I often hear things like this, but I never encounter them myself.

I've run every single version of Ubuntu ever released. Work machines stay on LTSes, testbeds run interim versions.

After the 22.04 release, I carefully de-snapped my work laptop, using `deb-get` to install native packages of everything. Worked a treat, took less disk space, things started a tiny bit faster.

Then I enabled Ubuntu Pro and it force-reinstalled snapd. It's fair enough to have it as a dependency: it's a standard component. I was very annoyed, though.

But when I upgraded to 24.04, a lot of things broke. I had to spend ages re-enabling repositories, getting new keys, changing version strings in stuff under `/etc/apt/sources.list.d` and so on. It's a PITA.

So I have performed a volte face. I removed all my `deb-get` packages, and reinstalled the snap versions. All my comms and messaging apps, music and media players, and so on.

It's much easier. No extra repos. I experimentally took one laptop from 24.04 to 24.10 to 25.04 to 25.10 and yesterday to 26.04. All my apps stay in place. Nothing broke. No custom repos. No changes needed to any config file. It just works.

I've been using Linux for 30 years, starting on Slackware and moving to Red Hat and Caldera and SUSE via lots of others. But I'm old and grumpy and I want stuff to work without fiddling. I want low maintenance. Snap is low maintenance. My messaging apps can download stuff into my Downloads folder, open attachments from Documents, and so on.

I run native packages of my own browsers (Waterfox and Chrome) and AppImages of Panwriter and Logseq, and I have none of these difficulties.

Life is easier if you don't fight the OS and the vendor.

And Ubuntu is still easier and less hassle than Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Arch, or any of the other big names.