How do we disable the snap stuff

[Chris Green]

On Sat, Jul 24, 2021 at 06:13:35PM +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
> Upon booting one of my systems; UbuntuMATE 21.04, it immediately
> starting downloading megabytes of stuff.
> 
> Upon checking, it was automatically downloading unknown upgrade stuff.
> 
> The settings in the "Software and Updates" application had been
> changed by the software - against my will - so that, for "When there
> are security updates", instead of the option "Display immediately",
> the software had changed the setting to "Download and install
> immediately". So, I immediately severed the Internet connection,
> changed the setting back to what it should have been, according to my
> choices, closed the application, to save the setting change, and,
> restored the Internet connection.
> 
> Upon restoring the Internet connection, the massive downloading
> resumed, so, I opened the "Software and Updates" application again,
> and, noticed that it has a line of text "Snap packages are checked
> automatically and installed  automatically."
> 
> As this snap stuff can not be trusted to not make unauthorised
> changes, and, cannot be trusted to not sabotage the system operation
> (this unauthorised snap interference probably explains the error
> messages that I have been getting, about incomplete and partial
> upgrades and resultant systems instability across my systems), how do
> we disable this malicious snap thing?
> 
Uninstall the snapd package, that's what I have done.

-- 
Chris Green