I am creating a new VM instance on the google cloud platform with ubuntu-os-cloud/ubuntu-2004-lts as my boot disk image. I observed that some snap packages are being installed by default including the google-cloud-sdk. Now I use apt for all the package management on the servers and don't necessarily have a problem with snap being present. I have found quite some articles on removing snapd from Ubuntu, but what I wanted to enquire is whether keeping the snap as it is and keep working with apt for my package management will pose any issues.
2 Answers
Yes if you are using snap installed applications removing snap will also remove them.
Snap I gather has become a secondary install method within Ubuntu which is why its been installed by default.
Snap is a lot more flexible than apt which is why its gained in popularity though its not going to replace apt without some major enhancements.
Ubuntu is designed to use snap packages as the delivery platform for software.
Apparently, on the Google Cloud Platform, Ubuntu has been configured to automatically install the google-cloud-sdk for you, and by effect to keep it up to date. It makes sense to use these facilities since they have been designed to help you and you get support for them.
If you really want to remove snapd and the snap packages, you can obviously do so as well. However, you would need to be able to install and maintain manually the google-cloud-sdk and other default packages.
