Its stable by default, with an option to switch to testing or unstable.
I usually uninstall snap immediately after installing my distro. Most what I need exist on the repository or PPAs - like vivaldi! - and I use some MS windows staff through wine, as well.
Maybe going for flatpak if necessary but not now I don't need anything to be installed not existing in repo.
I have not had any issues with snap apps. They seem to be working just as well as any other app I have on my UM
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Not Sparky MATE as I specified.
Here are the Sparky download pages:
Stable
Mate
Mate is only in rolling.
Sorry, i meant spirallinux.
That's okay. I tried Spiral Mate too, but it had some weird behaviors. If I used open parent location in a Caja search it would open audacity. It didn't seem ready to me for my main OS. That is when I tried Sparky Mate. I always had trouble with rolling releases until I had tried Parrot, and it had better explanations on how not to break the OS, so now I don't mind rolling releases.
Is it possible to create a script to remove the snapd if it exists on the very first reboot?
And is there a package app for the Application Store?
We could create a script to remove the snapd, its packages and then install the apps from a predetermined source... but it would need to run on the first boot to be useful to deployable...
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This is something I don't understand--we have the ability to choose our desktop settings, our themes, even install certain apps directly from the software boutique on boot--why can't we also determine to opt out of Snaps at the same time? Oh, I understand that this would remove software boutique too which is why it should offer the option only after people have selected from the welcome center apps they wish to install. But I don't understand why it can't be done. (Or why the boutique needs to be a snap either for that matter....)
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If you don't like snaps, you can switch to openSUSE or Fedora.
Or you could just make your own iso without snapd.
If you don't like snaps, you can switch to openSUSE or Fedora.
Ah yes, the 'if you don't like something go away' response. How I missed those. Not.
Snaps are a pox on humanity. They are inherently slow and given even Mark Shuttleworth is unable to get the developers to fix the most cosmetic aspect of their use, I have zero confidence that they will eventually be improved upon enough to make them worthwhile. So I'd like the thing retarding my system's performance removed from my system. I don't think that's an incredible thing to ask for.
If the Ubuntu-Mate developers can put a button in to change the desktop's looks on boot in the Welcome-Center they can also put an option in to remove the system of snaps.
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You can use Ubuntu and just uninstall Snap! 
And immediatly after it, install homebrew and flatpak! 
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I think flatpak is a good option for bigger programs - my mean of "bigger" (perhaps) is older ones or famous ones and/or etc... - like chrome, vivaldi, telegram and etc...
And Homebrew for smaller new programs, - like "helix" as an editor, "moar" as a pager and "broot" alternative to tree!
Yeah, i am using ubuntu right now.
I'm just telling him that there are options.
In fact, i even made a tutorial on how to remove firefox snap and install the tar instead.
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If you're talking about removing snaps, and ubuntu-mate-welcome is a snap, then it would break your system.
Snaps are not that slow unless you have less than 4gb ram anymore. Firefox launches in 2 seconds on 8gb ram.
I've completely removed all snaps on Ubuntu Mate 22.04.1 LTS (and on UM 20.04.x LTS before) and my system is NOT broken.
Some snaps such as gtk-common-themes and core18 are NOT part of the whole system but are used only for applications which are installed as snaps. So removing them and all snaps does not break the system.
UM Welcome and the Software Boutique are gone but I never really cared about them. I can still use Synaptic as my package manager. And yes I use another way to get Firefox installed.
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If you're talking about removing snaps, and ubuntu-mate-welcome is a snap, then it would break your system.
Realistically, outside of accessing it when doing a new install and grabbing things like the Steam client or installing Synaptic, how much do you really use Welcome Center after the third or fourth reboot? It can easily be removed at that point and very few people would miss it. It can perform its last action by removing itself when removing snaps from the system.
Snaps are not that slow unless you have less than 4gb ram anymore. Firefox launches in 2 seconds on 8gb ram.
Who said anything about application launch times? I'm talking about the impact on booting the system. Having snaps installed slows that down every boot up. Can also occasionally cause delays on shutting down too. These days that's mostly caused by systemd than anything else but I can definitely see the difference once I remove snaps from my system. There's a reason I called it the thing retarding my system's performance.
Oh and you can still feel that delay the first time when you launch that Firefox application. It's a bit less once you have started it once but still noticeable on a 16GB RAM system.
Fun fact! I was using the live environment to install Brunch to some other computer, and needed to launch the browser to read the instructions I'd saved in HTML by saving the page to the USB drive with the images. By default HTML files will open in LibreOffice because the system has no idea that the Snap version of Firefox even exists until you launch it. I ended up dragging and dropping the file into the open browser to be able to read it rather than playing with configuration files that were never going to be used again.... So yeah, snaps are a solution in search of a problem and don't actually integrate into a system. Is it any wonder that most of us want these slow ineffective and inefficient things gone on our otherwise very functional Ubuntu-Mate systems?
We have been testing flatpak, and it works in our environment.
We have tested adding flatpak support, just for fun. I think that method of deployment has merits. Keeping an older version of some apps is a good thing, since some upgrades are needed and they at times break a users environment.
We have tested, removing firefox and reinstalling it on deployment.
Users are free to add extensions to it that way. And that works for us.
We have kept snapd even if we have no use for it.
We do not want to move to another distro! We feel the environment is a natural bridge to the Windows OS. Training for new users is minimal.
I have been working on major UNIX and Windows networks since 1979. It has always been a balancing act between advances in technologies and user productivity.
Some programs written in the 90's are still in use in sandboxed environments.
Remember a large network in 1979 was 10 nodes. Now I have 8 nodes in my house!!
And a watch that is as powerful as the nodes 20 years ago!
Keep up the good work on Ubuntu-Mate! Tweeks like an option to have snapd or not and making the app store and welcome center native should be investigated.
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Hello guys, hope you're doing great. I have migrated to Flatpaks actually. There are only a handful of apps that are still not packaged in Flatpak such as scrcpy which I use from time to time, but the best point of moving towards the Flatpak direction for me was not having to re-add Snap application icons to Plank every time they would update. That is a mess.
Sometimes I didn't even remember an application existed because it got updated and disappeared from my sight (Plank Dock). But on the Flatpak side of things, that simply does not happen.
They are faster to open, faster to use, don't update automatically, you have to manually update them and AFAIK, they don't have a closed source backend so, couldn't recommend it enough. Give it a try 
(Specially if you are a Dock user like myself)
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That's great news, Doc. Glad you're sticking to MATE 
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Yet another reason for you to try Flatpak:
I am curious to see how the MATE team is going to react to this. Of course they're not removing the possibility to install Flatpaks, but not having its core installed by default will be another step we will have to take during the post-installation process.
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