Embarrassingly newbie question
 

I'm not really a newbie, but I have a really, really newbie question. I ran Ubuntu 12.04 for many years (yes, even one year beyond support), but I don't recall ever hearing the term "snap" when I installed 12.04. Times change. Recently I installed 2 versions of Linux of which Ubuntu 18.04 is one. Now I am hearing this term "snap" with no idea what it is.

What does "snap" mean and how are snaps useful?

embarrassingly newbie question. Yes.
You ought to tell us at least some context. Where did you read/hear it? Can you give us a link or a page or some sentences?
or just start here: https://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/developers or here: https://snapcraft.io/

I don't have any context or else I'd know what it is. I just see it mentioned occasionally and sometimes see it mentioned in the software center.

Thanks for the link ... now I know that it is a program packaged with all it's dependencies so that it can run across platforms.

It's been available since 16.04 so take a look at the site below or if that doesn't explain it to your satisfaction, google snap on Ubuntu.

https://www.howtogeek.com/252047/how...ntu-16.04-lts/

There have been a number of ways that linux users have considered installing programs for different distros more easily. Snap is one of them.

Thanks for the info and explanations everyone.

It's a Ubuntu invention to cause you to have unnecessary duplication of software across multiple packages.

Personally I can't see the point - but I think that about quite a lot of Ubuntu stuff.

A CentOS developer pointed out that there are security risks in using snap packages. Shuttleworth's response was that that was true, but it would be all right when you shifted to Wayland!

One argument for them is that it's easier to roll back if you get a bad snap update, but I can't really see that's the case. As a minor irritation, it means separate update commands for snap packages and deb/rpm packages.

Personally, I think it's just ill-advised copying of Windows. Apparently Ubuntu cooked up the idea in collaboration with Dell, which doesn't surprise me.