Ubuntu Studio - Snap annoyance

[u/52buickman]

Reaching out to the gurus with Ubuntu Studio. I'm predominantly a Debian user. I left Ubuntu because of the annoyance of Snap. I''m trying out Ubuntu Studio for music production. I see this for Snap packages installed after installing Ubuntu Studio:

$ grep PRETTY /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS"

$ snap list
Name Version Rev Tracking Publisher Notes
bare 1.0 5 latest/stable canonical✓ base
core24 20260824 2124 latest/stable canonical✓ base
desktop-security-center 0+git.4adf2b9 206 1/stable/… canonical✓ -
firefox 154.0-1 8763 latest/stable/… mozilla✓ -
firmware-updater 0+git.64c41a0 262 1/stable/… canonical✓ -
freeshow 1.6.7 227 latest/stable/… eeickmeyer -
gnome-46-2404 0+git.b31ceab-sdk0+git.f0723a0 164 latest/stable/… canonical✓ -
gtk-common-themes 0.1-81-g442e511 1535 latest/stable/… canonical✓ -
gtk-theme-orchis 2022-07-20 3 latest/stable/… eeickmeyer -
icon-theme-breeze 1.3 5 latest/stable/… kde✓ -
mesa-2404 25.2.8-snap288 1839 latest/stable/… canonical✓ -
prompting-client 0+git.dd8c750 228 1/stable/… canonical✓ -
snapd 2.77.1 28254 latest/stable canonical✓ snapd
snapd-desktop-integration 0.9 391 latest/stable/… canonical✓ -

Are there any dependencies on the Gnome/Ubuntu 24.04 packages from the Linux audio specific packages here? Outside of Firefox, everything else seems to be related to Snap itself or ESM, for which I would not be using.

[u/Netris89]

I use this script to remove snap from any new Ubuntu flavor I install (used it last a few weeks ago and everything works like a charm).

[u/52buickman → u/Netris89]

Just what the doctor ordered. Thanks.

[u/tweb2 → u/52buickman]

On the link shared by Netris89 it says "If you're running Ubuntu Desktop, do not run this script. It will mess you up." I don't know much about the Ubuntu Studio distro specifically but given the follow on on explanation given, isn't this reason to pause?

[u/Mr_Lumbergh]

I don’t use any of the “studio” distros at all and just run my own tweaked Debian.

[u/krelpwang]

Just don't use snap, i guess?!

[u/beatbox9]

I don't think I understand the logic. You went from Ubuntu to Ubuntu Studio because of snaps...?

First: ew, why are you using ubuntu studio instead of just plain old Ubuntu LTS?

Second, just remove the snaps and disable snapd from installing if you don't want them. The snaps are not essential--most of the packages are just libraries to make other snaps work. The only real snap would be firefox, which you can just easily replace with the non-snap version: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/install-firefox-linux#w_install-firefox-deb-package-for-debian-based-and-ubuntu-based-distributions-recommended

Snaps are just another packaging format; and they're really good for some types of software (and there are better package types for others). And so just like you wouldn't use flatpak for everything, just don't use snaps for everything (or even anything). So I don't understand what the issue is?

I also don't understand why anyone in 2026 would use ubuntu studio but that's a different issue.

[u/52buickman → u/beatbox9]

No. This is a fresh installation of Ubuntu Studio due to its integrated Linux audio/music tools without the headache of rolling my own. It is actively developed and maintained.

I ditched Ubuntu several years ago for Debian for desktop use. I use Rocky on my servers. With Debian, I don't get the extra drama and is what Ubuntu is based on. Ubuntu irritated me because of Snap and ESM which is ingrained into the distro. Yeah Snap is another packaging format but has long non-resolved issues (e.g. dependency on /home for the user home directory -- bad design, bad coding). The apt package manager is bad enough but is tolerable comparatively (e.g. multiple command runs to just maintain package updates and clean itself up as opposed to the RPM/dnf based distros that only have a single execution to do the same).

Why yet another package manager? Debian and RPM based Linux distros have alternate repositories for the packages that are not supported by the distro sponsor for whatever reason but desired by the community. Snap is not a cross distro/cross platform solution that has been well adopted as a "market place" for apps as like Docker for virtual machine support.

[u/beatbox9 → u/52buickman]

You didn't really address the questions. But regardless: you asked why yet another package manager? Because snap does some stuff better than apt/deb and flatpak. (And snaps are cross distro / cross platform).

But they are all different. For example: snaps are good for headless system apps that need to be upgraded frequently. Apt / deb suck for this, since they need to be produced for each version of the distro and can be a maintenance nightmare in terms of effort. And Flatpaks suck for this since they can't do headless system apps at all. So this is one example of 'why yet another package manager.'

And this is before noting that snaps are older than many other package types, such as flatpaks. And how they're not vm's.

But again: just don't use them if you don't want to.