Discussing [HowTo] Get rid of Snap in Zorin

Is it because PPA can be behind compared with developer's version? I just remembered that I had to compile phpMyAdmin from source since Ubuntu PPA is several years behind.

will flatpak take more resources to work than snap?

No, it does not. The way Snap works, and the way flatpak partially works, is that they promise to resolve dependency problems by including all packages it needs to run in the same manner that Windows installers do. This adds a lot of Bloat, however.
The main cause of missing dependency problems is in users trying to install OutDated Apps.

If I remove snap now, can I install it whenever I want in the future?

noice

I was very happy to notice this "show the source" function in Zorin Software. I had some nasty surprises in past when I was using Ubuntu.

I must also add that Mint Linux does not include Snap as default. I also know that MXLinux does not have Snap either since it does not use systemd.

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For those that think I am harsh on Snapd... I am a total Sweetheart compared to what the Linux Mint developers have to say about it. :wink: It is one of several reasons that the Mint Team will always have my support and encouragement.

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After I have found out how Snap works, I fully understand the reason for Windows to eat up 60 GB easily in fresh installation while I could install Linux under 10 GB. File redundancy is the keyword here :exclamation:

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I saw you and others talking about Mint got bogged-down (unstable? I am not very clear about its meaning, I am not a native speaker) after some time of usage. I experienced three major crashes in Mint after about a half year of use - the main reason I came back to Zorin.

Do you have any idea why it is so?.... Call me chicken, but I do not have the gut to pose this question at Mint forum :yum:

Well...

Many people have asked about this on the Mint Forums and generally (I am just being brutally honest) - it does not go very far. I do not believe that this is due to any slight of hand. Rather, that the users on the forum are unwilling to ascribe that all users that complain of it have the same cause.

I do not know what is causing it, either. I do know that the issue is Not Present on Zorin OS with Cinnamon, but is present on Linux Mint with Cinnamon. Two main differences between Zorin OS and Linux Mint are that:

  1. ) Zorin backports a higher version of gnome shell and Mint does not and

  2. ) Zorin OS uses HWE kernel by default; handles graphics slightly differently.

As Cinnamon runs very well on Zorin OS Lite, I am geared toward looking at the Graphics differences.

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In my case, it was Mint XFCE which became unstable.

So the problem is definitely not a desktop! My husband has been using MXLinux with XFCE without any issue.

Thanks for your observation and description of the atmosphere in the Mint Forum. I started to understand the situation more clearly now.

Unless Mint people are ready to address this stability issue, there is nothing I can do. I think we will stick to Zorin and MXLinux and be happy :slightly_smiling_face:

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Many of the folks on the Mint forums are great. Very Top Notch.
I think that many users do not experience sluggishness, even if it common enough that some of us notice it. That makes it very tough to try to suss out the cause. And I was unaware that XFCE also bogs down on Mint. This is new information to me and a bit of a game-changer... Though it does suggest that the problem is solely in something about the Mint side. Which is interesting.
I began my journey into Linux on Zorin OS, so I have only ever Tried Mint Out during distro-hopping. I never tried Mint XFCE very much, simply because Zorin comes with XFCE.

I also install Cinnamon from the Embrosyn repository.
That said, I installed it from the Main Server for Zorin OS 16 since the Embrosyn repo does not yet have a Focal file. And I have not, at any time, slowed down on Zorin in the least.

I really think that Mint is a great team. I fully support their strong FOSS Ideology and these days - Wen Need That. But I also admit plainly that Zorin OS, in my experience, has a strong tendency to be far more stable, far faster in performance and quicker with solid updates. Sometimes, on Zorin, I get a bad update that breaks something - but a fix comes out quick.
Ultimately... another person might look over my Zorin OS installation and ask, "Why do you use Zorin at all?" I do not use the Zorin Extensions. I remove dockbarx, I do not use Zorin Appearance. I do not use the Zorin Icons or the Zorin themes. Looking at my system, you would not recognize it on the surface as being Zorin at all, except for the Zorin Logo in my terminal which I custom put in (with gratitude for the help from kcaps who taught me how).
I install Zorin, then the Work Begins of changing everything, tweaking everything, putting in my Own Preferred apps and settings. But the Underlying expertly assembled base of Zorin OS is what matters- delivering Solid Performance and solid updates.

But I also think your husband is as sharp - MXLinux is a very near thing to Zorin OS, with certain differences that I really appreciate. In communicating with the MXLinux Team often enough, I always felt well-informed and often even entertained. The MX team is a great team that keeps a lot of spirit in Linux. I strongly prefer a non-systemd OS and I tolerate it on Zorin OS. I have ways of mitigating it... (It's part of why I fumble on helping users with sound Issues). I appreciate the teams bold decision to include systemd-shim, allowing user choice with a simple grub parameter, though they caught some unfair flak for it.
I do wish the ZorinGroup was as open with documentation as both the above mentioned teams as that would make Zorin OS a far stronger Distro.

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Thanks for your rundown on Mint and MXLinux.
I read it with a great interest since those are the 2 working horses :racehorse: :racehorse: in our household.

That is exactly what I need.
When I am pressed by the time, the last thing I want is a system crash :scream:

I think his use case is rather special.
He is a professional musician and he needs to write music scores using Lilypond - a derivative of LaTeX. A great software with one major shortcoming. It can only use a single thread of CPU for score compiling.

My husband used to use Ubuntu Mate but decided to switch because of a display bug he could not live with. So one day, we sat together and tested all Debian based distros we could put our hands on. We took a large orchestra score and measured the time required for compiling it in Lilypond. A very unusual benchmark test :wink:

The fastest ones were those distros ran on RAM - such as Tails and Puppy Linux. But they are not very practical for day-to-day use. Next came AntiX and MXLinux. He took MXLinux because he preferred its desktop design.

I agree with you. I hope the planned subdomain for Wiki style documentation will fill this gap.

Well, the confession time.
Finally the time came where I had to give in and install SNAP app :frowning:

As far as I know, B1 Free Archiver is the only archiver that can handle CJK fonts without garbling them.

I looked up this app in Software but all I could see were different flavours of SNAP such as stable, beta, testing, etc.

Unfortunately, the deb installer only supports up to Ubuntu 12.04. It is impossible to install in Zorin 16 due to an unmet dependency for libqt4-dbus (>=4:4.7.4).

Apparently, libqt4-core and libqt4-gui packages don't exist any more in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and newer.

I looked at the procedure for installing those packages in the above page and decided not to bother. Even I took all the trouble to install this outdated libqt4 library, it will be only used by B1 Free Archiver and nothing else.

Now I can see some use cases for SNAP.
At any rate, I think this app is small enough to be SNAP (Deb file 12 MB vs SNAP 120 MB).

Hi, seems like ok thread for my question xD
How to install third party apps ( if it is not in the store ) ?
Snap is no go ( will remove it also), but what about flatpak ?

I think that safest way to install app is via :
sudo apt install or I am wrong ?
Thanks

You could also use Synaptic if you want an interface.

How to install third party apps ( if it is not in the store ) ?

I usually check the app(s) homepage for .deb or PPA.

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I dont need interface :slight_smile: just wanted opinion about flatpak etc.. what is safe and what is not. Dont want to brake my system in next few days :stuck_out_tongue:

The problem with only get apps from the default repo, is that you may not get the latest version and there's a trend that app builder only put their apps on flat/snap and ofcause the source to build from scratch. A good idea is to learn to build from source if you don't want to use flat/snap.

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cool..maybe sometimes.. probably it is not easy xD

btw, congrats on promotion :slight_smile: Need to be careful what I am posting here ,hihi

Building from source is often as easy as

./configure

make

sudo make install

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