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Friday, October 23, 2015

Ubuntu Desktop To Eventually Switch To Snappy Packages By Default

Ubuntu Desktop will eventually switch to Snappy packages by default, while continuing to provide deb-based images as an alternative, at least for a while. I'm sure this doesn't come as a surprise for some of you, but further details regarding this have been revealed today.

Will Cooke, Ubuntu Desktop Manager at Canonical, posted a notice for Ubuntu Desktop Next (a Unity 8 desktop build used for testing) users which mentions that for 15.10, the plan is to have "a build based on Snappy Personal and so the current .deb based Desktop Next image will be going away and will be replaced with the new Snappy version".

Since Will's notice was pretty vague, it raised quite a few questions, especially regarding the future of Ubuntu Desktop and Michael Hall from Canonical tried to answer some of them on Reddit (/r/Ubuntu). Here's a quick summary (copy/pasted from Reddit):

Q: Will all of Ubuntu be based on snappy packages in the mid-/long term instead of deb/click?

A: All Ubuntu will use snap packages eventually, yes. But the system images and even some of the snappy apps will be built from debs.

Q: What happens after Ubuntu 16.04 (assuming Mir and Unity 8 land as default)? Are there going to be two branches, one with click packages, one with deb?

A: That is the plan, yes, but the details still need to be worked out at UOS.

Q: Is Ubuntu moving away from dpkg and apt altogether? What does that mean for its relationship with Debian?

A: Our system images are still built from debs in the archive, our relationship with Debian isn't going away anytime soon.

Q: How does Snappy (or click--whatever) improve updates on the Desktop? Does it bring improved security & privacy in any ways so there is less chance of installing harmful software or more secure delivery methods?

A: Snap packages are more secure, yes, and they can be updated by their upstream at any time, they don't get frozen to the Ubuntu release. So you get newer apps, safer apps, and the upstream gets more control over it's distribution.

Q: Snappy Personal = *.click?

A: Snappy is an evolution of click, which will eventually replace clicks on the phone. Snappy Personal is to phone and desktop what Snappy Core is to cloud and IoT, it's the base install image that provides the minimum functionality needed for you to get started.

Q: Could you briefly explain the advantages of snappy packages over click packages?

A: Snappy packages can provide platforms or services that other snap packages can depend on, something clicks could not. Otherwise they are the same. The snappy tool can also update your system image, where that was a separate tool from click.

Q: What about the impact of that in other ubuntu editions (kubuntu, xubuntu)? Everyone is supposed to move to snappy and abandon apt/dpkg?

A: The flavors won't be affected unless they choose to add snappy support themselves to get its benefits.

Q: In this future scenario, will we see ppa's moving from apt/deb to snappy too? If yes, will we have both versions running?

A: With click/snappy you really don't need a PPA anymore.

Check out the full Reddit conversation HERE. You can find more information about Snappy packages in our Snappy Ubuntu Core post (Snappy Ubuntu Core is a cloud-optimized Ubuntu flavor, but the article also explains what Snappy packages are).

The Ubuntu Online Summit, which will take place between 5th and 7th of May, should reveal more information about this.

Transmageddon 1.0, Snappy Player 1.0 Available In PPA [Ubuntu 14.04]

Quick update for Ubuntu 14.04 users: Transmageddon 1.0 and Snappy 1.0, both released recently, are available in the main failsdownloads PPA.

Transmageddon 1.0 (video transcoder and now, DVD ripper)

Transmageddon is a video transcoder for Linux which uses GStreamer. The latest 1.0 release comes with changes such as:

support files with multiple audio streams, allowing you to transcode them to different codecs or drop them from the new file;
DVD ripping support. So know you can use your movie DVDs as input in Transmageddon, be aware though that you need to install things like lsdvd and the GStreamer dvdread plugin from gst-plugins-ugly for it to become available. And you probably also want libdvdcss installed to be able to transcode most movie DVDs;
another small feature of the release is that you can now set language information on files with one audio stream inside. If you rip a DVD with multiple audio streams, Transmageddon will preserve the existing audio information, so in that case you shouldn’t need to set the language metadata manually;
VP9 support.

Unfortunately Transmageddon 1.0 didn't work properly in Ubuntu versions older than 14.04, that's why it's available in the main failsdownloads PPA for Ubuntu 14.04 only. Add the PPA and install it using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/failsdownloads
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install transmageddon

Or download the deb from HERE and install it manually.

To be able to rip DVDs (not tested!) using Transmageddon, you'll need to make sure that lsdvd, libdvdread4 and gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly are installed (and install libdvdcss2 via libdvdread4):

sudo apt-get install lsdvd libdvdread4 gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly
sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

Snappy 1.0 (media player)

Snappy is a GStreamer-based open source media player which comes with a minimalistic Clutter interface. The player features:

subtitles support;
video and audio synchronization tweeking;
multi-screen full-screen;
media queues;
history of played media;
seeking/muting/cycling through languages (audio streams);
frame stepping;
more.

However, there are no preferences/options at all so some of its features can only be controlled via command line.

Snappy 1.0 is available in the main failsdownloads PPA for Ubuntu 14.04 and 13.10 only (for older Ubuntu versions it requires newer dependencies). Add the PPA and install it using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/failsdownloads
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install snappy

Alternatively, you can also download the deb file from HERE and install it manually.

Canonical Announces Snappy Ubuntu Core, A Transactionally Updated Flavor For The Cloud

Canonical announced "snappy" Ubuntu Core yesterday, a new cloud-optimized Ubuntu edition that uses transactional updates.

Below you can watch the snappy Ubuntu Core introductory video in which Ubuntu and Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth explains how snappy Ubuntu Core works:

(direct video link)

But what exactly is snappy Ubuntu Core? This new Ubuntu cloud flavor uses Ubuntu Core (a minimalist version of Ubuntu) as it base, which runs on a read-only system partition and uses "snappy" instead of apt-get or debs.

Snappy is an adaptation of the click packaging system developed for the Ubuntu Phone. A snappy package consists of a tarball with all the files needed to run an application or framework, with no imposed directory structure, no dependencies, and a single metadata file which contains the package name, version and binary file paths.

The snappy system and applications are confined by the AppArmor kernel security system, keeping each part of Ubuntu in a separate, read-only file. This ensures that all the installed applications are completely isolated from each other, similar to what Canonical is doing on the mobile phone.

Thanks to this, snappy applications don't need to be reviewed, so developers can deliver their applications faster.

Furthermore, snappy uses a "transactional" (or "image-based") update mechanism (for both the system and applications), which means that each update can either completely succeed or completely fail, without "partial failures". Before each update, snappy backs up the data and rolls back if the update fails, so the system is never in a broken / incomplete state.

On top of that, updates on Ubuntu Core are smaller than regular package updates because only the difference between the old and the new version is downloaded (delta updates), instead of getting the whole package.

"All of that is designed for Docker, because it gives you a transactional base for transactional application ecosystem. And so, the very first snappy application we're shipping is Docker itself", says Mark Shuttleworth.

This should bring faster, more reliable and of course, more secure updates, solving issues like the recent ownCloud removal from the Ubuntu repositories (ownCloud had to be removed from the Ubuntu repositories because it was very complicated to update and, being a community package, no one from the community stepped up to update it), with an easy way of rolling back if something goes wrong.

Also, although not new, snappy should also fix the broken dependencies and maintainer scripts (postinst, etc.) problems which, even though not common for packages in the official Ubuntu repositories, can occur with third-party packages.

So how exactly is snappy different from other existing transactional systems? On his blog, Mark Shuttleworth writes:

"There have been interesting developments in the transaction systems field over the past few years. ChromeOS is updated transactionally, when you turn it on, it makes sure it’s running the latest version of the OS. CoreOS brought aspects of Chrome OS and Gentoo to the cloud, Red Hat has a beta of Atomic as a transactional version of RHEL, and of course Docker is a way of delivering apps transactionally too (it combines app and system files very neatly). Ubuntu Core raises the bar for certainty, extensibility and security in the transactional systems game. What I love about Ubuntu Core is the way it embraces transactional updates not just for the base system but for applications on top of the system as well. The system is just one layer that can be updated transactionally, and so are each of the apps on the system. You get an extensible platform that retains the lovely properties of transactionality but lets you choose exactly the capabilities you want for yourself, rather than having someone else force you to use a particular tool".

More on Mark's blog blog

Try snappy Ubuntu Core

Snappy Ubuntu Core (currently in alpha) is available on the Microsoft Azure cloud and as KVM images which can be downloaded for local Linux desktop development however, it should available on more certified clouds in the coming weeks.

If you want to give snappy Ubuntu Core a try, either as a KVM image for local development on Ubuntu or as a cloud image on Azure, you'll find complete instructions HERE.

References / more information: