aside from.. Flatpaks and the like are just a different way of doing things, which necessitates learning.
I get the point being made about defaults being important as a first user experience is extremely important if you're wanting to keep a user, but there is something to be said for a little common sense that you have to be able to try to learn a little when you're doing something new.
Alas, I work in a customer service adjacent role in fintech so I know all too well that users hate to learn lmfao
And many don't seem to know how to find information, like when I ran into exactly that situation where I was trying to attach a file by dragging and dropping from dolphin into FF and nothing happening. So I immediately went to Kagi (at the time, have since switched to self hosted searxng) and searched "unable to drag and drop file into Firefox browser bazzite" and very quickly found my answer. Alas Google fu is a skill many are sorely lacking
Yeah, I understand. I’ve gotten way more comfortable with it as I’ve gotten older to where I prefer it now.
I just wish there was more understanding for those that aren’t as inquisitive as the average Linux user.
I stated about rude people online in the original comment, and sure enough, here they are in this thread, so, I appreciate your more level headed approach. Thank you. :)
Linux Mint is the big daddy of Ubuntu derivatives, and it comes with snaps disabled and no flatpaks installed.
Everything in the graphical software manner that’s a flatpak has a big clear icon right on it.
I just checked on my own Mint system and the only flatpak installed is kdenlive. There IS a standard apt/ubuntu version available too, but I installed the flatpak (stable) because it’s a newer version and KDE’s website even touts that version.
Yeah, another issue is the download center types because they would use those and possibly download a flatpak only version and never know what was preventing them from whatever task they were trying to do. They wouldn’t understand the difference between a flatpak or a .deb install.