[snap] Ubuntu 18.04 LTS includes gnome-calculator as a snap

[Ivan]

Ubuntu 18.04 includes the calculator as a snap.

The standard installation of snap, with no custom snap apps installed other than what Ubuntu installs by default, takes a whooping 1.6GB of hard disk. Calc takes forever to start in a modern machine compared to the normal calc installed with APT, creates snap files in the user's home dir (with name $HOME/snap). This is ridiculous.

Snap is immature, there's no sysadmin tool support, and it's not ready to make it the default for standard Ubuntu LTS.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1788220/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

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[Ken VanDine (ken-vandine)]

This was caused by a fontconfig cache miss, which was caused by a difference in the fontconfig cache version between what's bundled in the snap vs the host cache on 18.04. This has been fixed with https://github.com/ubuntu/snapcraft-desktop-helpers/pull/144

[Ivan (ivanperez-nfm)]

@paulw2u I disagree with this being a gnome-calculator problem. This is a much more general problem that has to do also with the installation size.

I believe that bugs like this, and like [1], indicate that snap is not yet ready to be included by default, and especially not for basic desktop applications like calc.

I would like the status of this bug to be reset to affect Ubuntu (or perhaps ubuntu-desktop if that's the one that should depend on gnome-calculator), and the inclusion of snap or potential removal from the default installation (meaning as a direct or indirect dependency of ubuntu-desktop) to be discussed.

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snapd/+bug/1575053