Marc Wäckerlin
Für eine libertäre Gesellschaft

Ubuntu: Get Rid of Snap

August 22, 2024

Views: 45

Since a few releases, Ubuntu has introduces snap as package manager for some software, instead of using apt repositories. Snap has many disadvantages. Instead of referncing dependencies from other packages, everything is packed into one package and then run in a sandbox. Not only that this results in larger and redundant deployments, due to the sandbox, several concept fail. A system like snap, similar to docker, is fine for distributing micro services in a cloud, but not for local package management. It’s the duty of the packager (Ubuntu), to keep all dependencies consistent. They are just too lazy!

Steps to Take

To completely remove snap:

  1. Remove all installed Snap Packages
    snap list | tail -n +2 | cut -f1 -d' ' | xargs -i sudo snap remove --purge {}
  2. Remove Snap from the Apt Installation
    sudo apt autoremove --purge snapd
  3. Prohibit Re-Installation of the Snap Package
    Create file: /etc/apt/preferences.d/no-snap
  4. Install Software Using Apt

Remove all Installed Snap Packages

The first step is to remove all installed snap packes. To see a list of installed packages, call snap list, e.g. on my installation, so:

snap list

On my system (after I already removed firefox, thunderbird and chromium), it shows:

Name Version Rev Tracking Publisher Notes
bare 1.0 5 latest/stable canonical? base
code fee1edb8 167 latest/stable vscode? classic
core20 20240416 2318 latest/stable canonical? base
core22 20240731 1564 latest/stable canonical? base
cups 2.4.10-1 1058 latest/stable openprinting? -
firmware-updater 0+git.5007558 127 latest/stable/… canonical? -
gnome-42-2204 0+git.510a601 176 latest/stable/… canonical? -
gtk-common-themes 0.1-81-g442e511 1535 latest/stable/… canonical? -
icon-theme-breeze 1.0 2 latest/stable kde? -
snap-store 0+git.1419621 1124 latest/stable/… canonical? -
snapd 2.63 21759 latest/stable canonical? snapd
snapd-desktop-integration 0.9 157 latest/stable/… canonical? -

You can either manually remove them one by one, e.g. calling sudo snap remove --purge code`, or you can run a script, that tries to remove all of them one by one:

snap list | tail -n +2 | cut -f1 -d' ' | xargs -i sudo snap remove --purge {}

On my system, this outputs some errors:

error: cannot remove "bare": snap "bare" is not removable: snap is being used by snaps
gtk-common-themes and icon-theme-breeze.
code removed
core20 removed
error: cannot remove "core22": snap "core22" is not removable: snap is being used by snaps cups,
firmware-updater, gnome-42-2204, snap-store and snapd-desktop-integration.
cups removed
firmware-updater removed
gnome-42-2204 removed
gtk-common-themes removed
icon-theme-breeze removed
snap-store removed
error: cannot remove "snapd": snap "snapd" is not removable: remove all other snaps first
snapd-desktop-integration removed

As you see, not all have been removed immediately because of dependencies, so you simply run the command a second time:

snap list | tail -n +2 | cut -f1 -d' ' | xargs -i sudo snap remove --purge {}

This time all have been remove. Otherwise you’d just call it a third time.

bare removed 
core22 removed 
snapd removed

Remove Snap from the Apt Installation

Now it’s time to remove snap from the apt package installation:

sudo apt autoremove --purge snapd

At the end, I see some errors:

Final directory cleanup
rm: cannot remove '/var/snap': Device or resource busy
Cannot remove directory /var/snap
Removing extra snap-confine apparmor rules
Removing snapd cache
Removing snapd state
dpkg: warning: while removing snapd, unable to remove directory '/var/snap': Device or resource busy - directory may be a mount point?

This is, because I installed on ZFS, and it seems to create a separate mount point. It can be cleaned-up:

Get the name:

mount | grep snap

I get:

rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_7yzrbz/var/snap on /var/snap type zfs (rw,relatime,xattr,posixacl,casesensitive)

So the name of the ZFS resource is rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_7yzrbz/var/snap. Now I can remove it:

sudo umount /var/snap
sudo zfs destroy rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_7yzrbz/var/snap
sudo rm -rf /var/snap

Prohibit Re-Installation of Snap Package

In apt configurations, set Pin-Priority to a very low value for Package snapdto prevent it’s installation:

cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/no-snap
Package: snapd
Pin: release a=*
Pin-Priority: -10
EOF

Then the file contains those three lines:

marc@saturn:~$ cat /etc/apt/preferences.d/no-snap 
Package: snapd 
Pin: release a=* 
Pin-Priority: -10

Install Software Using Apt

After adding a repository, always first call sudo apt-get update to read the new sources.

Mozilla Firefox

You may install firefox from the mozzilla team’s PPA and set the priority to a higher level, e.g. 1001:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/ppa
sudo apt-get update
cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/mozilla-firefox
Package: * 
Pin: release o=LP-PPA-mozillateam 
Pin-Priority: 1001
EOF

Then you can install firefox from the apt packages:

sudo apt-get install firefox

Chromium Browser

For the chromium (open source version of Google chrome) browser, I found a PPA repository:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xtradeb/apps -y
sudo apt update
sudo apt install chromium

Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code on Linux writes:

Installing the .deb package will automatically install the apt repository and signing key to enable auto-updating using the system’s package manager.

So simply download and install the debian package, for that give global access and install, e.g.:

chmod ugo+r /home/marc/Downloads/code_1.92.2-1723660989_amd64.deb
sudo apt-get install ~/Downloads/code_1.92.2-1723660989_amd64.deb

References

My thanks go to:

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