I don't use, but see the advantages of such packaging. But auto-updating software (FOSS or blob) brings-in it's own barrel of concerns. In the event of something 'critical', a -message- alerting the user ... who can then research and decide ... is far preferable.
As a former Gentoo user, this whole Snap concept is a huge deal-breaker. I wouldn't consider Ubuntu for anything other than some thin-client/smart terminal/kiosk usage, and I'd still be wary of what gets pushed and what sort of potential holes might get opened.
> but you'll miss out on potentially critical components that are only available via snaps
REALLY shitty move.
Until the snap maintainer of Qt decides to upgrade you out of version compliance with your compositor and... Well, hope your kiosk doesn't do anything critical...
I understand the argument with browsers, but that does not justify the default on ubuntu-server. LXD being Snap-only really feels like force-feeding Snap.
In general, you can opt of snaps entirely and `apt-get remove snapd`, but you'll miss out on potentially critical components that are only available via snaps.