Last Tuesday, Mark Shuttleworth ad the launch of Ubuntu Core, Canonical and Ubuntu's commitment to the Cloud and to the change of the packaging system. Ubuntu Core is not just another flavor, it is an adaptation of Ubuntu to the Cloud with great changes such as the packaging system that make Ubuntu Core a different operating system.
The idea according to Mark himself is to facilitate the production environment and make Ubuntu work on several computers without the installation of some software influencing the rest and losing everything. In addition, both Ubuntu Core and its update system will significantly reduce the storage of Canonical servers and increase security.
Ubuntu Core is based on the Agile system and on the adaptation that many operating systems are having with respect to the Cloud, so the installations will be modular and incremental, I do not know how to reinstall the entire package in an update but rather the novelty will be installed. This will make us have a modular system that will allow us to have what we want and what we do not remove, period. At the moment Ubuntu Core is only ready to experiment, however one can download the image and test it in a virtual machine.
Snappy, the contribution of Ubuntu Core
Together with Ubuntu Core we have to start saying goodbye to the apt-get system, in Ubuntu Core such system is replaced by snappy, an adaptation of the Ubuntu Touch installer that is the same or similar to what we find in smartphones, the only thing in the command line. This installer forgets about dependencies and packages, we select the program and it installs, the dependencies are no longer necessary with Ubuntu Core.
Not long ago we told you that Ubuntu would be thinking of launching its own installer, of leaving Apt-Get aside, it seems that it has succeeded, now well Will snappy achieve the same success as apt-get and deb packages?
At the moment we have a statement from Shuttleworth himself that says it is easier to pass packages deb a snappy than the other way around or the current fixes in cloud systems. If so, there would be no problem but I doubt that everything is so simple.
Opinion
For some time I said that Canonical wanted another Ubuntu, a very different Ubuntu, well, now I see that Ubuntu Core will be a first step for it, however, almost nothing is known about this new version: neither operation, nor installation, etc…. We have to give Ubuntu Core the benefit of the doubt, it may really be better than the current one and even surpass its older sister, Ubuntu Server What do you say?
My doubts are: What happens when there are dependencies? Will they all go in the app package? What about software duplications? What will become of server management?
I hope they clarify them for us soon ...