They do not prevent you from adding repos and installing from those. They don’t even try to make it slightly more difficult to do so than it was before. Microsoft force you to use edge. Cannot really disable it. Can’t remove it. Can’t simply switch away from it. See the difference?
I haven’t kept up with Edge Shenanigans since I no longer use Windows, but the last time I used it I had no issues using Firefox instead of Edge.
Yeah sure you can add repositories to replace Canonical Sources to evade those dummied out packages, but you really really shouldn’t need to do that in the first place.
So the only difference is: MS enforcement is more stringent than Canonical, but they both force their respective ways onto the user (which may or may not versed enough to actually add/remove apt repositories).
you can install firefox, but even if you click ‘make firefox my default browser’, it won’t. It will open the settings, wait a second and then show you another button. Clicking that will do what you wanted - for web links. Pdf files? Html files? Searches from the start menu? Still all open edge.
On ubuntu it takes maybe a minute to remove the firefox snap, add the mozilla repo and install from there. Those dummie packages are more for convenience than anything nefarious. I agree that snaps have been made unavoidable if you’re not paying attention, but I disagree that it’s a bad thing. Ubuntu is migrating from .debs to snaps, so it makes sense that those become ever more prominant.
Oh so that’s still a thing that you need to set every file extensions and protocol separately to the other browser. Yeah that is stupid.
And it only takes a minute on Ubuntu if you Know what you are doing. The regular user probably only see that their applications are slow to start and need to search the internet why, if they care at all.
And why is that? Because Canonical doesn’t tell you that you installed a snap, Microsoft is “honest” enough and tells you that they are shitty and want you to use Edge.
