I know that Snap earned a bad reputation among Linux folks due on it being closed-source by Canonical, which developed the open-source Ubuntu Linux. I haven't used Linux for long, but I have to agree with the general consensus. Snap on my system, while generally doesn't degrade performance much, basically acts like Windows 10, auto update anytime it wants, regardless of my opinion. Its daemon, snapd, does degrade performance when updating apps. When using my Ubuntu virtual server, I uninstalled snapd, because all of my apps can be obtained from apt or docker. On the other hand, I was hesitant to remove snapd, along with Firefox, because I was afraid it would mess up something to my daily driver, Lubuntu. But it had to be done
Howto (by source)
You might want to backup the OS first before committing to this. So I used Clonezilla to back up the OS. You can use whatever.
Back at Lubuntu, I backed up my Firefox profile by going to about:profiles, look at the default profile, click Open Directory on Root Directory. Copy its content to another folder outside.
Next, I added Mozilla's repo using terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/ppa
I uninstalled Firefox from Snap using:
snap remove firefox
I then created 2 new files at 2 locations, 1 is for prioritizing the apt Firefox over snap Firefox, 1 is for preventing snap Firefox from coming back, respectively:
- /etc/apt/preferences.d/mozilla-firefox
Package: *
Pin: release o=LP-PPA-mozillateam
Pin-Priority: 1001
Package: firefox
Pin: version 1:1snap1-0ubuntu2
Pin-Priority: -1
- /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/51unattended-upgrades-firefox
Unattended-Upgrade::Allowed-Origins:: "LP-PPA-mozillateam:${distro_codename}";
After that, I uninstalled snapd, which Lubuntu prompted me to reinstall Firefox as apt instead. Just accept it.
sudo apt autoremove snapd --purge
Repeat the step to back up Firefox profile, this time is for recreating the profile. I created a new profile, opened its directory, pasted the backup profile there. And that's it.