In recent long term support (LTS) releases of Ubuntu, Canonical has been adding more and more packages that are installed using snapd.

Snapd is a package manager that relies on static linking of dependencies, contrary to over two decades of Linux managing dependencies via dynamic linking, with Debian being the pioneer of this approach.

On desktop systems, packages like Firefox on Ubuntu are now forced to be in Snapd, rather than Debian. This is annoying, and counter intuitive for many reasons. Suffice it to say that those who have been using repositories in Debian format know that they get a robust system with minimal dependency issues, while also staying up to date at the same time.

Ubuntu Server LTS

So if you are like me and want to get rid of snap on your system, here is how to do it on Ubuntu Server LTS 22.04.

Which Packages are Installed via Snapd?

First, list the packages that are installed via snap, using this command:

snap list

The output will be similar to this:

Name    Version        Rev    Tracking       Publisher    Notes
core20  20230613       1950   latest/stable  canonical**  base
lxd     5.0.2-838e1b2  24322  5.0/stable/?   canonical**  -
snapd   2.59.5         19457  latest/stable  canonical**  snapd

Shutdown LXD

We need to remove all of those, but before we can remove lxd, we need to shut it down first:

sudo lxd shutdown

Remove Snapd Packages

Then remove the packages that are installed via snap:

sudo snap remove lxd 
sudo snap remove core20

Remove Snapd Itself

And finally remove snapd itself, first from snap, then from apt:

sudo snap remove snapd
sudo apt remove snapd

Xubuntu Desktop LTS (XFCE)

If you have an Xubuntu desktop system that runs XFCE, upgrading from 20.04 LTS to 22.04 LTS will force you to use snap for Firefox, which is very annoying.

When using the command do-release-upgrade, a warning popup dialog will be displayed like this.

Upgrade to the firefox snap
  
Starting in Ubuntu 22.04, all new releases of firefox are only available to 
Ubuntu users through the snap package.
This package update will transition your system over to the snap by installing 
it.                                  
It is recommended to close all open firefox windows before proceeding to the 
upgrade. 

Still, you can remove snap totally, using a similar set of commands:

snap list

And you will see output like this, showing all snap packages:

Name               Version          Rev    Tracking       Publisher    Notes
bare               1.0              5      latest/stable  canonical**  base
core22             20240408         1380   latest/stable  canonical**  base
firefox            126.0-2          4259   latest/stable  mozilla**    -
gnome-42-2204      0+git.510a601    176    latest/stable  canonical**  -
gtk-common-themes  0.1-81-g442e511  1535   latest/stable  canonical**  -
snapd              2.62             21465  latest/stable  canonical**  snapd

We now need to remove all the snap packages:

This initial command will take some times, and display various steps it is going through.

sudo snap remove firefox 

The following commands are fast.

sudo snap remove gtk-common-themes
sudo snap remove gnome-42-2204    
sudo snap remove core22       
sudo snap remove bare  
sudo snap remove snapd

Then we remove the snap daemon itself.

sudo apt purge snapd

The output will be something like this:

...
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  firefox* firefox-locale-en* snapd*
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]
...
Removing firefox-locale-en (1:1snap1-0ubuntu2) ...
Removing firefox (1:1snap1-0ubuntu2) ...
Removing snapd (2.62+22.04) ...
...
(Reading database ... 199659 files and directories currently installed.)
...
Discarding preserved snap namespaces
Final directory cleanup
Removing extra snap-confine apparmor rules
Removing snapd cache
Removing snapd state
Purging configuration files for firefox (1:1snap1-0ubuntu2) ...

You can now proceed with installing Firefox or Firefox ESR from the Ubuntu Mozilla Team's PPA, as per this article.

Conclusion

Whether you have a server, or a desktop running XFCE, you now have a snapd free server system ...