The day I went to install something with APT and it forced installed the Snap with no easy way to tell it not to was the last day I ever ran Ubuntu on my PC
this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2026
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I recently tried Ubuntu.
Wait, no, I fought Ubuntu.
Firefox was snap. OK, remove it and apt install. Nope, that installs a snap. Now, one more thing, for some reason uninstalling the snap version of Firefox took several minutes each time where it was "disconnecting" it from a bunch of things, or something along those lines.
So I followed the Mozilla guide for Firefox installation on Ubuntu. Did it work? No. The higher priority setting for Mozilla repo from their guide didn't work.
Finally, I found the answer on OMG Ubuntu, and I could finally install the regular Firefox package.
Same here.
I had heard the issues, but thought - no big deal, right?
Then I went to run something and it ran weird, so I checked which on the command line - and discovered my apt command had been intercepted and rerouted to snap.
I forget the media (maybe multiple) where someone shoots their robot the first time it ignored a command, but it felt like that.
I reimaged that machine to Debian or Mint shortly after that.
The day they mentioned snaps was the day I grumbled and started recommending mint instead. Or maybe that was the day they crammed sponsored search results into their start menu...
I lost my shit when they first added snaps and I haven't used it since
Adding them didn't bother me. Actively subverting my choice to not use them did.
One of a few reasons I switched away from Ubuntu as my desktop/laptop OS.
I really liked Ubuntu, too. It was the distro that got me into Linux in 2012. I don't feel bad having switched to Debian Stable, though. I love my Debian.
Oops, I switched distros!
Oh man. Those turned my poop green.
Youre not supposed to eat software.
You're not my real dad.
Your mom and your biological dad and I are just worried about you. Snaps are mostly sugar.
Well actually...
Just remove it and install Flatpack boss
too early for operation, device not yet seeded
I've not used Ubuntu based since pop 22.04, so sorry for the misinformed question. What's the user facing issue with snap? I know the repos are solely managed by Ubuntu, but I didn't have any issue I could attribute to snap. Actually I liked it had terminal app support, not only graphical ones like flatpak (last I checked at least)
It's slow, and not great for desktop usage. Also, some apt packages have been transformed into snaps. If you do sudo apt install firefox it no longer installs the deb version, but the snap. I (and probably many other people) don't like this lack of transparency and choice. It just feels like getting snaps pushed down our throats.
I know the repos are solely managed by Ubuntu
That's my main issue with it, it makes your system dependent on a platform solely owned and controlled by Cannonical
Okay, but...
Recently, my girlfriend (who I successfully migrated to Kubuntu) was complaining about ads on youtube, so I wanted to install Brave for her, since that works well as a chromium-based browser but still doesn't show ads. (I've had issues trying to play youtube on Firefox with adblocker, probably because Google's trying to discourage anything other than Chrome.)
Brave was available in the app store, and installed as a Snap. And it was fine. It installed fine, it works fine, no issues. Maybe it's not the most efficient way to do things, and there certainly are issues with the snap system. But ... it's not the devil, and it's not the end of the world.
As far as I know, technically speaking, Snap, the application side, is fully foss, but not the server side, meaning you can only install Snap packs integrated into the system from Canonical directly. And this is a big pain point for most.
Snap has a far better permission system and avoids many of the security pitfalls of Flatpak, but it being hardcoded to use Canonical's proprietary server is BS. Also forcing people to use Snap is BS.
Is there any tutorial/article on those security pitfalls and permission system? I just build my packages when they aren't available wanted to try flatpak for some time.
Itβs also a pointless package formats that rivals much better and more adopted format that is Flatpak