ubuntu
How should Snaps with large amounts of saved data be handled when uninstalling?
Currently, if a user were to install the Steam Snap, install even a small game (like say, Sonic Mania - about 700mb) alongside its dependencies (Proton, Steam Linux runtime, etc), and later choose to remove the Snap, the system will spend several minutes saving a large snapshot before finally finishing the transaction. This problem is magnified if the user had downloaded a game several gigabytes--or even hundreds of gigabytes--in size.
This is snapd working as it was designed: taking a snapshot before removing the application. But for the use case of something like Steam, I would argue this is less than ideal.
The Steam Snap wiki currently recommends using a command to bypass snapshotting when uninstalling Steam, but many users would never think to check this wiki, and requiring they enter a command to properly uninstall a graphical app is not great UX in my opinion.
Thus, perhaps the App Center should have some function to remedy this behavior? Maybe it could at the very least give the user a choice on whether they want to keep their data while uninstalling the app or not, similar to what GNOME Software does with Flatpaks? (I still wouldn't consider this great for newbies, but it is something)
I will fully admit that I'm not at all sure how this problem should be solved, but I do think it is at least worth giving a go, because from my perspective it is a significant usability bug.
This will be an issue for classic snaps, because unlike strict snaps, they are allowed to have config file outside the snap folder. I think these should also be enforced for classic snaps. As those snaps currently works like debs, wrapped in snap.
