This is a lengthy, bizarre and catastrophic bug report. It’s mainly about Ubuntu, with a necessary mention to Linux Mint in order to (probably) isolate the culprit.
I used to have EndeavourOS, but I formatted my disk partition and installed Ubuntu 24.04, recalling my good memories of that system. I also started using the Snap Store for the first time. Installing apps became very convenient through the graphical interface of the Store, but every time I would download Firefox, Celtx or any other snap app, the system would - at random - freeze. The screen would turn black. The computer had to be reboot. And when I tried to boot it, it asked for a mandatory file system check claiming “bad inodes” (I can’t remember it clearly). Otherwise, disk data couldn’t be accessed.
These file system check prompts would usually happen with Celtx, the screenwriting software, though it did occur with other applications downloaded from the Snap Store as well. Installing a Ubuntu application outside of the Snap system yielded no issues.
Disk I/O errors are usually the result of hardware fault, but keep reading.
Growing tired of constant instability, I/O errors reported in the terminal and regular crashing with the Snap Store, I installed Linux Mint and lifted their SnapD restrictions to download Celtx only, avoiding the Snap Store. SnapD Core and Celtx were enabled after just 30 minutes in this new installation. You see, after SnapD was running I updated the system via “sudo apt upgrade” and it throwed two or three fatal errors before stopping the process, or so you would think. After I rebooted, Linux Mint “changed its name” to “Ubuntu” and had no boot files (?) to load because they got deleted (?). The boot partition was somehow damaged because Mint wouldn’t boot anymore under any circumstances. The only lingering processes from Ubuntu 24.04 were the SnapD mechanism and the Celtx snap which ran with it, and it was enough to cause every possible damage.
My EFI partition had leftovers of EndeavourOS, Arch Linux and Ubuntu 24.04. I later deleted additional entries, after formatting my disk again.
Lastly, I booted into a USB flash drive with Mint and performed three system checks: SMART, badblocks and fsck. They returned zero errors. I even booted into Windows and ran SMART from there, which also said the HDD passed in every way. My disk was fine, probably, unless the tests couldn’t detect the cause. I wiped the previous Mint installation and reinstalled Linux Mint again, but kept the SnapD restriction employed by the system. I performed the same update as last time, and it got through with no difficulty.
Celtx was reinstalled from Wine and ran perfectly.
I’m new to Linux. I don’t have a clue as to what happened. Snap Celtx is a possible suspect, as well as the SnapD mechanism and Ubuntu’s Snap Store. I only had trouble with Linux Mint after allowing SnapD to be installed and running the Celtx snap with it. My HDD apparently has no damaged blocks, as the tests showed.
This bug report may as well be something entirely new. That’s why I had the trouble to create this account and share it with Ubuntu developers.