30 ms·

Disabling Snaps in Ubuntu 20.04

599 points by temeritatis 6y ago

lainga 6y ago
Does Canonical have any 'push' motive for reducing dependence on apt? Or do they really just like snaps?
- shockinglytrue 6y ago
  Snaps (and Flatpak) are the app store pipe dream all over again, about 11.. 12? years too late. If anything treat them as early indicators of the future financials of these distros, if attempting this all over again is central to their future business model. Snap to me is synonymous with desperate. While I don't like the tech, the real reason Snap pushes me away from Ubuntu is the fear of this future where the app store dream turned out to be a failure again. What happens to the distro then?
- pixelmonkey 6y ago
  I think they just realized it gives them a way to package proprietary apps like Skype, Spotify, and Slack a bit more simply than would be required to apt-ify/dpkg-ify them. I really think that's the primary motivation.
  - ronjouch 6y ago
    I don't know about Spotify, but both Skype and Slack are distributed with private apt repositories and it works just fine.
    - kingosticks 6y ago
      Spotify is too. Their deb repo is just outdated compared to their snap (which itself is outdated compared to what's available on macOS and Windows). I think it's fair to say they don't care much.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    And it's a pretty good one since the experience with having a large catalog of useful software in Flatpaks has been awesome and largely seamless. I just wish Canonical wasn't off doing their own thing or had started out in the open from the start so it would have a chance of being a useful standard instead of the weird Canonical store.
    - vetinari 6y ago
      The number one reason why I don't like snap is: it puts Canonical in control. Only Canonical can run a store. Once you install something, Canonical decides, when packages on your computers will upgrade. Wrt control, it goes way beyond Apple store/Google Play/Microsoft Store. No thanks. Flatpak can preserve the benefits of decentralized repositories and upgrade under user control, with all the ease of packaging and sandboxing of the new toys.
    - sq_ 6y ago
      I can never figure out Canonical's logic with going off to do their own thing. They don't do it with everything, so clearly it's not a complete rejection of things not made in-house. It seems like they also often end up going back to the community solutions/standards eventually, so what benefit do they see in doing this over and over again?
      - mulmen 6y ago
        Does it force the community solution to improve? If the options are community or Canonical does that competition have benefits to both? Not sure Canonical are thinking that explicitly but maybe it’s just hedging their bets if the community solution doesn’t work out.
        fapjacks 6y ago
        But this is a false dichotomy, because Flatpak is a project controlled by Red Hat. Unless by "community" project you mean AppImages.
        6y ago
  - flatiron 6y ago
    I like the way arch does it. They have AUR and everything is there and they can just say they don’t support it.
    - adito 6y ago
      I think ubuntu also has similar stuff via PPA repository?
      - readwind 6y ago
        PPA is hell. Arch is love and life.
        Koshkin 6y ago
        Life, indeed. Reading the (excellent, mind you) documentation and, especially, the wiki is fun, I know, but sometimes I want to focus on something else (like getting things done).
        readwind 6y ago
        Totally agree, just have to report back that it's no huge'er job in terms of systems management. But am on your page. I guess it's relative, I was Ubuntu, too, because I liked the next-next-next ideology, but, when it comes to it, either system-types can be as maintenance free as any other. Rolling releases has the convenience of not being so difficult to upgrade, as you just roll along, you sometimes end up having to reinstall, on these systems like here, like Ubuntu and co I mean. But yeah work is what's most important. I've been a happy Ubuntu user for ages, glad you're getting your work done. It's all that matters relatively speaking. Thanks
        ghthor 6y ago
        The AUR is so transparent. If I want to see how the AUR package is getting built, ez, read the PKGBUILD linked right from the packages page. I was immediately turned off to using Snap because I couldn't find how the Snap was built and really who built it. No Thanks, that's not how I install software on my personal computer anymore, it's one of the main reasons I exited windows as soon as I started to learn about infosec and trust.
  - RMPR 6y ago
    If it's to avoid this kind of aberrations https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22864985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22864985 it's totally understandable, but in practice, it doesn't work that smoothly unfortunately, not to mention the potential vendor lockdown, or as the Mint team phrased it: > If you’re a Fedora user and you want to install Spotify, you’re told to go to https://snapcraft.io/spotify https://snapcraft.io/spotify. Spotify doesn’t distribute RPM packages, appimage, Flatpak or anything useful to a Fedora user who wants to download it, or to a Fedora maintainer who wants to add it to a repository. Fedora users are told to go to what is essentially a commercial store operated by a RedHat competitor where stats tell them their distribution is only 7th best. > We’re in luck, we can still download the .deb. If Spotify stops caring, what do we do? We move to snap because we have to? Will the snap store continue to let people download actual .snap files in the future or will that get locked down ? Will the snap store continue to operate without an Ubuntu One account or will we get vendor-locked ? https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3766 https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3766
  - simosx 6y ago
    In all your examples, it is their respective company that does the packaging. Skype is packaged by Microsoft, and so on. Here is the Skype snap page, https://snapcraft.io/skype https://snapcraft.io/skype Canonical provides the tools and several companies are providing their software as snap packages. Another example is JetBrains that provide all their development environments as snap packages.
- csdreamer7 6y ago
  Snaps have benefits. Canonical sells 5 year service subscriptions in addition to the 5 years they already offer for free on LTS. Snaps enable a way to get the latest VSCode and other apps on very old versions of Ubuntu. Snaps allowed me to try out Debian and Fedora with minimal issues and easily integrate them into my dotfile manager with Ansible.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    It's super super nice to have a real system for dealing with "pet" applications that users want to be updated outside of the distribution release cycle.
  - SahAssar 6y ago
    That works with Flatpak/AppImage too though, right? For me Snap has always had that Canonical smell of not-invented-here, just like Mir, Unity and Upstart. All of those were eventually replaced with what a majority of similar linux distros settled on. I'm not saying it was wasted development or that nothing was learned but ultimately they joined the rest of the ecosystem instead of the ecosystem joining them. It seems that canonical does best when they embrace the ecosystem and not try to replace it.
    - jraph 6y ago
      Upstart actually preceded systemd and was adopted by Fedora, Red Hat, openSUSE and ChromeOS. ChromeOS still seems to use it, interestingly. It probably paved the way to systemd and probably fulfilled a need that no other init system could. Ubuntu was also fast to switch to systemd when it appeared. Canonical cannot be accused of NIH for Upstart, it was a widely adopted clean init system at the time and made many distro's boot times great again. Service configuration files were also very easy and clean. Unity was a desktop environment that both was liked by many people and reused many components from Gnome, I don't really see a problem here. A point could be made for Mir.
    - berkut 6y ago
      Just like with Upstart (which existed well before systemd did), Snap existed before Flatpak, and in fact existed in another form (Click) for two years before that. So it's wrong to say Canonical is guilty of NIH-syndrome with these two items, when their versions were out first. Whether the tech is any good is another matter.
- deleted 6y ago
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vetinari 6y ago
One more thing if you installed on ZFS: /var/snap is a subvolume. Purging snapd wants to remove the /var/snap directory, but it being mounted subvolume, it will fail. Purging snapd will therefore also fail. Destroy (-r) the /var/snap subvolume before apt purge snapd. Similarly, if using flatpak, create a new subvolume for /var/lib/flatpak before installing the first one. You don't need to snapshot your flatpaks together with the /.
ThrowawayR2 6y ago
Interesting but it raises the question of what the effects of removing those snap packages are? I note that he doesn't mention installing anything to replace them, so it's probably not serious but still...
- aunetx 6y ago
  Those snaps are just, if I remember correctly, the dependencies for snap-store So removing all of this only removes the snap store, which you don't need anymore ;)
- simosx 6y ago
  A stock installation of Ubuntu 20.04 only has very few snaps. I think the only important one is the Snap Store/Ubuntu Software. If you can put up with the Snap Store, you can avoid (if you really want that) installing further snap packages.
jaytaylor 6y ago
Kudos to the OP, I'm glad this got posted on hacker news because Snap is so ridiculously broken. Since 16.04, Snaps have been a huge pain for me with running LXC in production environments. By default, Snap applies updates and restarts Systemd services anytime it likes, and there's no way to turn this behavior off! The only way to get around it is to download the Snap package binary and install that directly. Then Snap won't "know" where to get updates. (Caveat emptor: "Workarounds" like this can easily lead to a bad security scenario, since any critical security patches won't be installed by any standard system update process) Did I mention that a fair percentage of the time the Snap updates would leave LXC in a completely broken state? In production (and development, too)! The final nail in the coffin in this scenario comes in the form of Snap being the official recommended way to install LXC. I don't know if Stéphane and friends even publish Debian packages anymore. I get the idea behind snap and appreciate it, but the lack of configurability and no clear definition of what stable really even means . . .
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  Ugh, is it still impossible to disable Snap autoupdates? Even if people should be updating regularly, forcing them feels completely antithetical to the Linux ethos of users having control over their devices.
  - teraflop 6y ago
    Props to Microsoft, for getting their approach to Windows updates adopted as an industry standard! /s
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lemagedurage 6y ago
It's a shame that chromium's apt package uses snap now. Startup time increased from ~0.2 to 5-10 seconds. Using Brave fixes this.
- SanchoPanda 6y ago
  Chrome via appimage works great
  - m-p-3 6y ago
    AppImage itself is great.
- cies 6y ago
  Chromium from Debian, as a DEB package, on Ubuntu: https://github.com/cies/kubuntu-setup/tree/master/chromium https://github.com/cies/kubuntu-setup/tree/master/chromium
- dralley 6y ago
  Using Firefox also fixes this.
- LeoPanthera 6y ago
  Switching to another browser to fix a packaging problem with the first browser is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. It's also disingenuous to suggest a browser wrapped in a cryptocurrency promotional wallet thing as a comparable alternative.
  - capableweb 6y ago
    > Switching to another browser to fix a packaging problem with the first browser is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Sure, but some people just want to have their problem fixed and they only have a sledgehammer in front of them. If it works, is it really that bad? > a browser wrapped in a cryptocurrency promotional wallet thing I think you have it the wrong way around. It's a browser containing an integration with a cryptocurrency wallet, not the other way around. You'd still be able to use it as a normal browser if you ignore the cryptocurrency stuff.
djhaskin987 6y ago
I installed keepassxc using a snap, but because it was in a snap browser integration didn't work with my browser because of the snap isolation, rendering it useless. Also it's kind of weird that hey Damon has to run just so that I can install snaps and one Daemon per snap, too. I'm pretty sure I don't like that.
- cies 6y ago
  Keepass as a snap because security right /s. This is an actual piece of software that has a history of being modded by attackers to steal credentials. Why would you put that in a snap?
  - trystero 6y ago
    May I ask what history you're speaking of? (also note that KeepassXC is a fork of Keepass)
    - cies 6y ago
      Any Keepass (or similar) software, it should run as predictable as possible. I know this software was once offered with a trojan loaded on some download website, but just searched around and could not find anything about it. Maybe the maintainers remember.
emersion 6y ago
It seems like on recent Ubuntu installations some packages are provided by snaps (ie. "apt install XXX" will install a snap). I'd be interested in disabling this behaviour, if anyone knows.
- 101404 6y ago
  That would be really bad. I used Ubuntu for the past 15 years or so, but that would make me switch to a different distro. So shortly after the Mir fiasco, why does Canonical feel it necessary to come up with the next dumb idea?
  - emersion 6y ago
    Unfortunately, it seems like I remembered correctly, at least for Chromium: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22972856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22972856
  - shock 6y ago
    What is or was the Mir fiasco?
    - miker64 6y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_(software)#Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_(software)#Controversy
- slipheen 6y ago
  Cies posted a link to https://github.com/cies/kubuntu-setup#remove-snap https://github.com/cies/kubuntu-setup#remove-snap They give the suggestion to remove via sudo rm -rf /var/cache/snapd/ && sudo apt autoremove --purge snapd && rm -fr ~/snap And make sure it never installs again: sudo bash -c "cat > /etc/apt/preferences.d/no-snapd.pref" << EOL Package: snapd Pin: origin "" Pin-Priority: -1 EOL
  - emersion 6y ago
pmontra 6y ago
If gnome-3-34-1804 and gtk-common-themes are a snap, what happens when we remove them? I expect to be able to install them using apt but I went to https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/focal/ https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/focal/ and I couldn't find them. So "a snap-free Ubuntu" seems to be a really a different kind of Ubuntu. (Unless there are also other versions of Gnome in 20.04.)
- elagost 6y ago
  These are resources/dependencies for other snaps. The .deb packages for Gnome and your GTK themes stick around. You can safely remove the snaps and not see any real noticeable difference.
psanford 6y ago
I really like the idea of snaps. I really don't like a lot of the execution decisions around them. Snaps break debain's stable release model. They allow upstream to ship updates outside of the normal 6 month ubuntu releases. There are times when you might want this, but it should be opt in not mandatory. I thinking specifically of lxd which is only shipped via snaps. The snap store's trust model is confusing. Its hard to tell who is making the packages and how they are sandboxed. If I'm going to install a proprietary piece of software I want to know exactly what it can and can't do. Lately I've been using firejail when I need to run things like this. And now for a minor complaint that also feels most user hostile to me: why do the snap developers think its ok to require a non hidden directory in $HOME? Seriously my home directory is MINE, if you have to store application state there at least have the decency to do it in a hidden directory.
- Avshalom 6y ago
  >And now for a minor complaint that also feels most user hostile to me: why do the snap developers think its ok to require a non hidden directory in $HOME? Seriously my home directory is MINE, if you have to store application state there at least have the decency to do it in a hidden directory. 4 years old now. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snapd/+bug/1575053 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snapd/+bug/1575053
  - encom 6y ago
    Unrelated to Snap, but on Windows, trying to use the My Documents folder for your actual documents is frustrating, because a huge number of apps and games like to use the folder for all sorts of nonsense, instead of using %appdata% like they're supposed to.
    - RMPR 6y ago
      This behavior is such normal for all the apps (especially games) that at one point I thought it was a specification.
      - 6y ago
nikisweeting 6y ago
Semi-related: does anyone know how to install microk8s via apt without snap?
- simosx 6y ago
  Packaging and maintaining microk8s is a significant effort to do with apt. You are asking if someone managed to do all the work to package microk8s and keep managing it as a deb package.
  - nikisweeting 6y ago
    I don't necessarily need an "all-in-one" package, I'd be ok with a 30min tutorial on installing all the components manually.
benjaminjackman 6y ago
So I've used ubuntu (Xubuntu, xfce) for quite a while and would rather not deal with this, are there any distros that aim to be ubuntu but without snap? Because hearing things like `sudo apt install chromium` actually aliases to using snap is disconcerting to say the least if true.
- silverreads 6y ago
  Debian, ubuntu's upstream.
- owl57 6y ago
  True, since 19.10: https://packages.ubuntu.com/eoan/chromium-browser https://packages.ubuntu.com/eoan/chromium-browser
- stOneskull 6y ago
  MX Linux might be the ticket. It's Xfce as well.
- Shared404 6y ago
  Pop!_Os is basically just Ubuntu but better. They will have flatpak integration with the store app with 20.04, but the official stance is to use the deb packages first, and then fall back to flatpak if there is no deb available.
  - cbHXBY1D 6y ago
    I think Pop_Os is becoming the next Ubuntu. It's already captured a huge percentage of the gaming community. If you read r/linux_gaming a huge amount seem to be using it.
- LeoPanthera 6y ago
  The closest thing to Ubuntu is Debian. But I'd like to throw in a recommendation for Fedora. It includes Flatpak by default (which to me as always been the least objectionable sandboxing system) but nothing comes as a flatpak by default. You have to explicitly choose to use it. Fedora's hardware support is second to none, and even supports in-OS BIOS updates. I highly recommend it.
schmichael 6y ago
Performance aside I was very disturbed to learn snap packages have no namespacing and no useful mandatory authorship metadata: https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/lack-of-package-provenance-is-a-security-concern/16316 https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/lack-of-package-provenance-is-a... tl;dr -> HashiCorp's various tools exist as snaps but none are published by HashiCorp. All are out of date. Some have incorrect metadata. Few provide any clue as to who or where the upstream is. There's usually not even a way to contact the snap author to submit patches or ask for an upstream link. eg https://snapcraft.io/nomad https://snapcraft.io/nomad
- ghthor 6y ago
  Yep, it's a massive smell. When I looked at installing a snap I wanted to audit the build script but I couldn't find that anywhere. That's a big NO from me.
AlexMax 6y ago
I wanted to like snaps (and flatpaks before then), because trying to ease packaging and deployment of apps on Linux is a noble goal, but in both cases I eventually gave up on non-trivial use of them because they were always broken in some annoying way because of their sandboxing. The latest snap I had to get rid of was Visual Studio Code, because I was trying to work on an open source game with it, and I found out that if I launched the game from inside Visual Studio Code, my game wouldn't play sounds because it couldn't communicate with PulseAudio, and attempting to use ALSA just straight up gave me an error. On the other hand, I've only had positive experiences with AppImage. Gives you an all-in-one image that you can directly execute if you like, and no sandboxing nonsense.
- PopeRigby 6y ago
  AppImages are definitely the best, I just wish they had an easier way to integrate with the system. I know about appimaged, but I had problems settings it up, and it's just not as easy as integrating Flathub into Discover, or getting your packages from the CLI by accessing your distro's repositories.
- hvis 6y ago
  Snaps certainly have some usability problems. E.g. to use videoconferencing in Chromium I had to give it rights to connect to record audio explicitly. I expect you needed to do something like that for the VS Code snap.
  - mixmastamyk 6y ago
    I did that too, and it works for one minute, every time I start the browser. Firefox it is.
    - hvis 6y ago
      That's weird. I've been doing Zoom through web browser multiple times for hours since then.
      - 6y ago
phosphophyllite 6y ago
Why linux developers can't just replicate MacOS DMG installers and drag'n'drop installing? Seriously. Repositories with dependencies only annoy anyone rather than core linux fans. I use linux more than 10 years and still hate them. Yes, apt install package1 package2 is good, but dependency hell is so 2005! Users just need one simple package format without any fancy security and virtualization nonsense. It's hilarious when you can't update MPV on debian or ubuntu, because of some dependency. WAT 2020 But ofcource we cant have so much platform fragmentation without dependencies and different package formats, it is just "good tradition" now.
Pmop 6y ago
Funny thing: snapd is suggested for installation when executing sudo apt install gnome-software-plugin-flatpak
coleifer 6y ago
Canonical always has tried to differentiate themselves, and they just can't execute. Remember Unity, Mir, Juju, upstart and all the other failed shit they've come out with? Snap is just more of the same. I don't want to run that garbage on my desktop. I don't need more daemons and forced auto-updates and all the baggage. I strongly recommend anyone similarly frustrated to check out debian, which is a fantastic distro. Thanks to Kevin for posting this, but if you're using Ubuntu and disabling snap, you're fighting against the current and I have to imagine it's going to be increasingly difficult with subsequent releases.
- robocat 6y ago
  > and they just can't execute That’s a bit rich: are they not the #1 consumer distro, which hardly implies they are failing to execute. A successful product has missteps, so what. > I don't want to run that garbage on my desktop. So don’t. Why complain that others do? I use Ubuntu because it works and I can mostly find information about how to do what I want. There are major aspects of Ubuntu I don’t like (Gnome, Snap) but selecting a distro is all about choosing your compromises. I have tried Debian and other distros, but I tend to go back to Ubuntu because it works best for me.
  - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
    > That’s a bit rich: are they not the #1 consumer distro, which hardly implies they are failing to execute All the hard work to make it a viable OS is done by Debian. Canonical just adds some polish and then wrecks it all with poor design decisions over and over again.
    - ch33zer 6y ago
      Then why doesn't everyone use Debian?
      - harry8 6y ago
        Because it's popular it gets 3rd party support. So people use it making it popular. Vicious/virtuous circle depending on whether you're looking at it from above or below. Just like windows Shuttleworth admires and seeks emulate so very much.
cies 6y ago
To ensure snap will not be installed again see the apt config here: https://github.com/cies/kubuntu-setup#remove-snap https://github.com/cies/kubuntu-setup#remove-snap This is needed because an every growing number op packages is "dependant" on it. Here I show how to install Chromium as a DEB package from Debian (on a buntu): https://github.com/cies/kubuntu-setup/tree/master/chromium https://github.com/cies/kubuntu-setup/tree/master/chromium
- madars 6y ago
  Chromium is actually the only real use case for snaps. It is so difficult to build/package chromium for a LTS distro that Debian simply stopped trying. See what happens with security updates on Debian jessie (which is under their LTS): https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/source-package/chromium-browser https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/source-package/c... . Ubuntu made the right choice here: https://snapcraft.io/blog/chromium-in-ubuntu-deb-to-snap-transition https://snapcraft.io/blog/chromium-in-ubuntu-deb-to-snap-tra...
  - Avamander 6y ago
    It's a terrible use-case that causes data loss for users, for FOUR years now: https://bugs.launchpad.net/snapd/+bug/1616650 https://bugs.launchpad.net/snapd/+bug/1616650 I despise the bug, it causes so much trouble without a way to turn it off. Plus the switch to snap happened exactly during a critical vuln which meant people were running on critically vulnerable chromium for weeks.
  - Taniwha 6y ago
    Except that chromium under snaps is pretty unusable unless your home directory is structured exactly the magic way Canonical expects, if you have symbolic links, stuff on other disks, suddenly you can't upload your customer orders, or your PCB CAD designs to be made, you can't save files into /tmp anymore, even if you've been doing that for 3 decades. And it all fails silently, mysteriously, no error messages explaining why stuff has suddenly stopped working. I'm not against stuff changing, but tell us up front, explain what's changed and make sure that you're not breaking existing things or provide a way for people to keep their existing stuff work, a flag that says that following symbolic links is OK ... and put that UI in Chromium itself, not in some other box somewhere
notokay 6y ago
Nice and helpful guide. In this month only I had to give up using firefox because uglyBar and ubuntu because of snaps. There won't be anywhere to run soon.
- mothsonasloth 6y ago
  You can disable the new address bar on Firefox - https://lifehacker.com/how-to-disable-firefox-75s-new-address-bar-1842728031 https://lifehacker.com/how-to-disable-firefox-75s-new-addres...
  - notokay 6y ago
    Not on the new nightly release anymore.
smkellat 6y ago
In looking at some of the other entries about 20.04 on Mr. Custer’s site I’m wondering if it would’ve been simpler to just start with mini.iso to make an actual barebones installation and then install only what is actually desired. If you truly want a lean install then building your own custom mix is possible in Ubuntu and a relatively blank slate is available.
deleted 6y ago
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ressetera 6y ago
Snaps are great for auto updating software, especially the ones from JetBrains. I think most users will be fine. Those of us who need more fine grained control, can have it.
- ngngngng 6y ago
  You'd be surprised. Whenever my helm snap updates it breaks all the authentication I previously set up. And I get a weird error. That's not me needing fine grained control. It's just snaps being awful.
- RMPR 6y ago
  You can have pretty much the same with the tar.gz package, just unpack at a location, execute the setup to create the desktop file and some symlinks and you're set, plus you're notified upon a new update, no need to use Snap for that.
- InternetOfStuff 6y ago
  Chromium silently moved to a snap package some weeks ago. Annoying but harmless: it's start time has multiplied. Workflow-breaking: Chromium now can't see my NFS mounts anymore. It's not just about having a pretty home directory.
  - Avamander 6y ago
    Workflow-breaking: KDE integration, Estonian eID signing and GooPG plugins don't work, also data loss when Chromium updates and you have it open
- davet91 6y ago
  JetBrains has their own tool called 'Toolbox' to install and update their software (and Android Studio). With Toolbox you are in control when and what to update and you can install multiple versions at the same time. It's distributed as AppImage for Linux. Very much recommended.
musicale 6y ago
> I lean more toward Flatpak as it is more performant What is "performant" supposed to mean here? Is Flatpak faster than Snap? more compact? simpler? more reliable/secure? easier to use? more efficient in terms of cpu/memory/communication/power/etc.? all of the above?
- djsumdog 6y ago
  I always had problems with both of them. I use Docker a lot and Flatpak/Snap are intended to be a type of Docker for desktop apps. I know with Flatpak it has some shims to integrate with your system UI libraries so themes try to match up, but there are issues with that too (and flatpak apps just not starting up half the time). I really hate Snap/Flatpak conceptually. Use the package manager. That's what it's there for. FPM is a way to make package building easier. Snap/Flat tools feel like they're about the same as Electron cancer; and I bet we'll see more closed source commercial stuff pushed to the Linux world via them as well.
  - RMPR 6y ago
    Flatpak is marketed as a better Snap (it surely has some advantages: no vendor lockdown), but at the end of the day, the system integration is not that good, I tried to use the Flatpak of Wireshark back in the day when I tried Fedora Silverblue, I ended up regretting that experiment.
  - Koshkin 6y ago
    > a type of Docker for desktop apps By the way, what is it with Docker that makes it hard or impossible for it to be used for this exact purpose?
    - mixmastamyk 6y ago
      Docker is poorly designed as well.
      - appleflaxen 6y ago
        can you elaborate? I can google for "docker sucks" blogposts, but I trust the HN opinion to be a bit more thoughtful. Any specific pain points you can identify?
zimbatm 6y ago
Consider any other operating systems out there for a moment. A new upgrade comes along that contains unwanted features. How often is it possible to revert that by uninstalling a few packages? There is a level of care here which I think is great. Some engineer somewhere made sure that the system would still work without snaps. This is a very Debian attitude which Ubuntu inherits from and which I would like to celebrate for a bit :-)
- djsumdog 6y ago
  Have you ever tried Void? I've used it on my routers for years, had a media PC with it and recently setup my dedicated server with it. It's really nice, but it is certainly more hands on and missing the management layers found in other Linux distros.
ilaksh 6y ago
The issue I had with snap was my server was going down. I thought it had run out of disk space like the last few times, but it seemed to be out of memory. Then I looked in htop and something related to snap or lxc was using most of the RAM. I think this is Ubuntu 18. Don't remember what I installed that used snap. But I had to remove snap to prevent my server from running out of memory periodically making my program crash.
- RMPR 6y ago
  You may have run into this bug https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/memory-run-memory-file-system-leaking-with-snap-install-remove/429 https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/memory-run-memory-file-system-l...
troyready 6y ago
One of the very annoying consequences of the Chromium move to snap on 20.04 is that it will silently fail to launch most external links (e.g. Slack, Zoom). A workound is posted at https://bugs.launchpad.net/snapd/+bug/1776873/comments/29 https://bugs.launchpad.net/snapd/+bug/1776873/comments/29 (simple patch & recompile). May be worth making a PPA for the fixed snapd if we can't get the Canonical dev team to fix the core issue.
- qppo 6y ago
  It basically breaks xdg-open. This is crucial for a lot of flows with desktop software and I'm honestly baffled why it isn't fixed. Any URI with a custom scheme is horribly and completely broken with a browser installed as a snap. Even basic stuff like file uris are broken in browsers installed as a snap. It's extremely weird to see this kind of thing when it happens too, you usually trust Firefox to work!
  - akvadrako 6y ago
    It is strange this is still broken, but it’s pretty easy to build wrappers for xdg-open and friends yourself. I prefer the isolation of snaps so I’m willing to put a little work into it, but understand not everyone cares to do that.
    - qppo 6y ago
      It's a problem for my users, because it's silently broken.
- Avamander 6y ago
  Oh it also breaks a lot of native extensions: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chromium-browser/+bug/1741074 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chromium-browser/+... It also causes data loss: https://bugs.launchpad.net/snapd/+bug/1616650 https://bugs.launchpad.net/snapd/+bug/1616650
arodyginc 6y ago
You can also get snap-free Kubuntu (with a great Plazma desktop)
Tijdreiziger 6y ago
So can anyone actually explain what Snaps and Flatpaks are? Why are they good/bad? And how do they compare to each other?
- RMPR 6y ago
  The two technologies are used to sandbox GUI apps. They were supposed to make it possible to run newer apps on top of older libraries and to let 3rd party editors publish their software easily towards multiple distributions, but in practice you can face many problems (lack of system integration, apps not even starting, ...). Flatpak allows anyone to create stores, (iirc Flathub code is on Github) while with Snap you need to use the Snapcraft (vendor lockdown).
Darmody 6y ago
I've been using Ubuntu 20.04 for several weeks, almost since beta came out. The snap thing is a pain in the ass. I understand the need for something like snap or flatpak. I had software too new or too old that wouldn't work because some dependencies were not updated or were too new. Snaps can solve that by allowing the developers to provide everything you need (or everything you need that is not on your system). But why would I want a snap calculator or a snap system monitor? On 19.04 it would take a couple seconds to open the calculator...thank god they reverted those apps as normal packages. Now I feel like I felt on Windows when I had to be extra careful installing software in case somethign weird came in the installer. What kind of package is this? Is it a snap? Can I install the normal package? Is the snap provided by someone trustworthy? I also had to install Unity. Gnome lacks support for multiple monitors. Some stuff like the dash working only on the main monitor breaks completely my workflow. Almost for every action I want to make I have to change my focus to the main monitor.
- beart 6y ago
  multiple monitor support in Linux is high on my list of reasons I keep switching back to my Windows partition.
  - redblacktree15 6y ago
    I suggest trying Kubuntu. I've been running 3 4K monitors for years, all works fine, including HiDPI support.
    - beart 6y ago
      If my primary monitor is to the right of my secondary monitor, do applications open on the primary monitor or the 'left' monitor? Also, do applications remember which monitor they were last opened on?
      - kbknapp 6y ago
        Not the parent, but I've also been using KDE in a multi-monitor setup for years (I have a 1440p primary monitor, and two vertical 1080p monitors to the sides). In my experience, applications open on the primary monitor, or on the monitor that is "active" (i.e. if you run Alt+F2 to bring up a run prompt on your secondary monitor and launch an application from there, the application opens on the secondary monitor where you launched it.). Yes, applications remember which monitor and even location on the monitor they were last at.
stbtrax 6y ago
What problem were snaps trying to solve?
- simosx 6y ago
  1. Snaps provide granular confinement to the applications. Is there a network tool CLI that happens not to read/write local files? You can forbid access to the filesystem, forbid access to the X server and all other resources. 2. Is the whole packaging a pain? Just do the work once and create the snapcraft.yaml packaging file that describes the whole process. You can even use the snap build server to rebuild fresh snap packages (in six architectures) as soon as you make a commit to your repository. 3. Are you a software company that wants to distribute your software? You can do all the snap building in-house. 4. The same snap works in many many distributions.
- thecureforzits 6y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PmHRSeA2c8&t=5m38s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PmHRSeA2c8&t=5m38s
fapjacks 6y ago
And now, in a sort of hilarious turn of events, the latest pulseaudio update wants to install snapd (recommended by pulseaudio's new libsnapd-glib1 dependency). And of course, when someone asked about it, they just got a quiet WONTFIX.
throwbackThurs 6y ago
I recommend trying out other distributions. While I like the convenience of Ubuntu, it's got some clear downsides like poor package management & a bloated install. Not to mention the disaster that is Gnome3. Arch has been very hassle free for me, even the installation process was relatively pain free (If you follow a guide). I've been running it for probably nearly a year or so without any problems.. NixOS also looks really interesting and could be the future of desktop computing, I'm keen to give that a try when I get some downtime.
pnako 6y ago
Just install Debian instead of disabling all the stupid stuff from Canonical.
KoenDG 6y ago
I remember this happening: https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/docker-snap-18-09-9-error/14171/2 https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/docker-snap-18-09-9-error/14171... Not fun to think that could have happened on a production env if people didn't disable snap.
zamadatix 6y ago
What happens if you just sudo apt purge snapd without the rest?
- simosx 6y ago
  In a default installation of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, there are only very few pre-installed snap packages. The only important one is the Snap Store, that allows to install DEB packages and snap packages. If you can put up with the Snap Store and only install DEB packages, then you are fine. If you remove the Snap Store and you are at ease with 'apt', then you can may do so.
simosx 6y ago
Canonical distributes LXD as a snap package. That does not forbid others to package LXD independently. Debian has been close to packaging LXD at https://wiki.debian.org/LXD https://wiki.debian.org/LXD It is a matter of picking up interest to complete the work.
oedmarap 6y ago
I recently switched from Ubuntu (before 20.04's release) to Clear Linux which has Flatpak integrated by default. Along with the native package "bundles" (e.g. dev-tools, ruby-basic, containers-virt, etc.) that include built-in dependencies, Flatpak/FlatHub apps seem to work better than Snap/Snapcraft in my experience.
- gtaylor 6y ago
  I was just reading this the other day: https://community.clearlinux.org/t/changes-coming-to-clear-linux-direction/4337 https://community.clearlinux.org/t/changes-coming-to-clear-l... I wonder what is about to happen to the desktop experience for Clear Linux.
grizzles 6y ago
Snaps < Flatpak ufw < firewall-config =============== I like & prefer Ubuntu. But where else is Fedora/CentOS/other distros ahead of Ubuntu?
sgnnseven 6y ago
Take note though that AppArmor breaks when removing the snapd package using this method - at least that was the case for me about a week ago :/
ausjke 6y ago
been a long time Ubuntu LTS user, reading from the discussion here, I'm seriously thinking about moving back to Debian _fully_, anybody is doing it similarly?
aloknnikhil 6y ago
Thanks for this. I followed the steps and it failed to unmount the current "core" mount for snapd because the target was busy. What helped me was to unmount it lazily by running 'sudo umount -l /snap/core/xxxx' and then purging the package. That helped things move along. Just in case someone runs into this issue.
usr1106 6y ago
Most of our family PCs run Xubuntu LTS. Because they are low end / 10+ year old machines I always uninstall unnecessary stuff like snap. Have not seen a single case where I would have regretted this. I have been using Xubuntu 20.04 for several weeks and it has worked well. Because that's a high end laptop I have not bothered to uninstall snap yet, although that has been on my mind. I am surprised that the article writes there are snaps installed by default. Checking in Xubuntu 20.04 that's luckily not the case $ snap list No snaps are installed yet. Try 'snap install hello-world'. So the only somewhat worrying news is that chromium is gone. $ apt show chromium-browser Package: chromium-browser Version: 80.0.3987.163-0ubuntu1 ... Pre-Depends: debconf, snapd ... Description: Transitional package - chromium-browser -> chromium snap This is a transitional dummy package. It can safely be removed. . chromium-browser is now replaced by the chromium snap. Not that I would use Chromium more than 3 times a year. But occasionally some web site is broken on Firefox. And if it is important like a flight check-in I start chromium. But flying is not a valid use case in Europe at the moment so lets see how long I it takes until I note the lack of chromium again.
joshuaellinger 6y ago
Very timely. Just tried to install 20.04 on LVM. It gets in to a completely broken state if you misconfigure the network due to an error in an exception handler in an Python error handling view in the UI. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
usr1106 6y ago
I always uninstall snapd, too. Inspired by this post I checked what is actually offered as a snap. This one surprised me: https://snapcraft.io/aws-kernel https://snapcraft.io/aws-kernel Who can explain me how I would use a kernel running as a snap? Well, last updated 2017, so I don't think I want to try that one.
favadi 6y ago
I don't understand the need to remove it, if you don't like snap, just ignore it and don't install anything from it. There is no harm keeping them instlaled, right?
- dingo_bat 6y ago
  Although minimal, but the base snap installation does consume disk space. I also think they have a daemon running to help with updates.
antpls 6y ago
I installed Snap on Debian 10 stable to install Firefox and Chromium as snaps. It allows me to get the latest security updates for these 2 software without entering into dependency hell with the OS. Beside the slow startups, which is not really an issue with those apps because I keep them open all the time, it worked flawlessly so far for me. My only con is that the defaults update all snaps like every day, and I really would like to have better control on that, because I'm always on mobile data.
- kelnos 6y ago
  If all you're looking for is the ability to get the upstream updates immediately, you can also just download the tarball version and unpack it somewhere under your home directory. Then dump a .desktop file for each in ~/.local/share/applications/ so it shows up in your app menu. No startup slowness, and you'll still get the vendor-provided updates as they're released.
  - saintamh 6y ago
    I'm curious why this got downvoted -- would it not work?
    - zodmaner 6y ago
      I have no idea why that reply got downvoted as well. It is essentially how I installed Firefox on my Debian stable laptop , and it has been working great as far.
ezoe 6y ago
The only downside of disabling snap in Ubuntu is the Chromium. Since Ubuntu's official package of Chromium is using snap, disabling the snap means you don't get packaged Chromium from Canonical. You have to build it yourself or using other means of distribution, like using Debian apt package or proprietary Google Chrome. It's not much of a problem for me since I believe that keeping diversity of Web browser is necessary for the healthy Web ecosystem and I force myself to use Firefox. And I really hate Chromium force me to waste CPU time on some kind of test payload occasionaly, it use 100% of a core and there is no way to disable it. I'm fine with restricting myself to use Firefox since I'm not a Web frontend developer so I don't need to test Chromium behaviours myself. But others may not.
LockAndLol 6y ago
Say bye bye to Chromium on 20.04 from the default repos https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/g7cv6k/debs_installing_snaps_what_the_fresh_horror_is/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/g7cv6k/debs... The deb tries to install the Chromium snap package ;)
aledthemathguy 6y ago
Excuse my question, but why even Ubuntu? Isn't something like Manjaro better?
red_admiral 6y ago
I really don't get what market ubuntu is going for here. People like me who would like a system that works their way, even if it's not the same way as the distribution maintainers - nope. Believe it or not, I don't want my desktop to be full of animations, I want updates to happen on my schedule, and I care about having the active title bar a different colour to the rest. People who believe in Free As In Freedom - it's still technically free, but for all practical purposes it might as well not be if you have to recompile a core package for things like using a non-standard home directory path. This is one of many things where I sigh and go Freedom wasnt meant to be like this. The average non-techy user - uses windows anyway, and has access to a much larger software ecosystem as a result.
coderesearch 6y ago
Two questions: a) is it possible to use Chromium without snaps? b) Can anybody please describe the general experience with Centos for a media production machine - needs to run NVIDIA GPU support, Ardour, low latency jackd and Davinci Resolve on XFCE.
dancemethis 6y ago
The two snaps I had to interact with so far, dotnetCore and microk8s are ridiculously bad. Why they have so many stupid quirks and nonlogical interfaces are way beyond me.
bfrog 6y ago
Snap is honestly driving me away from Ubuntu. Managed systems are less manageable with snap involved.
lokedhs 6y ago
To me is seems as though Snap is playing a similar part as Unity did in Ubuntu. It's Canonical suffering from NIH. Flatpak exists and works. The application I'm working on is distributed on Flathub, and I don't have the time nor the interest to learn yet another packaging system. Ubuntu would do well trying to not just lead (which they do in some aspects, I'm sure) but also try to follow when it's more appropriate. The push towards Unity and now Snap just causes more fragmentation in the Linux community.
SkyMarshal 6y ago
Does anyone else use update-alternatives to install and maintain software? Takes a little setup work, mainly in scripting the soft links for binaries, but once done it’s a pretty clean way of managing software installations. http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/man8/update-alternatives.8.html http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/man8/update-alter...

599 points by temeritatis 6y ago

lainga 6y ago

Does Canonical have any 'push' motive for reducing dependence on apt? Or do they really just like snaps?

shockinglytrue 6y ago
Snaps (and Flatpak) are the app store pipe dream all over again, about 11.. 12? years too late. If anything treat them as early indicators of the future financials of these distros, if attempting this all over again is central to their future business model. Snap to me is synonymous with desperate. While I don't like the tech, the real reason Snap pushes me away from Ubuntu is the fear of this future where the app store dream turned out to be a failure again. What happens to the distro then?
pixelmonkey 6y ago
I think they just realized it gives them a way to package proprietary apps like Skype, Spotify, and Slack a bit more simply than would be required to apt-ify/dpkg-ify them. I really think that's the primary motivation.
- ronjouch 6y ago
  I don't know about Spotify, but both Skype and Slack are distributed with private apt repositories and it works just fine.
  - kingosticks 6y ago
    Spotify is too. Their deb repo is just outdated compared to their snap (which itself is outdated compared to what's available on macOS and Windows). I think it's fair to say they don't care much.
- Spivak 6y ago
  And it's a pretty good one since the experience with having a large catalog of useful software in Flatpaks has been awesome and largely seamless. I just wish Canonical wasn't off doing their own thing or had started out in the open from the start so it would have a chance of being a useful standard instead of the weird Canonical store.
  - vetinari 6y ago
    The number one reason why I don't like snap is: it puts Canonical in control. Only Canonical can run a store. Once you install something, Canonical decides, when packages on your computers will upgrade. Wrt control, it goes way beyond Apple store/Google Play/Microsoft Store. No thanks. Flatpak can preserve the benefits of decentralized repositories and upgrade under user control, with all the ease of packaging and sandboxing of the new toys.
  - sq_ 6y ago
    I can never figure out Canonical's logic with going off to do their own thing. They don't do it with everything, so clearly it's not a complete rejection of things not made in-house. It seems like they also often end up going back to the community solutions/standards eventually, so what benefit do they see in doing this over and over again?
    - mulmen 6y ago
      Does it force the community solution to improve? If the options are community or Canonical does that competition have benefits to both? Not sure Canonical are thinking that explicitly but maybe it’s just hedging their bets if the community solution doesn’t work out.
      - fapjacks 6y ago
        But this is a false dichotomy, because Flatpak is a project controlled by Red Hat. Unless by "community" project you mean AppImages.
        6y ago
- flatiron 6y ago
  I like the way arch does it. They have AUR and everything is there and they can just say they don’t support it.
  - adito 6y ago
    I think ubuntu also has similar stuff via PPA repository?
    - readwind 6y ago
      PPA is hell. Arch is love and life.
      - Koshkin 6y ago
        Life, indeed. Reading the (excellent, mind you) documentation and, especially, the wiki is fun, I know, but sometimes I want to focus on something else (like getting things done).
        readwind 6y ago
        Totally agree, just have to report back that it's no huge'er job in terms of systems management. But am on your page. I guess it's relative, I was Ubuntu, too, because I liked the next-next-next ideology, but, when it comes to it, either system-types can be as maintenance free as any other. Rolling releases has the convenience of not being so difficult to upgrade, as you just roll along, you sometimes end up having to reinstall, on these systems like here, like Ubuntu and co I mean. But yeah work is what's most important. I've been a happy Ubuntu user for ages, glad you're getting your work done. It's all that matters relatively speaking. Thanks
      - ghthor 6y ago
        The AUR is so transparent. If I want to see how the AUR package is getting built, ez, read the PKGBUILD linked right from the packages page. I was immediately turned off to using Snap because I couldn't find how the Snap was built and really who built it. No Thanks, that's not how I install software on my personal computer anymore, it's one of the main reasons I exited windows as soon as I started to learn about infosec and trust.
- RMPR 6y ago
  If it's to avoid this kind of aberrations https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22864985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22864985 it's totally understandable, but in practice, it doesn't work that smoothly unfortunately, not to mention the potential vendor lockdown, or as the Mint team phrased it: > If you’re a Fedora user and you want to install Spotify, you’re told to go to https://snapcraft.io/spotify https://snapcraft.io/spotify. Spotify doesn’t distribute RPM packages, appimage, Flatpak or anything useful to a Fedora user who wants to download it, or to a Fedora maintainer who wants to add it to a repository. Fedora users are told to go to what is essentially a commercial store operated by a RedHat competitor where stats tell them their distribution is only 7th best. > We’re in luck, we can still download the .deb. If Spotify stops caring, what do we do? We move to snap because we have to? Will the snap store continue to let people download actual .snap files in the future or will that get locked down ? Will the snap store continue to operate without an Ubuntu One account or will we get vendor-locked ? https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3766 https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3766
- simosx 6y ago
  In all your examples, it is their respective company that does the packaging. Skype is packaged by Microsoft, and so on. Here is the Skype snap page, https://snapcraft.io/skype https://snapcraft.io/skype Canonical provides the tools and several companies are providing their software as snap packages. Another example is JetBrains that provide all their development environments as snap packages.
csdreamer7 6y ago
Snaps have benefits. Canonical sells 5 year service subscriptions in addition to the 5 years they already offer for free on LTS. Snaps enable a way to get the latest VSCode and other apps on very old versions of Ubuntu. Snaps allowed me to try out Debian and Fedora with minimal issues and easily integrate them into my dotfile manager with Ansible.
- Spivak 6y ago
  It's super super nice to have a real system for dealing with "pet" applications that users want to be updated outside of the distribution release cycle.
- SahAssar 6y ago
  That works with Flatpak/AppImage too though, right? For me Snap has always had that Canonical smell of not-invented-here, just like Mir, Unity and Upstart. All of those were eventually replaced with what a majority of similar linux distros settled on. I'm not saying it was wasted development or that nothing was learned but ultimately they joined the rest of the ecosystem instead of the ecosystem joining them. It seems that canonical does best when they embrace the ecosystem and not try to replace it.
  - jraph 6y ago
    Upstart actually preceded systemd and was adopted by Fedora, Red Hat, openSUSE and ChromeOS. ChromeOS still seems to use it, interestingly. It probably paved the way to systemd and probably fulfilled a need that no other init system could. Ubuntu was also fast to switch to systemd when it appeared. Canonical cannot be accused of NIH for Upstart, it was a widely adopted clean init system at the time and made many distro's boot times great again. Service configuration files were also very easy and clean. Unity was a desktop environment that both was liked by many people and reused many components from Gnome, I don't really see a problem here. A point could be made for Mir.
  - berkut 6y ago
    Just like with Upstart (which existed well before systemd did), Snap existed before Flatpak, and in fact existed in another form (Click) for two years before that. So it's wrong to say Canonical is guilty of NIH-syndrome with these two items, when their versions were out first. Whether the tech is any good is another matter.
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vetinari 6y ago

One more thing if you installed on ZFS: /var/snap is a subvolume. Purging snapd wants to remove the /var/snap directory, but it being mounted subvolume, it will fail. Purging snapd will therefore also fail. Destroy (-r) the /var/snap subvolume before apt purge snapd. Similarly, if using flatpak, create a new subvolume for /var/lib/flatpak before installing the first one. You don't need to snapshot your flatpaks together with the /.

ThrowawayR2 6y ago

Interesting but it raises the question of what the effects of removing those snap packages are? I note that he doesn't mention installing anything to replace them, so it's probably not serious but still...

aunetx 6y ago
Those snaps are just, if I remember correctly, the dependencies for snap-store So removing all of this only removes the snap store, which you don't need anymore ;)
simosx 6y ago
A stock installation of Ubuntu 20.04 only has very few snaps. I think the only important one is the Snap Store/Ubuntu Software. If you can put up with the Snap Store, you can avoid (if you really want that) installing further snap packages.

jaytaylor 6y ago

Kudos to the OP, I'm glad this got posted on hacker news because Snap is so ridiculously broken. Since 16.04, Snaps have been a huge pain for me with running LXC in production environments. By default, Snap applies updates and restarts Systemd services anytime it likes, and there's no way to turn this behavior off! The only way to get around it is to download the Snap package binary and install that directly. Then Snap won't "know" where to get updates. (Caveat emptor: "Workarounds" like this can easily lead to a bad security scenario, since any critical security patches won't be installed by any standard system update process) Did I mention that a fair percentage of the time the Snap updates would leave LXC in a completely broken state? In production (and development, too)! The final nail in the coffin in this scenario comes in the form of Snap being the official recommended way to install LXC. I don't know if Stéphane and friends even publish Debian packages anymore. I get the idea behind snap and appreciate it, but the lack of configurability and no clear definition of what stable really even means . . .

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
Ugh, is it still impossible to disable Snap autoupdates? Even if people should be updating regularly, forcing them feels completely antithetical to the Linux ethos of users having control over their devices.
- teraflop 6y ago
  Props to Microsoft, for getting their approach to Windows updates adopted as an industry standard! /s
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lemagedurage 6y ago

It's a shame that chromium's apt package uses snap now. Startup time increased from ~0.2 to 5-10 seconds. Using Brave fixes this.

SanchoPanda 6y ago
Chrome via appimage works great
- m-p-3 6y ago
  AppImage itself is great.
cies 6y ago
Chromium from Debian, as a DEB package, on Ubuntu: https://github.com/cies/kubuntu-setup/tree/master/chromium https://github.com/cies/kubuntu-setup/tree/master/chromium
dralley 6y ago
Using Firefox also fixes this.
LeoPanthera 6y ago
Switching to another browser to fix a packaging problem with the first browser is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. It's also disingenuous to suggest a browser wrapped in a cryptocurrency promotional wallet thing as a comparable alternative.
- capableweb 6y ago
  > Switching to another browser to fix a packaging problem with the first browser is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Sure, but some people just want to have their problem fixed and they only have a sledgehammer in front of them. If it works, is it really that bad? > a browser wrapped in a cryptocurrency promotional wallet thing I think you have it the wrong way around. It's a browser containing an integration with a cryptocurrency wallet, not the other way around. You'd still be able to use it as a normal browser if you ignore the cryptocurrency stuff.

djhaskin987 6y ago

I installed keepassxc using a snap, but because it was in a snap browser integration didn't work with my browser because of the snap isolation, rendering it useless. Also it's kind of weird that hey Damon has to run just so that I can install snaps and one Daemon per snap, too. I'm pretty sure I don't like that.

cies 6y ago
Keepass as a snap because security right /s. This is an actual piece of software that has a history of being modded by attackers to steal credentials. Why would you put that in a snap?
- trystero 6y ago
  May I ask what history you're speaking of? (also note that KeepassXC is a fork of Keepass)
  - cies 6y ago
    Any Keepass (or similar) software, it should run as predictable as possible. I know this software was once offered with a trojan loaded on some download website, but just searched around and could not find anything about it. Maybe the maintainers remember.

emersion 6y ago

It seems like on recent Ubuntu installations some packages are provided by snaps (ie. "apt install XXX" will install a snap). I'd be interested in disabling this behaviour, if anyone knows.

101404 6y ago
That would be really bad. I used Ubuntu for the past 15 years or so, but that would make me switch to a different distro. So shortly after the Mir fiasco, why does Canonical feel it necessary to come up with the next dumb idea?
- emersion 6y ago
  Unfortunately, it seems like I remembered correctly, at least for Chromium: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22972856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22972856
- shock 6y ago
  What is or was the Mir fiasco?
  - miker64 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_(software)#Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_(software)#Controversy
slipheen 6y ago
Cies posted a link to https://github.com/cies/kubuntu-setup#remove-snap https://github.com/cies/kubuntu-setup#remove-snap They give the suggestion to remove via sudo rm -rf /var/cache/snapd/ && sudo apt autoremove --purge snapd && rm -fr ~/snap And make sure it never installs again: sudo bash -c "cat > /etc/apt/preferences.d/no-snapd.pref" << EOL Package: snapd Pin: origin "" Pin-Priority: -1 EOL
- emersion 6y ago

pmontra 6y ago

If gnome-3-34-1804 and gtk-common-themes are a snap, what happens when we remove them? I expect to be able to install them using apt but I went to https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/focal/ https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/focal/ and I couldn't find them. So "a snap-free Ubuntu" seems to be a really a different kind of Ubuntu. (Unless there are also other versions of Gnome in 20.04.)

elagost 6y ago
These are resources/dependencies for other snaps. The .deb packages for Gnome and your GTK themes stick around. You can safely remove the snaps and not see any real noticeable difference.

psanford 6y ago

I really like the idea of snaps. I really don't like a lot of the execution decisions around them. Snaps break debain's stable release model. They allow upstream to ship updates outside of the normal 6 month ubuntu releases. There are times when you might want this, but it should be opt in not mandatory. I thinking specifically of lxd which is only shipped via snaps. The snap store's trust model is confusing. Its hard to tell who is making the packages and how they are sandboxed. If I'm going to install a proprietary piece of software I want to know exactly what it can and can't do. Lately I've been using firejail when I need to run things like this. And now for a minor complaint that also feels most user hostile to me: why do the snap developers think its ok to require a non hidden directory in $HOME? Seriously my home directory is MINE, if you have to store application state there at least have the decency to do it in a hidden directory.

Avshalom 6y ago
>And now for a minor complaint that also feels most user hostile to me: why do the snap developers think its ok to require a non hidden directory in $HOME? Seriously my home directory is MINE, if you have to store application state there at least have the decency to do it in a hidden directory. 4 years old now. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snapd/+bug/1575053 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snapd/+bug/1575053
- encom 6y ago
  Unrelated to Snap, but on Windows, trying to use the My Documents folder for your actual documents is frustrating, because a huge number of apps and games like to use the folder for all sorts of nonsense, instead of using %appdata% like they're supposed to.
  - RMPR 6y ago
    This behavior is such normal for all the apps (especially games) that at one point I thought it was a specification.
    - 6y ago

nikisweeting 6y ago

Semi-related: does anyone know how to install microk8s via apt without snap?

simosx 6y ago
Packaging and maintaining microk8s is a significant effort to do with apt. You are asking if someone managed to do all the work to package microk8s and keep managing it as a deb package.
- nikisweeting 6y ago
  I don't necessarily need an "all-in-one" package, I'd be ok with a 30min tutorial on installing all the components manually.

benjaminjackman 6y ago

So I've used ubuntu (Xubuntu, xfce) for quite a while and would rather not deal with this, are there any distros that aim to be ubuntu but without snap? Because hearing things like `sudo apt install chromium` actually aliases to using snap is disconcerting to say the least if true.

silverreads 6y ago
Debian, ubuntu's upstream.
owl57 6y ago
True, since 19.10: https://packages.ubuntu.com/eoan/chromium-browser https://packages.ubuntu.com/eoan/chromium-browser
stOneskull 6y ago
MX Linux might be the ticket. It's Xfce as well.
Shared404 6y ago
Pop!_Os is basically just Ubuntu but better. They will have flatpak integration with the store app with 20.04, but the official stance is to use the deb packages first, and then fall back to flatpak if there is no deb available.
- cbHXBY1D 6y ago
  I think Pop_Os is becoming the next Ubuntu. It's already captured a huge percentage of the gaming community. If you read r/linux_gaming a huge amount seem to be using it.
LeoPanthera 6y ago
The closest thing to Ubuntu is Debian. But I'd like to throw in a recommendation for Fedora. It includes Flatpak by default (which to me as always been the least objectionable sandboxing system) but nothing comes as a flatpak by default. You have to explicitly choose to use it. Fedora's hardware support is second to none, and even supports in-OS BIOS updates. I highly recommend it.

schmichael 6y ago

Performance aside I was very disturbed to learn snap packages have no namespacing and no useful mandatory authorship metadata: https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/lack-of-package-provenance-is-a-security-concern/16316 https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/lack-of-package-provenance-is-a... tl;dr -> HashiCorp's various tools exist as snaps but none are published by HashiCorp. All are out of date. Some have incorrect metadata. Few provide any clue as to who or where the upstream is. There's usually not even a way to contact the snap author to submit patches or ask for an upstream link. eg https://snapcraft.io/nomad https://snapcraft.io/nomad

ghthor 6y ago
Yep, it's a massive smell. When I looked at installing a snap I wanted to audit the build script but I couldn't find that anywhere. That's a big NO from me.

AlexMax 6y ago

I wanted to like snaps (and flatpaks before then), because trying to ease packaging and deployment of apps on Linux is a noble goal, but in both cases I eventually gave up on non-trivial use of them because they were always broken in some annoying way because of their sandboxing. The latest snap I had to get rid of was Visual Studio Code, because I was trying to work on an open source game with it, and I found out that if I launched the game from inside Visual Studio Code, my game wouldn't play sounds because it couldn't communicate with PulseAudio, and attempting to use ALSA just straight up gave me an error. On the other hand, I've only had positive experiences with AppImage. Gives you an all-in-one image that you can directly execute if you like, and no sandboxing nonsense.

PopeRigby 6y ago
AppImages are definitely the best, I just wish they had an easier way to integrate with the system. I know about appimaged, but I had problems settings it up, and it's just not as easy as integrating Flathub into Discover, or getting your packages from the CLI by accessing your distro's repositories.
hvis 6y ago
Snaps certainly have some usability problems. E.g. to use videoconferencing in Chromium I had to give it rights to connect to record audio explicitly. I expect you needed to do something like that for the VS Code snap.
- mixmastamyk 6y ago
  I did that too, and it works for one minute, every time I start the browser. Firefox it is.
  - hvis 6y ago
    That's weird. I've been doing Zoom through web browser multiple times for hours since then.
    - 6y ago

phosphophyllite 6y ago

Why linux developers can't just replicate MacOS DMG installers and drag'n'drop installing? Seriously. Repositories with dependencies only annoy anyone rather than core linux fans. I use linux more than 10 years and still hate them. Yes, apt install package1 package2 is good, but dependency hell is so 2005! Users just need one simple package format without any fancy security and virtualization nonsense. It's hilarious when you can't update MPV on debian or ubuntu, because of some dependency. WAT 2020 But ofcource we cant have so much platform fragmentation without dependencies and different package formats, it is just "good tradition" now.

Pmop 6y ago

Funny thing: snapd is suggested for installation when executing sudo apt install gnome-software-plugin-flatpak

coleifer 6y ago

Canonical always has tried to differentiate themselves, and they just can't execute. Remember Unity, Mir, Juju, upstart and all the other failed shit they've come out with? Snap is just more of the same. I don't want to run that garbage on my desktop. I don't need more daemons and forced auto-updates and all the baggage. I strongly recommend anyone similarly frustrated to check out debian, which is a fantastic distro. Thanks to Kevin for posting this, but if you're using Ubuntu and disabling snap, you're fighting against the current and I have to imagine it's going to be increasingly difficult with subsequent releases.

robocat 6y ago
> and they just can't execute That’s a bit rich: are they not the #1 consumer distro, which hardly implies they are failing to execute. A successful product has missteps, so what. > I don't want to run that garbage on my desktop. So don’t. Why complain that others do? I use Ubuntu because it works and I can mostly find information about how to do what I want. There are major aspects of Ubuntu I don’t like (Gnome, Snap) but selecting a distro is all about choosing your compromises. I have tried Debian and other distros, but I tend to go back to Ubuntu because it works best for me.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  > That’s a bit rich: are they not the #1 consumer distro, which hardly implies they are failing to execute All the hard work to make it a viable OS is done by Debian. Canonical just adds some polish and then wrecks it all with poor design decisions over and over again.
  - ch33zer 6y ago
    Then why doesn't everyone use Debian?
    - harry8 6y ago
      Because it's popular it gets 3rd party support. So people use it making it popular. Vicious/virtuous circle depending on whether you're looking at it from above or below. Just like windows Shuttleworth admires and seeks emulate so very much.

cies 6y ago

To ensure snap will not be installed again see the apt config here: https://github.com/cies/kubuntu-setup#remove-snap https://github.com/cies/kubuntu-setup#remove-snap This is needed because an every growing number op packages is "dependant" on it. Here I show how to install Chromium as a DEB package from Debian (on a buntu): https://github.com/cies/kubuntu-setup/tree/master/chromium https://github.com/cies/kubuntu-setup/tree/master/chromium

madars 6y ago
Chromium is actually the only real use case for snaps. It is so difficult to build/package chromium for a LTS distro that Debian simply stopped trying. See what happens with security updates on Debian jessie (which is under their LTS): https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/source-package/chromium-browser https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/source-package/c... . Ubuntu made the right choice here: https://snapcraft.io/blog/chromium-in-ubuntu-deb-to-snap-transition https://snapcraft.io/blog/chromium-in-ubuntu-deb-to-snap-tra...
- Avamander 6y ago
  It's a terrible use-case that causes data loss for users, for FOUR years now: https://bugs.launchpad.net/snapd/+bug/1616650 https://bugs.launchpad.net/snapd/+bug/1616650 I despise the bug, it causes so much trouble without a way to turn it off. Plus the switch to snap happened exactly during a critical vuln which meant people were running on critically vulnerable chromium for weeks.
- Taniwha 6y ago
  Except that chromium under snaps is pretty unusable unless your home directory is structured exactly the magic way Canonical expects, if you have symbolic links, stuff on other disks, suddenly you can't upload your customer orders, or your PCB CAD designs to be made, you can't save files into /tmp anymore, even if you've been doing that for 3 decades. And it all fails silently, mysteriously, no error messages explaining why stuff has suddenly stopped working. I'm not against stuff changing, but tell us up front, explain what's changed and make sure that you're not breaking existing things or provide a way for people to keep their existing stuff work, a flag that says that following symbolic links is OK ... and put that UI in Chromium itself, not in some other box somewhere

notokay 6y ago

Nice and helpful guide. In this month only I had to give up using firefox because uglyBar and ubuntu because of snaps. There won't be anywhere to run soon.

mothsonasloth 6y ago
You can disable the new address bar on Firefox - https://lifehacker.com/how-to-disable-firefox-75s-new-address-bar-1842728031 https://lifehacker.com/how-to-disable-firefox-75s-new-addres...
- notokay 6y ago
  Not on the new nightly release anymore.

smkellat 6y ago

In looking at some of the other entries about 20.04 on Mr. Custer’s site I’m wondering if it would’ve been simpler to just start with mini.iso to make an actual barebones installation and then install only what is actually desired. If you truly want a lean install then building your own custom mix is possible in Ubuntu and a relatively blank slate is available.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ressetera 6y ago

Snaps are great for auto updating software, especially the ones from JetBrains. I think most users will be fine. Those of us who need more fine grained control, can have it.

ngngngng 6y ago
You'd be surprised. Whenever my helm snap updates it breaks all the authentication I previously set up. And I get a weird error. That's not me needing fine grained control. It's just snaps being awful.
RMPR 6y ago
You can have pretty much the same with the tar.gz package, just unpack at a location, execute the setup to create the desktop file and some symlinks and you're set, plus you're notified upon a new update, no need to use Snap for that.
InternetOfStuff 6y ago
Chromium silently moved to a snap package some weeks ago. Annoying but harmless: it's start time has multiplied. Workflow-breaking: Chromium now can't see my NFS mounts anymore. It's not just about having a pretty home directory.
- Avamander 6y ago
  Workflow-breaking: KDE integration, Estonian eID signing and GooPG plugins don't work, also data loss when Chromium updates and you have it open
davet91 6y ago
JetBrains has their own tool called 'Toolbox' to install and update their software (and Android Studio). With Toolbox you are in control when and what to update and you can install multiple versions at the same time. It's distributed as AppImage for Linux. Very much recommended.

musicale 6y ago

> I lean more toward Flatpak as it is more performant What is "performant" supposed to mean here? Is Flatpak faster than Snap? more compact? simpler? more reliable/secure? easier to use? more efficient in terms of cpu/memory/communication/power/etc.? all of the above?

djsumdog 6y ago
I always had problems with both of them. I use Docker a lot and Flatpak/Snap are intended to be a type of Docker for desktop apps. I know with Flatpak it has some shims to integrate with your system UI libraries so themes try to match up, but there are issues with that too (and flatpak apps just not starting up half the time). I really hate Snap/Flatpak conceptually. Use the package manager. That's what it's there for. FPM is a way to make package building easier. Snap/Flat tools feel like they're about the same as Electron cancer; and I bet we'll see more closed source commercial stuff pushed to the Linux world via them as well.
- RMPR 6y ago
  Flatpak is marketed as a better Snap (it surely has some advantages: no vendor lockdown), but at the end of the day, the system integration is not that good, I tried to use the Flatpak of Wireshark back in the day when I tried Fedora Silverblue, I ended up regretting that experiment.
- Koshkin 6y ago
  > a type of Docker for desktop apps By the way, what is it with Docker that makes it hard or impossible for it to be used for this exact purpose?
  - mixmastamyk 6y ago
    Docker is poorly designed as well.
    - appleflaxen 6y ago
      can you elaborate? I can google for "docker sucks" blogposts, but I trust the HN opinion to be a bit more thoughtful. Any specific pain points you can identify?

zimbatm 6y ago

Consider any other operating systems out there for a moment. A new upgrade comes along that contains unwanted features. How often is it possible to revert that by uninstalling a few packages? There is a level of care here which I think is great. Some engineer somewhere made sure that the system would still work without snaps. This is a very Debian attitude which Ubuntu inherits from and which I would like to celebrate for a bit :-)

djsumdog 6y ago
Have you ever tried Void? I've used it on my routers for years, had a media PC with it and recently setup my dedicated server with it. It's really nice, but it is certainly more hands on and missing the management layers found in other Linux distros.

ilaksh 6y ago

The issue I had with snap was my server was going down. I thought it had run out of disk space like the last few times, but it seemed to be out of memory. Then I looked in htop and something related to snap or lxc was using most of the RAM. I think this is Ubuntu 18. Don't remember what I installed that used snap. But I had to remove snap to prevent my server from running out of memory periodically making my program crash.

RMPR 6y ago
You may have run into this bug https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/memory-run-memory-file-system-leaking-with-snap-install-remove/429 https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/memory-run-memory-file-system-l...

troyready 6y ago

One of the very annoying consequences of the Chromium move to snap on 20.04 is that it will silently fail to launch most external links (e.g. Slack, Zoom). A workound is posted at https://bugs.launchpad.net/snapd/+bug/1776873/comments/29 https://bugs.launchpad.net/snapd/+bug/1776873/comments/29 (simple patch & recompile). May be worth making a PPA for the fixed snapd if we can't get the Canonical dev team to fix the core issue.

qppo 6y ago
It basically breaks xdg-open. This is crucial for a lot of flows with desktop software and I'm honestly baffled why it isn't fixed. Any URI with a custom scheme is horribly and completely broken with a browser installed as a snap. Even basic stuff like file uris are broken in browsers installed as a snap. It's extremely weird to see this kind of thing when it happens too, you usually trust Firefox to work!
- akvadrako 6y ago
  It is strange this is still broken, but it’s pretty easy to build wrappers for xdg-open and friends yourself. I prefer the isolation of snaps so I’m willing to put a little work into it, but understand not everyone cares to do that.
  - qppo 6y ago
    It's a problem for my users, because it's silently broken.
Avamander 6y ago
Oh it also breaks a lot of native extensions: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chromium-browser/+bug/1741074 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chromium-browser/+... It also causes data loss: https://bugs.launchpad.net/snapd/+bug/1616650 https://bugs.launchpad.net/snapd/+bug/1616650

arodyginc 6y ago

You can also get snap-free Kubuntu (with a great Plazma desktop)

Tijdreiziger 6y ago

So can anyone actually explain what Snaps and Flatpaks are? Why are they good/bad? And how do they compare to each other?

RMPR 6y ago
The two technologies are used to sandbox GUI apps. They were supposed to make it possible to run newer apps on top of older libraries and to let 3rd party editors publish their software easily towards multiple distributions, but in practice you can face many problems (lack of system integration, apps not even starting, ...). Flatpak allows anyone to create stores, (iirc Flathub code is on Github) while with Snap you need to use the Snapcraft (vendor lockdown).

Darmody 6y ago

I've been using Ubuntu 20.04 for several weeks, almost since beta came out. The snap thing is a pain in the ass. I understand the need for something like snap or flatpak. I had software too new or too old that wouldn't work because some dependencies were not updated or were too new. Snaps can solve that by allowing the developers to provide everything you need (or everything you need that is not on your system). But why would I want a snap calculator or a snap system monitor? On 19.04 it would take a couple seconds to open the calculator...thank god they reverted those apps as normal packages. Now I feel like I felt on Windows when I had to be extra careful installing software in case somethign weird came in the installer. What kind of package is this? Is it a snap? Can I install the normal package? Is the snap provided by someone trustworthy? I also had to install Unity. Gnome lacks support for multiple monitors. Some stuff like the dash working only on the main monitor breaks completely my workflow. Almost for every action I want to make I have to change my focus to the main monitor.

beart 6y ago
multiple monitor support in Linux is high on my list of reasons I keep switching back to my Windows partition.
- redblacktree15 6y ago
  I suggest trying Kubuntu. I've been running 3 4K monitors for years, all works fine, including HiDPI support.
  - beart 6y ago
    If my primary monitor is to the right of my secondary monitor, do applications open on the primary monitor or the 'left' monitor? Also, do applications remember which monitor they were last opened on?
    - kbknapp 6y ago
      Not the parent, but I've also been using KDE in a multi-monitor setup for years (I have a 1440p primary monitor, and two vertical 1080p monitors to the sides). In my experience, applications open on the primary monitor, or on the monitor that is "active" (i.e. if you run Alt+F2 to bring up a run prompt on your secondary monitor and launch an application from there, the application opens on the secondary monitor where you launched it.). Yes, applications remember which monitor and even location on the monitor they were last at.

stbtrax 6y ago

What problem were snaps trying to solve?

simosx 6y ago
1. Snaps provide granular confinement to the applications. Is there a network tool CLI that happens not to read/write local files? You can forbid access to the filesystem, forbid access to the X server and all other resources. 2. Is the whole packaging a pain? Just do the work once and create the snapcraft.yaml packaging file that describes the whole process. You can even use the snap build server to rebuild fresh snap packages (in six architectures) as soon as you make a commit to your repository. 3. Are you a software company that wants to distribute your software? You can do all the snap building in-house. 4. The same snap works in many many distributions.
thecureforzits 6y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PmHRSeA2c8&t=5m38s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PmHRSeA2c8&t=5m38s

fapjacks 6y ago

And now, in a sort of hilarious turn of events, the latest pulseaudio update wants to install snapd (recommended by pulseaudio's new libsnapd-glib1 dependency). And of course, when someone asked about it, they just got a quiet WONTFIX.

throwbackThurs 6y ago

I recommend trying out other distributions. While I like the convenience of Ubuntu, it's got some clear downsides like poor package management & a bloated install. Not to mention the disaster that is Gnome3. Arch has been very hassle free for me, even the installation process was relatively pain free (If you follow a guide). I've been running it for probably nearly a year or so without any problems.. NixOS also looks really interesting and could be the future of desktop computing, I'm keen to give that a try when I get some downtime.

pnako 6y ago

Just install Debian instead of disabling all the stupid stuff from Canonical.

KoenDG 6y ago

I remember this happening: https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/docker-snap-18-09-9-error/14171/2 https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/docker-snap-18-09-9-error/14171... Not fun to think that could have happened on a production env if people didn't disable snap.

zamadatix 6y ago

What happens if you just sudo apt purge snapd without the rest?

simosx 6y ago
In a default installation of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, there are only very few pre-installed snap packages. The only important one is the Snap Store, that allows to install DEB packages and snap packages. If you can put up with the Snap Store and only install DEB packages, then you are fine. If you remove the Snap Store and you are at ease with 'apt', then you can may do so.

simosx 6y ago

Canonical distributes LXD as a snap package. That does not forbid others to package LXD independently. Debian has been close to packaging LXD at https://wiki.debian.org/LXD https://wiki.debian.org/LXD It is a matter of picking up interest to complete the work.

oedmarap 6y ago

I recently switched from Ubuntu (before 20.04's release) to Clear Linux which has Flatpak integrated by default. Along with the native package "bundles" (e.g. dev-tools, ruby-basic, containers-virt, etc.) that include built-in dependencies, Flatpak/FlatHub apps seem to work better than Snap/Snapcraft in my experience.

gtaylor 6y ago
I was just reading this the other day: https://community.clearlinux.org/t/changes-coming-to-clear-linux-direction/4337 https://community.clearlinux.org/t/changes-coming-to-clear-l... I wonder what is about to happen to the desktop experience for Clear Linux.

grizzles 6y ago

Snaps < Flatpak ufw < firewall-config =============== I like & prefer Ubuntu. But where else is Fedora/CentOS/other distros ahead of Ubuntu?

sgnnseven 6y ago

Take note though that AppArmor breaks when removing the snapd package using this method - at least that was the case for me about a week ago :/

ausjke 6y ago

been a long time Ubuntu LTS user, reading from the discussion here, I'm seriously thinking about moving back to Debian _fully_, anybody is doing it similarly?

aloknnikhil 6y ago

Thanks for this. I followed the steps and it failed to unmount the current "core" mount for snapd because the target was busy. What helped me was to unmount it lazily by running 'sudo umount -l /snap/core/xxxx' and then purging the package. That helped things move along. Just in case someone runs into this issue.

usr1106 6y ago

Most of our family PCs run Xubuntu LTS. Because they are low end / 10+ year old machines I always uninstall unnecessary stuff like snap. Have not seen a single case where I would have regretted this. I have been using Xubuntu 20.04 for several weeks and it has worked well. Because that's a high end laptop I have not bothered to uninstall snap yet, although that has been on my mind. I am surprised that the article writes there are snaps installed by default. Checking in Xubuntu 20.04 that's luckily not the case $ snap list No snaps are installed yet. Try 'snap install hello-world'. So the only somewhat worrying news is that chromium is gone. $ apt show chromium-browser Package: chromium-browser Version: 80.0.3987.163-0ubuntu1 ... Pre-Depends: debconf, snapd ... Description: Transitional package - chromium-browser -> chromium snap This is a transitional dummy package. It can safely be removed. . chromium-browser is now replaced by the chromium snap. Not that I would use Chromium more than 3 times a year. But occasionally some web site is broken on Firefox. And if it is important like a flight check-in I start chromium. But flying is not a valid use case in Europe at the moment so lets see how long I it takes until I note the lack of chromium again.

joshuaellinger 6y ago

Very timely. Just tried to install 20.04 on LVM. It gets in to a completely broken state if you misconfigure the network due to an error in an exception handler in an Python error handling view in the UI. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

usr1106 6y ago

I always uninstall snapd, too. Inspired by this post I checked what is actually offered as a snap. This one surprised me: https://snapcraft.io/aws-kernel https://snapcraft.io/aws-kernel Who can explain me how I would use a kernel running as a snap? Well, last updated 2017, so I don't think I want to try that one.

favadi 6y ago

I don't understand the need to remove it, if you don't like snap, just ignore it and don't install anything from it. There is no harm keeping them instlaled, right?

dingo_bat 6y ago
Although minimal, but the base snap installation does consume disk space. I also think they have a daemon running to help with updates.

antpls 6y ago

I installed Snap on Debian 10 stable to install Firefox and Chromium as snaps. It allows me to get the latest security updates for these 2 software without entering into dependency hell with the OS. Beside the slow startups, which is not really an issue with those apps because I keep them open all the time, it worked flawlessly so far for me. My only con is that the defaults update all snaps like every day, and I really would like to have better control on that, because I'm always on mobile data.

kelnos 6y ago
If all you're looking for is the ability to get the upstream updates immediately, you can also just download the tarball version and unpack it somewhere under your home directory. Then dump a .desktop file for each in ~/.local/share/applications/ so it shows up in your app menu. No startup slowness, and you'll still get the vendor-provided updates as they're released.
- saintamh 6y ago
  I'm curious why this got downvoted -- would it not work?
  - zodmaner 6y ago
    I have no idea why that reply got downvoted as well. It is essentially how I installed Firefox on my Debian stable laptop , and it has been working great as far.

ezoe 6y ago

The only downside of disabling snap in Ubuntu is the Chromium. Since Ubuntu's official package of Chromium is using snap, disabling the snap means you don't get packaged Chromium from Canonical. You have to build it yourself or using other means of distribution, like using Debian apt package or proprietary Google Chrome. It's not much of a problem for me since I believe that keeping diversity of Web browser is necessary for the healthy Web ecosystem and I force myself to use Firefox. And I really hate Chromium force me to waste CPU time on some kind of test payload occasionaly, it use 100% of a core and there is no way to disable it. I'm fine with restricting myself to use Firefox since I'm not a Web frontend developer so I don't need to test Chromium behaviours myself. But others may not.

LockAndLol 6y ago

Say bye bye to Chromium on 20.04 from the default repos https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/g7cv6k/debs_installing_snaps_what_the_fresh_horror_is/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/g7cv6k/debs... The deb tries to install the Chromium snap package ;)

aledthemathguy 6y ago

Excuse my question, but why even Ubuntu? Isn't something like Manjaro better?

red_admiral 6y ago

I really don't get what market ubuntu is going for here. People like me who would like a system that works their way, even if it's not the same way as the distribution maintainers - nope. Believe it or not, I don't want my desktop to be full of animations, I want updates to happen on my schedule, and I care about having the active title bar a different colour to the rest. People who believe in Free As In Freedom - it's still technically free, but for all practical purposes it might as well not be if you have to recompile a core package for things like using a non-standard home directory path. This is one of many things where I sigh and go Freedom wasnt meant to be like this. The average non-techy user - uses windows anyway, and has access to a much larger software ecosystem as a result.

coderesearch 6y ago

Two questions: a) is it possible to use Chromium without snaps? b) Can anybody please describe the general experience with Centos for a media production machine - needs to run NVIDIA GPU support, Ardour, low latency jackd and Davinci Resolve on XFCE.

dancemethis 6y ago

The two snaps I had to interact with so far, dotnetCore and microk8s are ridiculously bad. Why they have so many stupid quirks and nonlogical interfaces are way beyond me.

bfrog 6y ago

Snap is honestly driving me away from Ubuntu. Managed systems are less manageable with snap involved.

lokedhs 6y ago

To me is seems as though Snap is playing a similar part as Unity did in Ubuntu. It's Canonical suffering from NIH. Flatpak exists and works. The application I'm working on is distributed on Flathub, and I don't have the time nor the interest to learn yet another packaging system. Ubuntu would do well trying to not just lead (which they do in some aspects, I'm sure) but also try to follow when it's more appropriate. The push towards Unity and now Snap just causes more fragmentation in the Linux community.

SkyMarshal 6y ago

Does anyone else use update-alternatives to install and maintain software? Takes a little setup work, mainly in scripting the soft links for binaries, but once done it’s a pretty clean way of managing software installations. http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/man8/update-alternatives.8.html http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/man8/update-alter...