I'm on Ubuntu 20.04.2 with Gnome desktop.
I would like to know the following: which of my apps are snaps, or if I have snap apps at all, and if I do then how many.
Secondary question: is there a way to go snap-less? Or do some system-related apps depend on snap, so I'm stuck with it?
At this time, snaps are not required to run Ubuntu. However the Ubuntu software store does depend to some extent upon the availability of snaps.
To list the snaps that are installed on your system, open a terminal window and enter the command snap list - this will give a list similar to
$ snap list
Name Version Rev Tracking Publisher Notes
core18 20210128 1988 latest/stable canonical✓ base
gnome-3-34-1804 0+git.3556cb3 66 latest/stable/… canonical✓ -
gtk-common-themes 0.1-50-gf7627e4 1514 latest/stable/… canonical✓ -
snap-store 3.38.0-59-g494f078 518 latest/stable/… canonical✓ -
snapd 2.48.2.1 11036 latest/stable canonical✓ snapd
It is possible to remove some or all of the snaps. Many (most) applications are available in different packaging options, but this is something that the application maintainer decides.
My current method for removing all snaps:
snap list | awk '!/^Name|^core|^snapd/ {system ("sudo snap remove " $1)}'
sudo apt remove --purge -y snapd gnome-software-plugin-snap
This does disable the ubuntu software store. However, running sudo apt install gnome-software will call as a dependancy snapd. You could simply omit the second line of my snap removal.
