Ubuntu Criticized For Bug Blocking Installation of .Deb Packages

The blog It's FOSS is 'pissed at the casual arrogance of Ubuntu and its parent company Canonical..... The sheer audacity of not caring for its users reeks of Microsoft-esque arrogance.'
If you download a.deb package of a software, you cannot install it using the official graphical software center on Ubuntu anymore. When you double-click on the downloaded deb package, you'll see this error, 'there is no app installed for Debian package files'.

If you right-click and choose to open it with Software Center, you are in for another annoyance. The software center will go into eternal loading. It may look as if it is doing something, but it will go on forever. I could even livestream the loading app store on YouTube, and it would continue for the 12 years of its long-term support period.
Canonical software engineer Dennis Loose actually created an issue ticket for the problem himself — back in September of 2023. And two weeks ago he returned to the discussion to announce that fix 'will be a priority for the next cycle'. (Though 'unfortunately we didn't have the capacity to work on this for 24.04...)

But Its Foss accused Canonical of 'cleverly booting out deb in favor of Snap, one baby step at a time' (noting the problem started with Ubuntu 23.10):
There is also the issue of replacing deb packages with Snap, even with the apt command line tool. You use 'sudo apt install chromium', you get a Snap package of Chromium instead of Debian

The venerable Linux magazine argues that Canonical 'has secretly forced Snap installation on users.'
[I]t looks as if the Software app defaults to Snap packages for everything now. I combed through various apps and found this to be the case.... As far as the auto-installation of downloaded.deb files, you'll have to install something like gdebi to bring back this feature.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.