No Snappy Personal images until 16.10 Update!!

[ventrical]

Hi,

For any and all who have been testing the snappy_personal images (personal_x86.img)... I have just received an e-mail from Canonical's chief ubuntu-desktop engineer, Will Cooke, which basically states that the snappy personal desktop is on the shelf until the 16.10 cycle. So basically , those of us in testing and development version should test and experiment with the current LTS cycle. Perhaps work and test for LXD on xenial snappy core could provide some surprises.

Thanks and..

Regards..


From Will Cooke:

Hi Dale,

Thanks for your emails.


So we stopped the Snappy builds of the U8/Mir desktop around October last year when it became clear that having the two options was confusing people, also there was a pretty big bug which would result in your boot partition being over-written if you tried to install the Snappy version alongside the classic .deb based version.


The decision was made to stop building the Snappy version while the bugs were being ironed out.


Right now we're all focusing on getting the LTS out in the best possible shape we can, and so we will be rebooting the Snappy images work from the beginning of the 16.10 cycle. All the machinery is still in place to build those images, so it won't be long before we see them being generated again.


I'll let you know as soon as we flip the switch back on again.


Cheers, Will

[grahammechanical]

I was starting to think along the lines that they would build Ubuntu Personal on the stable 16.04 LTS code rather than on the moving 16.04 development code. This email seems confirmation. And the plane seems sensible.

Personally, I cannot see how the specialised partition layout of personal_x86 can be made compatible with the traditional Ubuntu partition layout. After installing personal_x86 on a hard disk using Disks>Image restore. I ended up with a hard disk that had GPT partitioning and I was able to create another partition and install traditional Ubuntu in it but I had to install Grub into the partition as it would have over-written the Grub of personal_x86.

I found no way to update the personal_x86 grub so that it detected the new Ubuntu installation. And the Grub in traditional Ubuntu does detect the Linux in personal_x86 but cannot load it due to the different locations that personal_x86 has for the Linux kernels. There are radical differences between traditional Ubuntu and snappy Ubuntu personal that will have to be fudged.

I can see snappy Ubuntu personal being a great OS that comes pre-installed on Ubuntu laptops and notebooks and even desktops. It will be very secure and very locked down. At the moment I am not seeing it as an ISO image that can be downloaded and installed like the present versions of Ubuntu. I see rough waters ahead.

Regards.

[ventrical]

I think perhaps that a 'shift' may take place where we will be using LXD containers on snappy-core where unity8 (or a facsimile thereof) can be loaded and run as a viable desktop. Or a modified unity7th desktop can be run in a concurrent session where the hypervisor can allow for literal 'kernel slamming' or they can modify xorg or create and new non-mir switchable compositor with the snappy core that can jockey between mutiple desktops.

There are currently a lot of tools available for testing so, time providing, I am going to experiment a little with a few things . I sure hope we get an .iso after 16.04lts release. I like your conventional wisdom about grub though. This is a big bug that will take a lot of resource to resolve. They might have to find another way to implement it.

Regards..

[sammiev]

Breakage... can not wait.

[ventrical]

Breakage... can not wait.

+1

[grahammechanical]

I think perhaps that a 'shift' may take place where we will be using LXD containers on snappy-core where unity8 (or a facsimile thereof) can be loaded and run as a viable desktop.

+1 But why only Unity? Why not any DE? I was reading somewhere about running apps like Firefox in LXC for better security. It would be something like what can be done with Docker. Now if these pre-scripted containers were snaps & installed through an app store then all this could take place without the user noticing anything technical going on.

I am going to have to get back into snappy Ubuntu core and LXC/LXD. Keep your eyes open for something called libertine. I saw it at the last Online Summit. It is the thing being developed to run x11 apps in containers on Xmir for Unity 8. Not to be confused with the Libertime fonts package.

https://launchpad.net/libertine

https://launchpad.net/~libertine-tea...puritine-devel

https://l3net.wordpress.com/2013/09/...irtualization/

Regards

[ventrical]

+1 But why only Unity? Why not any DE? I was reading somewhere about running apps like Firefox in LXC for better security. It would be something like what can be done with Docker. Now if these pre-scripted containers were snaps & installed through an app store then all this could take place without the user noticing anything technical going on.

I am going to have to get back into snappy Ubuntu core and LXC/LXD. Keep your eyes open for something called libertine. I saw it at the last Online Summit. It is the thing being developed to run x11 apps in containers on Xmir for Unity 8. Not to be confused with the Libertime fonts package.

https://launchpad.net/libertine

https://launchpad.net/~libertine-tea...puritine-devel

https://l3net.wordpress.com/2013/09/...irtualization/

Regards

There is a forum here somewhere where I did some experiments with snappy core and LXD containers. I was able to actually install baked .isos and then run programs like Htop and Midnight Commander .. etc.. but I could not get xorg-server to install or (at least) be recognized so even though I had all the parts I could not get the desktop to load. The main point is that you can use LXD containers, install an operating system on the container and run it using the deb repositories without interfecting snappy-core as a whole.

libertine

will be on the lookout.

Regards..

[ventrical]

+1 But why only Unity? Why not any DE? I was reading somewhere about running apps like Firefox in LXC for better security. I

I am going to have to get back into snappy Ubuntu core and LXC/LXD

Regards

@graham and other interested in testing snappy core -w LXD.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...8#post13432678

regards...

[ventrical]

Um.. I just noticed that there is no 16.04 snappy image?? Only 15.04!

Anyone know if there is a snappy 16.04 img?

thanks

regards..

[ventrical]

@graham and other interested in testing snappy core -w LXD.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...8#post13432678

regards...

I just wanted to bump this thread because I was listening to Mark in California and he talked a lot about Lex-D! 'LXD' containers. It may be that snappy personal will be the 'desktop on a phone' and not a 'phone on the desktop'.

The core reason is not just because of it's efficiency but also because of security. So perhaps there may be some breakage or experiments we can do with LXD and possible firefox ?

regards..