Canonical Reveals More Details About Ubuntu Core Desktop

Next April a new LTS Ubuntu arrives, and alongside it will be a whole new immutable desktop edition. At this year's Ubuntu conference in Riga, Latvia, Canonical revealed more details about its forthcoming immutable desktop distro. From a report: Core Desktop is not the next version of Ubuntu itself. Ordinary desktop and server Ubuntu aren't going anywhere, and the next release, numbered 24.04 and codenamed Noble Numbat as we mentioned last month, will be the default and come with all the usual editions and flavors. Nor is this a whole new product: it is a graphical desktop edition of the existing Ubuntu Core distro, as we examined on its release in June last year, a couple of months after 22.04. Ubuntu Core is Canonical's Internet of Things (IoT) distro, intended to be embedded on edge devices, such as digital signs and smart displays. It is an immutable distro, meaning that the root filesystem is read-only and there's no conventional package manager.

Rather than being a basis for customization, like a conventional Linux, the idea is that immutable distros are rolled out and updated more like a phone or tablet OS: there's a single fixed and heavily tested OS image, and it's deployed onto the devices out in the field without modification. Updates are monolithic: a whole fresh image is pushed out, and all the OS components are upgraded in a single operation to the same combination. That isn't unique. Most of the major Linux vendors have immutable offerings, and The Reg has looked at several over the years, including MicroOS, the basis of SUSE's next-gen enterprise OS ALP. As well as the well-known ChromeOS, another immutable desktop is the educational distro Endless OS.

[...] Canonical believes it has some unique new angles. Core Desktop is constructed as additional layers on top of the existing Ubuntu Core distro, and like Core, it's entirely built with a single packaging system: Ubuntu's Snap. While Snap remains controversial, it does have some compelling advantages over both SUSE and Red Hat's tooling. SUSE's transactional_update tool, while simpler than its rivals in implementation, requires a snapshot-capable filesystem, meaning that its immutable distros must use Btrfs. While it has many admirers, the number and the contents of the orange and red cells in the feature tables here in its own documentation reflect the FOSS desk's serious reservations about Btrfs.

Why not just run Windows ?

[ArchieBunker]

I mean if this is really what you want in a desktop OS then just use windows.

Re:

[ls671]

I have to admit that I now use Ubuntu for installs where Windows would seem suitable. Still on Slackware for my own desktop although.

Re:

[Brain-Fu]

Windows costs money, spies on you, advertises at you, uses dark patterns to prevent you from disabling some of this, and bricks old hardware that is still perfectly good. Linux solves all of those problems.

Of course, this "Ubuntu Core" is for internet-of-things devices, not desktops. That doesn't really change the above advantages, though.

Re:

[ArchieBunker]

So does Ubuntu.

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/20... [omgubuntu.co.uk]
https://linux.slashdot.org/sto... [slashdot.org]

Ubuntu doesn't do it anymore because they were called out but Linux is big business now. Don't think for a second they won't find ways to monetize users.

Re:Why not just run Windows ?

[Brain-Fu]

"So does Ubuntu" ... "Ubuntu doesn't do it anymore"

Your second statement makes your first statement false. And anyway, the comparison is in bad faith for the following reasons:

1. Ubuntu made data collection clear upfront, windows just does it without shining a spotlight on it.
2. Ubuntu gave an obvious and easy one-step way to opt out. Windows uses dark patterns so you have to hunt and hunt to find ways to opt out, you might not find them all, they add new ones and opt you in automatically over time, and you can never opt out of it all.
3. Ubuntu stopped when customers complain. Windows will never, ever stop.
4. Ubuntu's data gathering was, at its worst, minuscule compared to what Windows continues to flagrantly do.

The differences are material and staggering. You are arguing in bad faith.

Re:

[Locke2005]

Because Windows forces you to retrain everybody at a cost of $2000/seat every time they change the user interface and then force you to "upgrade" to a new version of Windows. The Ubuntu user interface is theoretically more consistent over time.

Re: Why not just run Windows ?

[Speare]

I bought a SteamDeck because I wanted to play some games that normally required a Microsoft-ridden PC to play. They use a very similar immutable approach on the SteamDeck, making apps more like game cartridges and maintenance as easy as choosing between public and preview update streams. For Grandma who keeps getting p0wnd by banner scams, an immutable Linux PC with a bog standard screenshare could also be a relief to the IT Support grandkids.

you want your digital signs to show an BSOD?

[Joe_Dragon]

you want your digital signs to show an BSOD?

Installing software on Linux is weird

[DarkRookie2]

There are Snaps. Which are slow, make unwanted folders in your home directory, and make troubleshooting even more of a pain in the dick. I lost a NextCloud install because I did it as a Snap. It slowly degraded to the point where it wasnt useable. There was a command to fix it, but fuck me if I could figure it out.
FlatPak are better, but still have problems. They are slow to start. Some of them can be massive for what little they do. Also a lot of them have issues seeing stuff not in home. Or hardware like

Re:

[ls671]

Try this command:
slackpkg upgrade-all

Re:

[posixively_true]

That's pretty funny but as a fellow slacker I must admit Slackware is the most "simple" - as in not having all the annoying features of most modern distros - linux distro. And I'm not even old!

Re:

[DarkRookie2]

1. I like having a selection of software. I don't recall having much in the way of the with Slackware.
2. Eww. Command line. What is this? The 1980s?

Re:

[ArchieBunker]

Whatever happened to compiling static binaries? Not like we're all hurting for space on 10 megabyte RL02 disk packs.

Re:

[KiloByte]

Static binaries mean every single bugfix (security or not) in a library requires recompiling the whole distro -- which costs not just buildd time (relatively cheap) but also requires every user to redownload every package.

Re:

[MIPSPro]

No, it would only require them to re-download packages which had affected libraries which got baked into static binaries. Now, if that library was something common, like libc, zlib, or QT it could be painful. However, it's an exaggeration to say "every package every time". What if the package was something niche? It might impact only a single package. I'm sorry, but the parent is correct, the "they are too big" argument isn't working for me anymore and most of the other anti-static arguments are mostly just

Just another step down to the bottom

[Uldis Segliņš]

I had enough with Snap. Now this sounds like the worst idea from them ever. Getting more and more Windows and Android alike, worst properties of those gets copied. Thanks to Canonical for what they did years ago, but I will never go back.

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

Snap sounds like a great idea. Maybe the implementation is off, but the basic concept is exactly what Linux needs.

Linux Torvalds was talking about this a few years ago at a Debian conference, in response to a question. He said one of the reasons why Linux on desktop wasn't happening was the difficulty of distributing apps. Every distro has its own package manager and needs apps building for it. There is no universal binary distribution like there is for Windows or MacOS, or for that matter Android and iOS.