snapd? not sure

[jfaberna]

So I know this maybe just opinions, but what is it with snap and Ubuntu? I was not aware of it until my googling difference packages told me to install that package with snap. In most cases I either got an older version of the software or software installed in weird places with a directory structure I could not figure out how to live with. Software development packages require you to know and work with their directory structure and it's different if I'm forced to install with Snap.

If I stay with Ubuntu, which is my preference, can I completely remove Snap and still get things done? I will not use it.

[howefield]

If I stay with Ubuntu, which is my preference, can I completely remove Snap and still get things done? I will not use it.

Running

sudo apt purge snapd

will remove snapd and all snap packages, if there are any installed.

For the most part your only issue would be if a particular piece of software is available only in the snap format.

You should be able to still get things done as the majority of software has alternative ways of being installed, removing snapd won't break your installation.

[guiverc]

I personally wouldn't purge `snapd`, but with a couple of commands you can disable it so it doesn't run (allowing you to enable it faster should you need it).

I primarily use Lubuntu, which being a Ubuntu family product, modern releases include `snapd`, however it installs without any snaps anyway.

I'm using an 11 year old desktop, so I've not exactly got loads of spare resources, but I still find snaps handy, and thus they're not disabled on this box.

I do on occasion use much older laptops with single core processors, and a total of 1GB RAM (Lubuntu 18.04 LTS) and on those boxes stopping/disabling `snapd` sure makes sense to me, but Lubuntu 18.04 didn't come with `snapd` anyway, so I don't have to.

As the snaps run as containerized applications, the 'unique' or 'different' layout doesn't worry me at all, and when I've had issues with a snap (rare, and with `chromium` mostly), it wasn't really any harder to work out where my user data was than back when it was a deb package (chromium has been a snap package on my system for ~21 months now).

For developers, they make sense; snap (package) it once and it'll run on all releases, where as deb packages really need to be built for every release (not that difficult if built on infrastructure, just click the releases you want to build for, but that's still a lot of packages that need testing, instead of a single snap).

Snaps needing extra resources required (mostly by containerization) I'm no fan of (especially with my aged hardware), but they provides greater choices (I can even find/use a chromium via deb package if I wanted to) as there are programs only available as snap (which likely would never be packaged as deb).

[poorguy]

I'm using an 11 year old desktop, so I've not exactly got loads of spare resources, but I still find snaps handy, and thus they're not disabled on this box.

I use a 14 year old desktop running Ubuntu 18.04 and have no problems with snaps.

I've only tried a few snaps and they were installed by default and they open a little slower but they run OK.

[jfaberna]

I personally wouldn't purge `snapd`, but with a couple of commands you can disable it so it doesn't run (allowing you to enable it faster should you need it).

As the snaps run as containerized applications, the 'unique' or 'different' layout doesn't worry me at all, and when I've had issues with a snap (rare, and with `chromium` mostly), it wasn't really any harder to work out where my user data was than back when it was a deb package (chromium has been a snap package on my system for ~21 months now).

For developers, they make sense; snap (package) it once and it'll run on all releases, where as deb packages really need to be built for every release (not that difficult if built on infrastructure, just click the releases you want to build for, but that's still a lot of packages that need testing, instead of a single snap).

Snaps needing extra resources required (mostly by containerization) I'm no fan of (especially with my aged hardware), but they provides greater choices (I can even find/use a chromium via deb package if I wanted to) as there are programs only available as snap (which likely would never be packaged as deb).

I guess I got unlucky. The first package I installed with Ubuntu Software app used snap and it was an obsolete package in Snap. The apps main website didn't mention snap as even an option. The second package was also from the Ubuntu Software app was VSCode. It was up to date, but the install location was totally messed up. I could not figure it out. Luckily I could remove and install with apt. For now I'll use Linux Mint 20 where they will not allow snap apps to be installed.

[dinkidonk]

The second package was also from the Ubuntu Software app was VSCode. It was up to date, but the install location was totally messed up. I could not figure it out. Luckily I could remove and install with apt.

I hope that you are not referring to Microsoft VS Code?

[jfaberna]

I hope that you are not referring to Microsoft VS Code?

VSCode is the preferred development platform for the new Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller for C/C++ with SWD hardware debugging. That's why I installed it. Also ESP32 MCU development with Arduino AVR with JTAG debugging is the domain of PlatformIO which is a plugin to VSCode.

So like it or not, it's what I use.

[dinkidonk]

VSCode is the preferred development platform for the new Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller for C/C++ with SWD hardware debugging. That's why I installed it. Also ESP32 MCU development with Arduino AVR with JTAG debugging is the domain of PlatformIO which is a plugin to VSCode.

So like it or not, it's what I use.

In case you've been living under a rock, here's one for ya.

[jfaberna]

My concern is that there are cases where Ubuntu turns an apt install into an excuse to use snap again like in Chromium. I run Linux Mint 20 on my laptop and it does not have snapd and their developers will not use it by default. That is based on Ubuntu so I'm safer, I think, with that.
However on my development system I've switched to Archlinux with Cinnamon DE. A lot harder to install everything, but at least I know what I got and nothing automatic is going to happen; no auto-updates, no auto-downloads, and no livepatches.

[dinkidonk]

It would be quite nice if snap / snapstore / snapcraft was an optinal install in the *buntu system installer. However, in Kubuntu Discover you can clearly see which source a package is (or will be) installed from, which gives you the choice. Usually the snap packages are (much) newer versions compared to the apt packages and there is the benefit of having the snaps sandboxed, which may be quite nice for some third party packages (Android Studio, M$ VSCode etc.). Snaps are also giving convenient access to install software which is not available in the ordinary repos and would require either building them or installing them as cumbersome downloads which may not be an option for the average user. On the other hand, snaps are bulky and slow which is not really what you want when using Linux.