Why are two versions of software with identical names installed on Ubuntu 18.04, and can I remove one of them?
Replacing some GNOME apps with Snaps is developers' decision to support modern glossy non-geek GNOME "functionality".
How to remove such snaps?
Search them by snap list
:
$ snap list
Name Version Rev Tracking Developer Notes
core 16-2.33 4830 stable canonical core
gnome-3-26-1604 3.26.0 64 stable/… canonical -
gnome-calculator 3.28.1 178 stable/… canonical -
gnome-characters 3.28.2 101 stable/… canonical -
gnome-logs 3.28.2 37 stable/… canonical -
gnome-system-monitor 3.26.0 45 stable/… canonical -
and then remove them with for example
snap remove gnome-system-monitor
And then install regular package with for example
sudo apt install gnome-system-monitor
Some deb-packages could be installed into the system as dependencies of other packages . For example gnome-system-monitor
is a dependency of the following packages:
$ apt-cache rdepends gnome-system-monitor
gnome-system-monitor
Reverse Depends:
gnome-core
vanilla-gnome-desktop
ubuntu-unity-desktop
ubuntu-budgie-desktop
gnome-applets
|compiz-gnome
cinnamon-desktop-environment
$ aptitude why gnome-system-monitor
i xinit Recommends gnome-terminal | xterm | x-session-manager | x-windo
w-manager | x-terminal-emulator
p compiz Provides x-window-manager
p compiz Depends compiz-gnome
p compiz-gnome Recommends gnome-system-monitor | mate-system-monitor
see corresponding man-pages for the syntax of used commands (man apt-cache
and man aptitude
).
I feel the responses have missed a crucial point. Snap packages have revisions. If you do
snap list --all
you will likely see some snaps listed more than once. If you look at the revision number, you will see that they have different revision numbers. You will also notice that in the notes field, the snap with the lowest revision number is flagged as 'disabled'.
I'm no snap expert, but my guess is that this is part of the built in support for rollback of changes. Basically, when snap installs a new revision of a snap package, it iwll disable the previous version, but leave it installed and install the new version, making it active. Should the user then run into problems with the new revision, you can just disable the new version and re-enable the previous version.
This has nothing to do with having an application installed as both a debian package and a snap. While this can occur, it has no relevance to the number of snap packages installed for an application.