Not able to do quick calculation via GNOME Activities

[motang]

With Ubuntu 17.10 I was able to press the Super key and do simple math quickly (i.e. 40/5 would give me answer of 8), not so with 18.04 testing. Is this due to the fact that GNOME Calculator application is a snap app? Also Calculator is missing in Search options in GNOME Settings.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: gnome-calculator (not installed)
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-11.12-generic 4.15.5
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-11-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.8-0ubuntu10
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Sat Mar 3 16:29:35 2018
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-02-25 (6 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Alpha amd64 (20180225)
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-calculator
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Indeed, that's because the snap doesn't include the search provider, installing the gnome-calculator deb can be used as a workaround until that problem is resolved (it's currently being worked on)

[Martin (martid0311)]

This is still an issue in 19.10. Has there been any progress? Also, is there any explanation anywhere about why gnome-calculator is a snap and not a deb? I have to imagine fixing both this issue and the launch time issue (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-calculator/+bug/1797734) are hard to fix and thus won't be fixed soon, and both would be solved if gnome-calculator wasn't a snap.

I see quick access to a calculator as a vital feature in modern operating systems (there's a reason why Windows, iOS, macOS, upstream GNOME, etc. has it built in to their search). It's a shame that it has been broken in Ubuntu for over one and a half years for such a seemingly trivial reason.

[Dimitri Papadopoulos (dimitri-papadopoulos)]

Please note that gnome-calculator is (also?) available as a deb package on Ubuntu 20.04.
Can't recall whether the **default** is deb or snap though.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The default format is deb