Snap

There's some controversy regarding snap, Ubuntu's new packaging format. LTSP does its best to support it, but occasionally some issues arise with it that can't be solved from the LTSP side, for example wasting RAM in live sessions or not working with NFS home.

If you decide to remove snap, you may open a terminal, type sudo -i to become root, and then copy/paste all the following code:

re() {
    if ! "$@"; then
        echo "Command failed: $*" >&2
        exit 1
    fi
}

remove_snap() {
    local packages

    if [ -x /usr/bin/mate-session ]; then
        packages=$(dpkg-query -W -f='${Package} ${Version}\n' arctica-greeter-guest-session ayatana-indicator-application evolution-common indicator-application mate-hud 2>/dev/null | awk '$2 { print $1 }') || true
        if [ -n "$packages" ]; then
            echo "Removing some MATE cruft: $packages"
            re apt-get purge --yes --auto-remove $packages
        fi
    fi
    if [ -x /usr/bin/snap ]; then
        if [ -f /var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/firefox_firefox.desktop ] &&
            [ ! -L /var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/firefox_firefox.desktop ]; then
            echo "Replacing Firefox snap with deb using MozillaTeam PPA"
            # Remove firefox before snapd to work around LP: #1998710
            snap remove firefox 2>/dev/null || true
            re add-apt-repository --yes ppa:mozillateam/ppa
            echo 'Package: *
Pin: release o=LP-PPA-mozillateam
Pin-Priority: 1001' >/etc/apt/preferences.d/60mozillateam-ppa
            # If you need more locales e.g. firefox-locale-el add them in this line
            re apt-get install --yes firefox firefox-locale-en
            if [ -f /usr/share/mate/applications/firefox.desktop ]; then
                re dpkg-divert --package sch-scripts --divert \
                    /usr/share/mate/applications/firefox-desktop.diverted \
                    --rename /usr/share/mate/applications/firefox.desktop
            fi
        fi
        # Remove snapd, THEN provide a symlink to deb firefox for panels etc
        re apt-get purge --yes --auto-remove snapd
        if [ ! -e /var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/firefox_firefox.desktop ]; then
            re mkdir -p /var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications
            re ln -s /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop /var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/firefox_firefox.desktop
        fi
    fi
}

remove_snap