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I prevously removed snapd, however, the /snap directory is still there, and consumes a lot of space. How to remove it?

I tried sudo rm -rf /snap, but that says

rm: cannot remove '/snap/path/to/file': Read-only file system

for all files in the directory.

I really did not understand why I could not delete those files even as a superuser, despite snapd already being uninstalled.

Archisman Panigrahi
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1 Answers1

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I found it.

sudo apt autoremove --purge snapd

Note: autoremove is optional. It removes the dependencies which were explicitly required for snapd, and this will free up some space.

Archisman Panigrahi
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    autoremove is overkill there, it will remove all packages (not just those pulled by snapd) that were automatically installed to satisfy dependencies for other packages and are now no longer needed as dependencies (manpage). There might be other packages in the OP's system that were automatically installed, no longer needed but still in use. The answer should take care of just the original problem. – Eduardo Trápani Jun 23 '20 at 05:06
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    that were automatically installed to satisfy dependencies for other packages and are now no longer needed as dependencies --- autoremove only removes them only if those other packages are removed. If something is no longer needed, removing that won't break the system. Suppose C is dependency for both A and B. You have uninstalled B. autoremove won't remove C unless you manually remove A as well. – Archisman Panigrahi Jun 23 '20 at 05:08
  • Say you do: apt-get install lynx snapd. That will also pull lynx-common. Now, remove just lynx and your system will still have lynx-common, ready to be autoremoved because it is not a dependency anymore. Your command above, at this time, will purge snapd and remove lynx-common. That's quite a side effect for a one-liner meant to take care of just snapd. – Eduardo Trápani Jun 23 '20 at 05:26
  • Isn't snap required to run Gnome desktop environment on Ubuntu Desktop? – Artur Meinild Mar 11 '22 at 13:24
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    @ArturMeinild No, you can run Gnome without snap. – Archisman Panigrahi Mar 11 '22 at 17:54