Xubuntu & snapd

**richolad-k** · February 13th, 2020

Does Xubuntu 19.10 include any snap packages? Will it download any if I install new packages? What is the distro's plan for the future regarding snapd?

**The Cog** · February 13th, 2020

I know chromium-browser is only available in a snap package from 19.10 onwards. I gather most other packages are not forcing you to use snap yet. I think the distro's plan is for more snap packages but haven't seen any official statements to that effect. I don't know if they plan to force users to use snap in general, or to offer both packages ongoing.

EDIT: I corrected 10.10 onwards to 19.10 onwards (typo)

**richolad-k** · February 13th, 2020

OK. You have the same questions I do, then. I'll await more responses. Disregard that -- I have just learned that Xubuntu includes snapd, and that removing all snaps and/or ensuring it remains snap-free is difficult. This means it is not what I want.

**The Cog** · February 13th, 2020

sudo apt purge snapd seemed to do it for me. I haven't seen them come back yet.

**TheFu** · February 13th, 2020

Originally Posted by The Cog

I know chromium-browser is only available in a snap package from 10.10 onwards. I gather most other packages are not forcing you to use snap yet. I think the distro's plan is for more snap packages but haven't seen any official statements to that effect. I don't know if they plan to force users to use snap in general, or to offer both packages ongoing.

I suspect you mean 17.10 for the chromium-browser snap, not 10.10?

Hope this is useful for someone. No non-LTS stuff, like 19.10 here. Sorry.

On an 18.04 machine:

Code:

snap list

should show any installed snap packages. If that command isn't found, then none are installed.

Code:

$ snap list
Name               Version          Rev   Tracking  Publisher   Notes
chromium           80.0.3987.100    1026  stable    canonicalâ  -
chromium-ffmpeg    0.1              15    stable    canonicalâ  -
core               16-2.43.2        8592  stable    canonicalâ  core
core18             20200124         1668  stable    canonicalâ  base
gtk-common-themes  0.1-28-g1503258  1440  stable    canonicalâ  -
snapd              2.43.2           6240  stable    canonicalâ  snapd

$ sudo snap remove chromium chromium-ffmpeg core core18 gtk-common-themes snapd
error: cannot remove "chromium", "chromium-ffmpeg", "core", "core18",
       "gtk-common-themes", "snapd": snap "core" is not removable: snap is used
       by the model

Removing the DEB package for snapd looks possible. Doing that removes all the snaps too!

Code:

$ sudo apt purge snapd
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  snapd*
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
After this operation, 65.3 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] Y

I answered yes! seemed to work and removed all snaps.

Code:

$ sudo apt install chromium-browser
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  adwaita-icon-theme at-spi2-core chromium-browser-l10n
....   ABOUT 3 PAGES OF PACKAGE LISTS ... 
0 upgraded, 149 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 103 MB of archives.
After this operation, 616 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] N   HELL NO!!!!

$ sudo apt install --no-install-recommends chromium-browser
.....
0 upgraded, 74 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 66.4 MB of archives.
After this operation, 255 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] Y
....
74% [74 chromium-browser 31.1 MB/52.1 MB 60%]                    1,626 kB/s 12s
....

After all that,

Code:

$ snap info

Command 'snap' not found, but can be installed with:

sudo apt install snapd

$ dpkg -l |grep chromium
ii  chromium-browser   65.0.3325.181-0ubuntu1    amd64  Chromium web browser, open-source version of Chrome

But 79.0.3945.130-0ubuntu0.16.04.1 is the current version on my 16.04 desktop systems. Seems Chromium has been abandoned as a deb package on 18.04.

Firefox it will be. Good news, Firefox in the 18.04 .deb repos looks to be current. 73.0+build3-0ubuntu0.18.04.1