Give better experience of migration of deb to snap
| Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| chromium-browser (Ubuntu) |
Fix Released
|
High
|
Olivier Tilloy | ||
Bug Description
Summary of current state:
Back in 19.10 we migrated the deb of chromium to a snap. Users who installed the deb, got snapd and the snap of chromium. Users who already had the deb of chromium, and upgraded, got snapd and the snap.
The goal of making the snap was (largely) to reduce the workload on the desktop team in packaging chromium, and to enable the desktop team to publish updates to users very quickly across all supported releases. For users, the goal is to have an up to date chromium browser.
For people upgrading, the migration goal was to ensure they kept the browser they'd installed (chromium has never been a default on Ubuntu, but has been on at least one flavour).
Feedback from the field:
* Some have complained that the Chromium snap has bugs which didn't manifest in the deb (see this very bug tracker)
* Some complained that there was no indication that they'd have a deb replaced by a snap (hard to know how many users actually care about this)
* Derivative distributions have complained that snapd is being installed "under the covers" or "via the backdoor" (or other pejorative statements)
Suggestion for improvement:
I believe a fair amount of critique comes from the ignorance of why chromium was migrated to a snap, as most users don't read our blog posts, news articles or release notes. In addition, there's not a tremendous number of user-facing packages which have gone through the deb-to-snap migration, so not a lot of prior art in the field.
So it's my believe we should document this better, inform the users better.
* At the point of installation of the deb, make it clear that snapd will be installed, followed by the chromium snap (and whatever other content and base snaps are required).
* During an upgrade from the deb to the snap, make it clear the deb is being replaced, with similar information to when the snap is installed.
* Link to documentation / blog / specific release notes in visible places which makes it clear why this is happening.
I'll refrain from suggesting technical solutions because I think we need to discuss the options.
| tags: | added: snap |
| tags: | added: desktop-lts-wishlist focal |
| Changed in chromium-browser (Ubuntu): | |
| importance: | Undecided → High |
| status: | New → Confirmed |
| Olivier Tilloy (osomon) wrote | #1 |
| Changed in chromium-browser (Ubuntu): | |
| assignee: | nobody → Olivier Tilloy (osomon) |
| status: | Confirmed → Fix Released |
| Merlijn Sebrechts (merlijn-sebrechts) wrote | #2 |
| Olivier Tilloy (osomon) wrote | #3 |
Fixed with https:/