Ubuntu – Are the close buttons broken on snap apps

19.10gnomesnap

All snap apps seem to have broken close buttons. This can be seen for the Gnome System Monitor and Gnome Calculator. Apps installed via apt look good (Gedit and Gnome Terminal). Is this a known problem for Ubuntu 19.10?

echo $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP

sadf

gsettings list-recursively | egrep "gtk-theme|icon-theme"

org.gnome.desktop.interface icon-theme 'Adwaita'
org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme 'Adwaita'

Best Answer

TL;DR

It is a bug, I have reported it to launchpad to notify the developers about the problem.

As temporary solution you can switch icon theme using GNOME Tweaks → Appearance to one of the following icon sets:

Ubuntu-mono-dark
Ubuntu-mono-light
Yaru

to get normal close button appearance:

Analysis

Seems to be a real bug of Snap and theming of such applications on GNOME DE.

I got the same issue using fresh Ubuntu 19.10 installation on VirtualBox with GNOME FlashBack and Adwaita GTK and icon themes.

I have tested all themes (full list from ls /usr/share/themes/ -1) and all icons (full list of ls /usr/share/icons/ -1) which were listed in GNOME Tweaks → Appearance tab and can conclude that many icon sets are broken:

Adwaita
DMZ-Black
DMZ-White
hicolor
HighContrast
Humanity
Humanity-Dark
LoginIcons

The icon set from above list render garbage on the close button.

The list of correct icon sets is very short:

Ubuntu-mono-dark
Ubuntu-mono-light
Yaru

You can test themes and icon sets on your machine with script below:

#!/bin/bash

DISPLAY=:0

for t in $(ls -1 /usr/share/themes/)
do 
    for i in $(ls -1 /usr/share/icons/)
    do

        echo -e "\nTheme: $t, Icons: $i\n"

        gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme "$t"
        gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface icon-theme "$i"

        /snap/bin/gnome-calculator

        #read -r -s -p "Press <Enter> for next theme"   
    done
done

Or use GNOME Tweaks to switch themes and icon sets.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Migrating to Lubuntu 19.10

I removed ubuntu-desktop, and ran "apt autoremove". Computer still booting, lxqt environment is still working wonderfully.

Anybody else who tries it please note that some amount of duplicate software is nevertheless left behind, which can be uninstalled manually, including, but not limited to, Nautilus, file roller, Thunderbird, etc.

Ubuntu – Reason for snap apps (re)installation on 19.10 upgrade

Look at the manifest. It specifies all the snaps and snap-associated packages that would be installed.

gir1.2-snapd-1:amd64    1.49-0ubuntu1
gnome-software-plugin-snap      3.30.6-2ubuntu10
libsnapd-glib1:amd64    1.49-0ubuntu1
snapd   2.41+19.10.1
snap:core       stable  7917
snap:core18     stable  1223
snap:gnome-3-28-1804    stable/ubuntu-19.10     71
snap:gnome-calculator   stable/ubuntu-19.10     501
snap:gnome-characters   stable/ubuntu-19.10     317
snap:gnome-logs stable/ubuntu-19.10     81
snap:gtk-common-themes  stable/ubuntu-19.10     1353

The fact that you deleted them in 19.04 shouldn't have affected what's installed in 19.10 but that doesn't seem to be the case.

In 19.04, if you run sudo apt purge snapd, doing so would remove, in addition to snapd, the snaps presently installed on your system. Now, if you run sudo do-release-upgrade, neither snapd nor any snaps are installed. Two users, here, and here, have verified this. I also checked, in a VM, that the upgrade from 19.04 to 19.10 didn't reinstall snaps or snapd, if sudo apt purge snapd was run before sudo apt purge snapd.

Whether this situation will persist if users eventually upgrade from 19.10 to 20.04 is unclear.

However, there's a comment over at discourse.ubuntu.com worth reading. Quoting from there:

This just sounds like a feature request in the upgrade tool. Essentially if the user has already removed a snap, and installed the deb of the application, then an upgrade happens they get a thing back that they removed.

However, I’m not sure the upgrade tools have the intelligence to know that you previously removed the snap, and don’t want it back. Further, the point of the upgrade tool is to take you to the new release. Those snaps are part of the new release. I have a feeling if you removed firefox from 19.04 and upgraded to 19.10, you’d get firefox back. Which is a similar use case that you’re describing.

That comment indicates that snaps should be reinstalled which isn't what we, who purged snapd see.

(I would also point out that before upgrading to 19.10, I purged several fonts I don't need. They too were not re-installed.)

Re.

What makes these snap applications better?

Martin Wimpress is the new Desktop Director of Ubuntu. He talks about the rationale behind snaps in this video: Future of Ubuntu & Unpacking Snaps with Martin Wimpress | Part 2 | IG Talks ep. 4.