Linux Mint 20 blocks snap app installation by default. Here’s how you can enable it.
In the weekly update blog a while back, the Linux Mint team announced that it will be disabling the snap daemon aka ‘snapd’ which is the core of snap apps in its latest Linux Mint 20.
Now, if you are thinking that you can run sudo apt install snapd from the terminal and install the snap daemon, well, you are wrong. Linux Mint disabled that as well.
The primary reason for this step explained by the Linux Mint team in the blog:
“A year later, in the Ubuntu 20.04 package base, the Chromium package is indeed empty and acting, without your consent, as a backdoor by connecting your computer to the Ubuntu Store. Applications in this store cannot be patched, or pinned. You can’t audit them, hold them, modify them or even point snap to a different store. You’ve as much empowerment with this as if you were using proprietary software, i.e. none. This is in effect similar to a commercial proprietary solution, but with two major differences: It runs as root, and it installs itself without asking you.”
Mint team
However, there is still hope and little tweaking to enable snap in Linux Mint 20. Here’s how. As the steps includes deleting cetain files, so be careful.
How to Enable Snap Package
- You can delete the nosnap.pref file via command line or via file manager.
- This file contains the rules which are blocking the snapd installation.
- Open the terminal and delete the file by using the below command.
sudo rm /etc/apt/preferences.d/nosnap.pref
- Or, you can open the file manager via sudo, (nemo or thunar) and delete the above nosnap.pref file manually.
After this, you can install snap via sudo apt install snap and continue installing snap packages.
