Installing the daemon

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Snaps are app packages for desktop, cloud and IoT that are easy to install, secure, cross-platform and dependency-free.

The snap daemon, known as snapd, is the background service that manages and maintains your snaps. It needs to be running before a snap can be installed.

Fortunately, the snap daemon is pre-installed and running on many distributions by default, and it’s easy to install on most other distributions.

Snap pre-installed

The snap daemon (snapd) is pre-installed and ready to go on the following:
KDE Neon Manjaro
Solus Ubuntu 18.04 and above
Most Ubuntu flavours Zorin OS

Without snap

For distributions without the snap daemon pre-installed, use the links below for specific installation instructions:
AlmaLinux OS Arch Linux
CentOS Debian
elementary OS Fedora
GalliumOS Kali Linux
KDE Neon* Kubuntu
Linux Mint Lubuntu
Manjaro* openSUSE
Parrot Security OS Pop!_OS
Raspberry Pi OS Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Rocky Linux Solus
Ubuntu* Xubuntu
Zorin OS*

* While snapd is pre-installed on these systems, installation instructions can help if you’re using older versions, or want to re-install snap after removing it.

See Troubleshooting for help resolving installation issues.

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I’d like to suggest the following list:
Ubuntu, Linux Mint, KDE Neon, Debian, Zorin, Elementary, Fedora, Deepin, Manjaro, Arch, GalliumOS, Raspbian, Parrot OS, Solus

These are all distributions where snaps are being used at a reasonable scale.

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Thanks! I’ll update…

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Something which I think falls under this topic, but I’ve not seen discussed widely, is the requirement for certain kernel features to be enabled (regardless of distribution).

I know that trying to make an exhaustive list of those would be a fool’s errand, but here are a couple that I came across on a recent adventure with a Moxa device:

  • SquashFS support is required in order to mount snaps. This is not always provided out of the box, but can be installed as a module
  • The ptmx device is required (enabled by the CONFIG_DEVPTS_MULTIPLE_INSTANCES kernel option). This is thankfully almost always enabled by default - but if not, requires kernel recompilation.

Not sure what the best way is to capture points like these (and how much detail to go into), but figured I’d throw it out there.

On a somewhat related note, the (soon to be updated?) Debian page https://docs.snapcraft.io/core/install-debian states

Note: Raspbian is currently not supported due to missing features in the kernel shipped.

That’s not necessarily true; I’m currently running snaps on stock Raspbian (stretch), and others are too, with only minor side effects.

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Thanks, that’s a great point. I personally think the best way to capture it is in a page for distribution authors (“Bringing snap support to a distro”?) that walks through the kernel and other system requirements for snapd.

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The list is currently missing OpenSUSE instructions. There is a really easy process (single click is an option) on the OpenSUSE software site at https://software.opensuse.org/download.html?project=system%3Asnappy&package=snapd. Once installed, it needs sudo systemctl enable snapd and then sudo systemctl start snapd, and then you can use snaps .

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@degville I just released 2.36 for openSUSE, could you please create a section for it. Feel free to give it a try on either Leap 42.3 (old stable), Leap 15 (stable) or Tumbleweed (rolling stable).

EDIT: some quick instructions:

sudo zypper addrepo --refresh https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/system:/snappy/openSUSE_Tumbleweed snappy
sudo zypper refresh
sudo zypper install snapd
sudo systemctl enable --now snapd.socket snapd.service

You can replace openSUSE_Tumblweed with one of openSUSE_Leap_43.2 or openSUSE_Leap_15.0

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That’s great news, thanks for the update! I’ll give it a go and create the document.

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Thanks, I also added a post about the update: openSUSE updated to snapd 2.36

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I tested this on both Leap 15 and Tumbleweed, and it all seems to work well. Install doc is here: Installing snap on openSUSE

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Super nice, thank you!

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The Ubuntu 18.04 comment doesn’t read well because it’s no longer the latest Ubuntu even though it’s the latest LTS… also Solus also has snaps installed out-of-the-box (as far as we know), could we add that to that pre-installed comment?

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Thanks for the suggestions. I’ve updated the text - the Solus-specific page did mention snapd being pre-installed , but I think it’s also worth highlighting here.

And thanks for updating the Ubuntu page!

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Please add a section for generic Linux, i.e. how to build from source. This should/could also include the list of required kernel options.

Note: I plan to port snap to Exherbo, therefore that kind of documentation would have been useful.

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I noticed RedHat isn’t on this list, but @Wimpress tells me that RedHat is in fact supported. Can we get this in the docs here and on installation pages? My team is fumbling in the dark trying to get snaps working on that distro.

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Snap is totally borked on Deepin, It would be great if that were fixed pronto, but in the meanwhile it would be good to take Deepin off the list here.

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Thanks for letting us know. I just checked and found the same problem - I’ll remove it from the list for now and speak with the team about the issue.

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Hi,
Does anyone know if it’s possible to install on Amazon Linux 2 workspaces?
Thanks

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Thanks so much for letting us know! The link should be fixed now.

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Any info on how to install snapd on Slackware?