Overview
Snaps are a distro independent method for packaging and distributing Linux software.
Using software distributed by Snap has a couple of distinct advantages:
- Software that is not compatible with current system libraries will still work when packaged as a Snap
- Snaps are automatically updated
There are some other considerations to be aware of:
- Snaps do not always integrate with system themes
- Snaps may need to install shared run-times which consume disk space
Installing Support for Snaps
To use Snaps you to install and configure the Snap Daemon. It is available in the Manjaro repos as snapd and can be installed with your favorite package manager or using the command
pamac install snapd
Once installed, you need to enable snapd using the command:
sudo systemctl enable --now snapd.socket
If you also want support for classic snaps you can use the command:
ln -s /var/lib/snapd/snap /snap
Using Snaps
Managing Snaps via Discover
One way to manage your Snaps is with the application Discover from the KDE project. You need a special version of Discover that can be found in the AUR to manage snaps. You can install the package discover-snap with your favorite package manager or the command:
pamac build discover-snap
Once installed you can run Discover and you will be able to browse and install Snaps with a familiar store interface.
Managing Snaps via Gnome Software
One way to manage your Snaps is with the application Gnome Software from the Gnome project. You need a special version of Gnome Software that can be found in the AUR to manage snaps. You can install the package gnome-software-snap with your favorite package manager or the command:
pamac build gnome-software-snap
Once installed you can run Software and you will be able to browse and install Snaps with a familiar store interface.
Managing Snaps via the CLI
Finding and Installing Snaps
You can use the command snap search to search for available Snaps. For example, if you wanted to install VLC here is what it might look like:
snap search vlc Name Version Publisher Notes Summary vlc 3.0.6 videolan✓ - The ultimate media player dav1d 0.2.0-1-ge29cb9a videolan✓ - AV1 decoder from VideoLAN mjpg-streamer 2.0 ogra - UVC webcam streaming tool audio-recorder 3.0.5+rev1432+pkg-7b07 brlin - A free audio-recorder for Linux
From this output we can see that VLC and some related applications are avialable. To install VLC, we would use the command
snap install vlc
This will install the application as well as any required run-times. Once the application is installed you should be able to run it from your menu as you would with any application.
Displaying Detailed Snap Information
You can get more details about a specific Snap using the command snap info. For example:
snap info vlc name: vlc summary: The ultimate media player publisher: VideoLAN✓ contact: https://www.videolan.org/support/ license: GPL-2.0+ description: | VLC is the VideoLAN project's media player. Completely open source and privacy-friendly, it plays every multimedia file and streams. It notably plays MKV, MP4, MPEG, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, MOV, WMV, QuickTime, WebM, FLAC, MP3, Ogg/Vorbis files, BluRays, DVDs, VCDs, podcasts, and multimedia streams from various network sources. It supports subtitles, closed captions and is translated in numerous languages. snap-id: RT9mcUhVsRYrDLG8qnvGiy26NKvv6Qkd channels: stable: 3.0.6 2019-01-10 (770) 212MB - candidate: 3.0.6 2019-01-10 (770) 212MB - beta: 3.0.6-341-g18d7d08 2019-05-24 (1020) 212MB - edge: 4.0.0-dev-8011-gfdbf7317e0 2019-05-24 (1019) 335MB -
Getting a list of installed Snaps
To show a list of all the Snaps and run-times that are currently installed you can use the command:
snap list
Removing Snaps
You can remove Snaps with the command snap remove. For example:
snap remove vlc