How to remove Snap from Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
Disable services and uninstall snapd packages
Stop snapd (snap daemon) services:
$ sudo systemctl disable snapd.service
$ sudo systemctl disable snapd.socket
$ sudo systemctl disable snapd.seeded.service
List all the snaps packages installed with the following command:
$ snap list
Remove snap packages. It’s best to do so one-by-one, rather than all in one apt remove line. So something like:
$ sudo snap remove firefox
$ sudo snap remove snap-store
$ sudo snap remove gtk-common-themes
$ sudo snap remove gnome-3-38-2004
$ sudo snap remove core18
$ sudo snap remove snapd-desktop-integration
For those who get the error in Ubuntu 22.04:
$ sudo snap remove --purge firefox
error: cannot perform the following tasks:
- Remove data for snap "firefox" (1943) (unlinkat /var/snap/firefox/common/host-hunspell/en_ZA.dic: read-only file system)
Verify that indeed /var/snap/firefox/common/host-hunspell is mounted as an ext4 file system using:
$ sudo lsblk -fe7 -o+ro
$ sudo systemctl stop var-snap-firefox-common-host\\x2dhunspell.mount
$ sudo systemctl disable var-snap-firefox-common-host\\x2dhunspell.mount
Removed /etc/systemd/system/default.target.wants/var-snap-firefox-common-host\x2dhunspell.mount.
Removed /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/var-snap-firefox-common-host\x2dhunspell.mount.
Delete any snap data cache:
$ sudo rm -rf /var/cache/snapd/
Then purge or remove completely snapd using the following command:
$ sudo apt autoremove --purge snapd
Optionally delete any files previously created in home directory with the following command:
$ rm -rf ~/snap
Reinstalling Firefox with apt
If you want to reinstall Firefox with apt, you may get the following error:
firefox : PreDepends: snapd but it is not going to be installed
You can get around that by blocking Ubuntu from pulling the snap version of Firefox by pinning it.
First, create a new file:
$ sudo vim /etc/apt/preferences.d/firefox-no-snap
Next, add these lines to that new file:
Package: firefox*
Pin: release o=Ubuntu*
Pin-Priority: -1
Save it. Then add the Mozilla team Ubuntu PPA for Firefox:
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/ppa
Finally, ‘apt update’ and ‘apt install’ the latest Firefox version:
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install firefox