/snap taking up a lot of space

[GreyGeek]

Getting rid of snap improved the speed and stability of my system. My cold boot to working Plasma desktop is 10-15 seconds and the only red lines in my systemlogs are two, one for failing to activate wpa signal strength monitoring and a DBus bluez error. Both occurred during boot two hours ago and neither are important.

[CanyonRoss]

20GB is plenty unless you are also using that partition for /home.

If you're low on drive space but good on memory, you can also mount tmpfs in RAM which prevents it from filling up.

Also, you likely have a swap file which is probably too large unless you hibernate. Like if you have 8GB RAM your swapfile might also be 8GB. You could make it 1GB instead and be fine, as long as you're not suspending/hibernating

Good to hear, no it's just my root partition, /home is another partition

[oshunluvr]

20GB is plenty unless you are also using that partition for /home.

If you're low on drive space but good on memory, you can also mount tmpfs in RAM which prevents it from filling up.

Also, you likely have a swap file which is probably too large unless you hibernate. Like if you have 8GB RAM your swapfile might also be 8GB. You could make it 1GB instead and be fine, as long as you're not suspending/hibernating

[CanyonRoss]

Haha! Thanks gents, I'll try this tonight when I'm back home.

The reason I want to clear it is because I've had it a few times where my root partition gets too full and stops me from being able to log in, and snap has been the culprit so I want to keep this to a minimum.

After I remove Firefox is there anything else worthwhile doing? I think root will have 20gb free afterwards which should be plenty left.

[Schwarzer Kater]

… this was unintentional.

[oshunluvr]

DANG IT! You beat me...AGAIN!

[oshunluvr]

Well I'm going to post it before SK dies...

https://www.kubuntuforums.net/forum/...et-rid-of-snap

[Schwarzer Kater]

You could install a Firefox binary instead of the Firefox Snap too I you would prefer to do so:
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/forum/...firefox-binary

… and afterwards either remove the Snap stuff (and keep the snapd functionality for the future) or purge and block it entirely:
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/forum/...et-rid-of-snap

[CanyonRoss]

I used the command

sudo snap remove brave

which has removed it. However, obviously there is still some unnecessary stuff in that directory. I'm now left with this:

Name               Version          Rev    Tracking         Publisher   Notes
bare               1.0              5      latest/stable    canonical✓  base
core18             20230320         2721   latest/stable    canonical✓  base
core20             20230308         1852   latest/stable    canonical✓  base
core22             20230316         583    latest/stable    canonical✓  base
firefox            111.0.1-2        2487   latest/stable/…  mozilla✓    -
gnome-3-38-2004    0+git.6f39565    119    latest/stable/…  canonical✓  -
gnome-42-2204      0+git.09673a5    65     latest/stable    canonical✓  -
gtk-common-themes  0.1-81-g442e511  1535   latest/stable/…  canonical✓  -
snapd              2.58.3           18596  latest/stable    canonical✓  snapd

​

Is there anything else I can do? Why are there multiple "core" names? Should I install another Firefox like I have with Brave? If so - how? I use Firefox because it has a plugin that doesn't work with Brave, but I don't use it often.

Thanks.

[CanyonRoss]

How do I get rid of the unnecessary stuff?

I don't use Gnome either, I use KDE.

Thanks once again.

[arsivci]

Hi, sorry for the delay in replying, yesterday was a manic day. Here's is the result of "snap list"

Name Version Rev Tracking Publisher Notes
bare 1.0 5 latest/stable canonical✓ base
brave 1.49.132 220 latest/stable brave -
core18 20230320 2721 latest/stable canonical✓ base
core20 20230308 1852 latest/stable canonical✓ base
core22 20230316 583 latest/stable canonical✓ base
firefox 111.0.1-2 2487 latest/stable/… mozilla✓ -
gnome-3-38-2004 0+git.6f39565 119 latest/stable/… canonical✓ -
gnome-42-2204 0+git.09673a5 65 latest/stable canonical✓ -
gtk-common-themes 0.1-81-g442e511 1535 latest/stable/… canonical✓ -
snapd 2.58.3 18596 latest/stable canonical✓ snapd

​

As SK said above, if you remove Brave you would only need 'core 20' and 'gnome-3-38' (FF depends on them). Still, I do not think Brave as a snap depends on both core 18 and 22 plus gnome 42; you probably installed and removed something else along the way.

Compare it to mine:

ars@triton:~$ snap list
Name Version Rev Tracking Publisher Notes
bare 1.0 5 latest/stable canonical✓ base
core20 20230308 1852 latest/stable canonical✓ base
firefox 111.0.1-2 2487 latest/stable mozilla✓ -
gnome-3-38-2004 0+git.6f39565 119 latest/stable canonical✓ -
gtk-common-themes 0.1-81-g442e511 1535 latest/stable canonical✓ -
snapd 2.58.3 18596 latest/stable canonical✓ snapd

[CanyonRoss]

Brilliant, thanks. I have just installed Brave via the command line as per the link you kindly posted. How do I remove the "snap" version and clear the snap directory to free up some space?

Thanks again

[Schwarzer Kater]

So now we can see that you (only) have two programs installed as Snaps: Firefox and Brave.

Especially for Brave (as your main browser) I would prefer to install it like recommended on their own website:
https://brave.com/linux/#release-channel-installation
"You can find Brave in the Snapcraft Store, but while it is maintained by Brave Software, it is not yet working as well as our official packages.
We currently recommend that users who are able to use our official package repositories do so instead of using the Snap."

[CanyonRoss]

Hi, sorry for the delay in replying, yesterday was a manic day. Here's is the result of "snap list"

Name               Version          Rev    Tracking         Publisher   Notes
bare               1.0              5      latest/stable    canonical✓  base
brave              1.49.132         220    latest/stable    brave       -
core18             20230320         2721   latest/stable    canonical✓  base
core20             20230308         1852   latest/stable    canonical✓  base
core22             20230316         583    latest/stable    canonical✓  base
firefox            111.0.1-2        2487   latest/stable/…  mozilla✓    -
gnome-3-38-2004    0+git.6f39565    119    latest/stable/…  canonical✓  -
gnome-42-2204      0+git.09673a5    65     latest/stable    canonical✓  -
gtk-common-themes  0.1-81-g442e511  1535   latest/stable/…  canonical✓  -
snapd              2.58.3           18596  latest/stable    canonical✓  snapd

​

[CanyonRoss]

What does snap list in Konsole say to be sure of the Snaps that are installed?

Thanks, I'll try this later tonight when I'm back home and get back to you.