Note that the snap can coexist with the ubuntu packages. If you wish to remove the ubuntu packages to use solely the snap, you can do:
sudo apt remove “chromium-*”
Requested Setups
That version of the snap is expected to work on Ubuntu 16.04, 17.04 and 17.10, and more generally on any linux distribution that supports snaps.
Specific Tests
I’m interested in your feedback using the snap for your normal browsing activities and workflows.
Please report any issues you encounter in this thread. Thanks!
alan@hal:~$ snap refresh chromium --candidate
error: cannot perform the following tasks:
- Make current revision for snap "chromium" unavailable (cannot write "/snap/chromium/49/meta/gui/chromium.desktop": invalid exec command: "chromium-browser")
- Make snap "chromium" (64) available to the system (cannot write "/snap/chromium/64/meta/gui/chromium.desktop": invalid exec command: "chromium-browser")
I’m tracking snapd from core in beta channel
$ snap version
snap 2.29~rc1
snapd 2.29~rc1
series 16
ubuntu 16.04
kernel 4.10.0-37-generic
No this isn’t expected.
Looking into it, the Exec command for the main desktop entry is correct (“chromium”), but the Exec commands for desktop actions (the contextual actions that appear when right-clicking on the chromium icon in the dock) point to “chromium-browser”, which doesn’t exist in the snap. But this has always been the case. This appears to be a change in snapd which has become stricter. @mvo can you comment on that change? I guess failing to upgrade a snap that was previously successfully installed is not expected?
alan@hal:~$ snap remove chromium
chromium removed
alan@hal:~$ snap info chromium
name: chromium
summary: Chromium web browser, open-source version of Chrome
publisher: canonical
contact: olivier.tilloy@canonical.com
description: |
An open-source browser project that aims to build a safer, faster, and more
stable way for all Internet users to experience the web.
snap-id: XKEcBqPM06H1Z7zGOdG5fbICuf8NWK5R
channels:
stable: 61.0.3163.100 (49) 242MB -
candidate: 62.0.3202.62 (71) 246MB -
beta: 62.0.3202.29 (46) 241MB -
edge: ↑
alan@hal:~$ snap install chromium
error: cannot perform the following tasks:
- Make snap "chromium" (49) available to the system (cannot write "/snap/chromium/49/meta/gui/chromium.desktop": invalid exec command: "chromium-browser")
That looks wrong, snapd shouldn’t prevent uninstalling (or upgrading from) a version that has an ill-formed desktop file if it didn’t complain when it was originally installed (revision 49 is the current stable).
I just checked, with snapd from stable chromium installs fine. Only with the snapd from beta the - Make snap "chromium" (49) available to the system (cannot write "/snap/chromium/49/meta/gui/chromium.desktop": invalid exec command: "chromium-browser") error is returned.
@popey helped me test that snap on nvidia hardware, and with the proprietary driver rendering now works, albeit not hardware-accelerated. That’s an improvement over previous versions of the snap where rendering didn’t even work.
As I don’t have access to nvidia hardware myself, I’d be interested in hearing from people who can test the snap on nvidia configurations (both proprietary driver and nouveau). Feedback highly appreciated!
Well it seems to work for some (@popey had some success with the chromium snap and nvidia proprietary drivers), so more investigation is needed to understand why it’s not working for you (thanks for your feedback so far by the way, it is much appreciated!).
Can you detail which graphics card you have, which version of the proprietary driver is installed, and do other snaps that make use of the GPU work (e.g. the 0AD snap (shameless plug))?
