This was no accident. They want you to install apps via their walled garden snap store.
Ubuntu goes full enshitification... Glad I'm back to pure Debian for a long time
Try command line?
dpkg -i /path/to/package.deb
That's likely an app just not installed by default for GUI
Correct, but new users don't want to need the command line for something as simple as installing packages.
New users probably shouldn't be installing .debs, especially if they don't know about terminal commands. I've seen so many fucked up systems from people treating Linux as Windows, as in installing everything by searching for stuff on their browser, downloading an installer and installing that.
Problem is a lot of closed source software still release their software as .deb or .rpm packages that installs their repos so you can install their software from the software centre.
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Tell them to install via flatpak. Spotify, Discord and so on should be available as flatpak via Gnome Software or the KDE software center. NOW on Ubuntu, this is anyone's guess. I'm guessing there is no flatpak support by default. Ubuntu is doing the linux community a disservice.
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Add a GUI desktop entry for that, assign .deb file mimetype to it, bam. A usable experience.
If a website stuffed a .deb into your Downloads folder and you click on it, should the default behaviour be to run it? Is there a significant pile of Ubuntu software out there that is unavailable in the apt and snap and flatpak stores? Other stores such as Steam and Epic (Heroic) are easily installable via … starting in your apt/snap/flatpak store.
A deb is not an executable. You can't run it
And neither is a doc file, but most OSes would open up a compatible word processor.
It can install a service that will start automatically after install, so for all intents and purposes, if you click it and enter your sudo password, you might as well have run an executable.
It has pre and post-install scripts. Once you hand it off to dpkg, it can do pretty much anything.
Well, that marks the first time I've seen anyone refer to it as "the apt store." Thanks, I hate it.
I'm off to download some standards docs from the ieee-shop 👨🔧 🍄
Unpopular opinion, I think this should be like this if there exists a snap or a package in the repo for it. Even if this is a bug. Maybe they should make a popup educating users about how they don't need to download installers. As for apps like discord, I believe there is a well maintained snap package available to install easily from the app center. I can't seem to find chrome there sadly, but it is on flathub. I hope it gets a package.
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I don't agree with you on this, people are used to install app on other operating systems this way, there is a better way yes I'm not arguing this, but a lot of proprietary software is distributed this way and not on the snap store, and being ubuntu a noob friendly distro make it worse for the averange user to search the internet only to install deb packages instead of providing a user friendly interface!
Yup, I understand that people are going to search for an installer and install it that way. What I am saying is maybe they should direct users to the snap store or something if the package they are trying to install exists on there already. Pretty non intrusive way to make sure they are doing it the right way.
Edit: this is not me advocating for snaps btw. I don't care what package manager anyone uses, as long as its not bricking your system.
They keep looking for trouble. Something is going to bite them in the ass one day.
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