Snaps and Flatpaks (SOLVED)

[benali72]

I worked on refurbishing a 6 yr old computer this weekend. It ran Kubuntu pretty well but, unfortunately, the person who had it before me had installed snaps.

Snap services added 25 seconds wall time to the boot process. And then when you tried to load a snap product, like a browser like Firefox or Chromium, ouch again! More than 15 seconds to get a browser up and running.

I kind of concluded that snaps and flatpaks may be great for ease of use, elminiating shared library problems, etc. But they're pretty bad from the performance standpoint, at least on older computers.

Anybody else have a similar experience?

[Grey]

But they're pretty bad

The thing is that the subject under discussion is "crutches". You can walk (use)... but it is extremely inconvenient and only in extreme circumstances.
A healthy person (a confident user) should avoid using medical "stuff" in every possible way for no reason

[mouldy]

Whats annoying some linux version software now only offered as snap/flatpak. I get it they want to make it as idiot-proof and as linux universal as possible, but its annoying and they can be extremely huge. I havent tried taking one of these apart.

Now the appimage, they offer some portability without being super sized. So for somethings they make sense.

[Clarity]

Yes, Snaps, Flatpaks, Appimage, and portables intend to relieve the confusion associated with Linux app installation, setup, and use, as well as the package managers for any given system. ALL have advantages AND disadvantages.

Use whatever that you find comfortable in adding, setup, access, and/or performance.

[wiak]

Yes, Snaps, Flatpaks, Appimage, and portables intend to relieve the confusion associated with Linux app installation, setup, and use, as well as the package managers for any given system. ALL have advantages AND disadvantages.

Use whatever that you find comfortable in adding, setup, access, and/or performance.

I only ever use snaps or flat packs as a last resort. Even some packages that now officially come in snap form from Ubuntu repositories usually have someone's private PPA that doesn't need huge snap (chromium for example). Of course you have to check private PPA trust reputation. I certainly don't want to encourage every package to become snap or similar.

[bigpup]

For snaps slow to load.

Found this:

In my case, removing the .local/share/flatpak folder and restarting the session fix the problem.
After that snap apps run just in a second

[benali72]

Whats annoying some linux version software now only offered as snap/flatpak. I get it they want to make it as idiot-proof and as linux universal as possible, but its annoying and they can be extremely huge. I havent tried taking one of these apart.

Now the appimage, they offer some portability without being super sized. So for somethings they make sense.

Hear, hear! I think if the person who had the computer before me had installed the browsers natively, instead of as snaps, they would have loaded and performed better.

But I looked in the Kubuntu repository, and snaps were all it offered for browsers and many other programs. So essentially, if you use Kubuntu these days, you will use snaps (unless you go to a lot of trouble to avoid it).

Bigpup, thanks for the tip! I tried it and it seemed to help somewhat for flatpaks, but not for snaps.

[benali72]

In the end, here's what I did to solve the problem of slow snaps on that computer I've been refurbishing.

I listed which apps are installed as snaps -- snap list

After identifying them, I deinstalled them. I followed the instructions here -- https://askubuntu.com/questions/1280707 ... stall-snap

Then I re-installed them as regular apps, through commands such as -- apt-get install firefox

This worked fine on my computer (although I read that it can get complicated for removing certain apps, as shown in this blog about how to remove the Chromium snap https://blog.pagefault-limited.co.uk/re ... eb-package ).

I read that Canonical invented snaps and that they now litter their repository. IMHO, that's not good if you're looking to install Kubuntu or Xubuntu on an older computer and need speed. It's sure nice that Puppy avoids these problems.