> The only 'con' is the pushing of Snap packages. It looks like deb files only can be installed via the terminal.

Another solution to this (aside from synaptic, command line, other clients) is to use Kubuntu (which has an apt based package manager called Discover, much improved in this release over prior versions). KDE still doesn't work great on tablets, but in all other respects it's a lot nicer than Gnome. Spend 30 minutes tweaking it to your preferences after install (apt install kubuntu-desktop) and you'll have a desktop that does exactly what you need it to. (You could also install KDE Neon, which packages latest stable KDE with a LTS Ubuntu core.)