Why are there multiple gnome-3 snaps?

Question

Listing snaps shows several gnome versions (3.28, 3.34, 3.38). Why is that? Is it ok to remove older snaps and just keep the latest version?

Sample output from snap list:

Name                  Version                     Rev    Tracking         Publisher   Notes
gnome-3-28-1804       3.28.0-19-g98f9e67.98f9e67  161    latest/stable    canonical✓  -
gnome-3-34-1804       0+git.3556cb3               77     latest/stable    canonical✓  -
gnome-3-38-2004       0+git.1f9014a               99     latest/stable    canonical✓  -

I closed my question as a duplicate of that one. Thanks @BeastOfCaerbannog! — Capi Etheriel, May 04 '22 at 18:37

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered May 04 '22 at 06:30

4

Snap applications use gnome backends as dependencies, and individual software may use different versions of gnome as a backend.

Therefore, it is not advisable to remove older gnome runtimes (as they will remove all the snapped applications which require those runtime).

If you want to save space on your disk, and can do with apt apps, you can remove snaps completely.

answered May 04 '22 at 06:30

Archisman Panigrahi

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1

Snaps aren't supposed to have dependencies though. What's going on? – Melab Feb 26 '23 at 23:21
2

Snaps do have shared dependencies for GNOME or KDE runtimes and Ubuntu backend. Otherwise each snap would take several gigabytes in the hard drive. – Archisman Panigrahi Feb 26 '23 at 23:47

Why are there multiple gnome-3 snaps?

1 Answers1