Dan MaloneyOK, everyone, let's get started! I'm Dan, I'll be your mod today. Thanks everyone for dropping by, we're excited to have Rhys Davies and Alan Pope from Canonical here today to talk about Ubuntu.
Rhys and Alan, care to start us off with a little about yourselves?
Thanks Dan :) Hi all, my name is Rhys Davies, I am currently a product manager at Canonical, I look after the appliances, snapcraft, LXD and all of the stuff we're doing with Ubuntu on Raspberry Pi. I've not been a product manager very long, coming up on a year, before I did mechatronics and mechanical engineering stuff. Compared to the folks here I imagine I'm under leveled on the software side of things but I'm trying to learn, I'm a big fan of making things and open source, so, here I am. Aside from this part of my life I enjoy reading, writing and TTRPGs ... hi
Hello! I'm a 1972-era human meatbag with a fancy for technical stuff. I have worked for Canonical since 2011, and before that was an active community member working on Ubuntu. I think keyboards are the pinnacle of human interface devices. :D
Human, eh? Well, I guess we can let that slide this one time...
they do seem to become more and more common
So while everyone else is furiously typing their questions, I'll throw one out there: can you explain a little about the Appliances concept? Am I right assuming that they're images that are optimized for Raspberry Pi and they're intended for IoT use?
https://ubuntu.com/appliance is the home page for Ubuntu Appliances, for those following along :)
Sure, so yes, they're optimised for Raspberry Pi and Intel NUCs to be run as IoT devices (or appliances) at home
(we're happy to answer hard questions as well as the soft ones too) :D
The idea is developers of those kinds of IoT projects can put their software on Ubuntu.com for the Ubuntu audience and the audiences of said appliances to download and get working on their Pis or NUCs
Which is what I imagine everyone here is doing right now afk
Question form the peanut gallery here. Can you give us an update on where the "experimental" status of ZFS and zsys is? Should we be seeing the "experimental" tag removed for 20.10?
I'm using the Adguard-Home appliance as my home DNS server. It replaces the PiHole RPi I was previously using.
I have a hard question: whose bright idea was it to try and forcefully shove snaps down everybody's throats?
@franksmcb Good question. I don't think the team have decided yet on whether we want to go full-on with ZFS or keep it experimental for now.
@Alan Pope - interesting. Does it do a better job than PiHole? I've found mine to be pretty leaky.
@Dan Maloney The main reason I prefer AdGuard + Ubuntu Core is it all auto updates on my schedule, (overnight when we're all asleep) and so it's pretty much zero maintenance for me. Nothing against PiHole at all, ran that for years.
@deʃhipu Hah! I don't accept the premise of the question. For most users snaps vs debs is just one package format verses another, it's not a super pressingly important thing they care about. Some technical users do, for sure. Just like people have opinions about X vs Wayland and GNOME vs KDE.
There's real value to users and developers to using a snap to deliver software though. Developers can publish and update quickly, users get a diverse array of up to date software.
@Alan Pope I think "forcefully" is the key word here
Sure, there's bugs, no software is bug free, and we're pretty aware of what the most important ones to work on are, we're listening to users.
@deʃhipu I'm not coming around your house and putting a gun to your head to install software. It's just a software package.
So you mentioned Wayland, I know you've been down this road previously. Where do you see Ubuntu proper going in 20.10?
I know there's been some upset about how we managed the deb to snap migration of chromium. I wrote a blog post about why we did it, about 6 months ago...
@Alan Pope in fact you are doing something equally sinister: you are installing one thing when I requested another
https://ubuntu.com/blog/chromium-in-ubuntu-deb-to-snap-transition
Chromium in Ubuntu - deb to snap transition | Ubuntu
We have recently announced that we are transitioning the Chromium deb package to the snap in Ubuntu 19.10. Such a transition is not trivial, and there have been many constructive discussions around it, so here we are summarising why we are doing this, how, and the timeline.
Question from an operations guy: We use ubuntu LTS server edition. What's the value proposition for using snaps in that context? Some concerns were raised about bandwidth sensitive installations and having to retool our systems to support this approach.
@deʃhipu I don't believe it's sinister, that's pushing a bit too far. The reason we install the snap when someone installs the deb is simple, migrations from 18.04 (previous LTS) to next release. If we didn't, the user might be left with no browser, which would be an awful upgrade process.
I can understand that you have to deal with the fallout now. That's how it works. I just wonder who pushed this.
@deʃhipu Team decision. I'm not about to throw someone under the bus for a collective decision.
Thanks, that's enough for me, good to know it didn't come from outside of the team.
@Alan Pope wasn't there a thing where, if you were to try to install packages using an apt command, the install would use snap instead? If so, what was the reasoning behind that?
@franksmcb I think we'll revisit wayland again in 20.10 but not sure it'll be default. One for the desktop team I think.
oh, sorry, as I was typing slowly, the answer was there =D
my bad
@Arsenijs @deʃhipu I actually filed a bug to improve that process just this week! https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chromium-browser/+bug/1888380
https://lasertimepodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/aladdin-genie-laser-time.jpg
@Leon Torres In terms of bandwidth, we have a snap store proxy which can reduce outbound bandwidth. It's certainly a new thing, but I haven't seen a ton of server based tools deployed like that. Those seem to mostly be deployed by juju or k8s.
in our case china bandwidth is expensive. the proxy is a great idea
There's also settings in snapd to limit when it updates. I started a little twitter thread about that last week. https://twitter.com/popey/status/1284063695962804224
It has some suggestions for reducing update frequency, and links to some documentation farther down that thread, and a blog post which also has some suggestions. We need to document this better!
TBH, the thread reads as "could you hack around the limitation of software I have control over"
Yeah, it does a bit, I agree.
The point is to have sane defaults, which keep systems up to date and secure by default. Which, for some use cases isn't always what's wanted. So the settings were added to enable finer control over the updates.
The vast majority of users leave the defaults as they are. As a publisher of a snap, I can be confident most people are running the latest, most secure version of my software. But for some, they want to be sticky on old releases, we get that.
So, since everyone has all their ubuntu appliances built and so have no questions about them, what's the biggest problems you have if you're doing hackaday projects with Linux?
How well is Ubuntu going in getting into corporate enviroments? are there companies using it in real day to day operations for desktops?
why reinvent the wheel with snap when AppImage and Flatpak appear to do the same thing? the cynic in me sees this as walled-gardening , what have I missed
@Stuart Ward On desktops, pretty great. We get a ton of great feedback from our desktop enterprise customers. They help us set the direction of Ubuntu on the desktop, so it appeals to both end-user enthusiasts and corporate environments.
hackaday crashed for me for a moment there
and by cynic in me, I mean regular me
the criticism I've seen is "I should be able to just disable snap updates indefinitely if that's what I currently see fitting, yet there's no explicit option to do that specifically", which is usually an option that's provoded
For example they help us decide how important things like fingerprint readers, hi-dpi screens, enterprise logins and such are.
@Alan Pope I love fprint logon on my thinkpad!
@morgan I see this question a lot. Fact is flatpak, snap and appimage are subtley different. For example flatpak is primarily aimed only at desktop applications. So while snaps allow you to install server appliances like AdGuard, Plex Media Server and NextCloud, Flatpak isn't suited to that.
yeah, fingerprint login is great, when the fingerprint sensor is supported
Appimage on the other hand wasn't designed with automatic updates out of the box, which we learned from developers was a thing they need on Linux. Developers told us they need a store front on Linux which compares to Play store, IOS store and Microsoft store. So they can have a similar experience for publishing their applications to Linux users.
Yeah, I'm keeping my ThinkPad T450 until I can find a newer laptop with a working fingerprint reader! :D
might want to sponsor some fingerprint sensor reverse-engineering for newer devices, or use your corporate leverage to get the datasheets/sources required =D I keep hearing about "I have a new machine and the fingerprint sensor is not Linux-compatible"
Note also flatpak and snap code bases started around a week, just a few days apart! :D
They all have their advantages, nobody wants a monoculture.
The tricky thing with some fingerprint readers is they require a binary blob to work :(
Hence me keeping my 5 year old laptop which works :D
For Mr. Davies, what hardware would you recommend for developing with Ubuntu Appliances?
For developing, anything, you can use any old laptop to do your developing and then I'd recommend testing things on a Raspberry Pi, then if you're going to make an appliance you can go to the appliances discourse and we can help you do more testing on other things
If you want to built a snap of something and compile it for the pi, we have a remote build option which builds in our cloud, for i386, amd64, armhf, arm64, ppc64el and even s390x :D
Are there any particularly useful/interesting appliances we would recommend investigating?
The Ubuntu Appliance images aren't intended to replace the existing installation methods that developers / publishers have. It's more of a sampler, to let people know we have the tools to build and publish appliance images for many architectures, easily. So you could turn something you built into an appliance in no time.
If you mean appliances that exist, there are five at the moment, I'd recommend investigating them all. There are more on the way. But, if you mean appliances you'd like to see, you tell me, I'd like to see one that could replace a kindle myself but we haven't found a project like that yet
Hello Adam :)
Interesting.
I would love to see a viable open source e-reader as well. I'm sitting at my desk with a RPI & Waveshare e-paper display on my left, and a kindle on my right.
something child oriented may be a nice way to get appliances into schools, like kindle fire kids but more curated and controlled by parents
https://github.com/joeycastillo/The-Open-Book this is a super interesting open ebook project
Greetings! I currently use my Google Assistant devices for automation at home. I've noticed they have started to suck more and more. Are there ways to integrate something like a Pi running Ubuntu to control systems like lights and such using something simple like a Snap to install?
@RunLinuxPls Indeed, I have a waveshare next to me now but getting it to work for anything more than weather updates is a pain still
@Leon Torres Yeah, something with management tools to deploy books to the kids would be great.
Thank you Mr. Pope.
@Adam Grubbs Good day! We're working with the Mycroft people to make a Mycroft appliance. Watch this space! There's also tools like OpenHAB and home-assistant which can do it without speech to text.
The Raspberry Pi foundation do a lot of great stuff for kids and school with their digital maker initiatives, that's part of the reason we're wanting to do more with the Pi people
Awesome! I'm looking forward to hearing more about that collaboration. I can only tolerate random music as a response to me asking to turn a light on so many times.
I'm using the OpenHAB appliance now and my lights turn on with music, on purpose, definitely worth having a look at @Adam Grubbs
On the appliance testing front, this seems to be a great idea https://ubuntu.com/appliance/vm
I'm just starting to experiement with home-assistant, a mycroft appliance would be wonderful. As regards flatpak/snap/appimages, I was relatively agnostic to any particular format at the beginning, but snaps have won me over just with the ease of installation. `snap install $APP` is so much easier than the comparable flatpak command. As far as the store being under the control of Canonical I'm 110% OK with that, it's a company/name/brand I trust implicitly
Yep, all the applainces are baked into multipass so it's just a multipass launch appliance: foo and you're away
We're up against the top of the hour now, so I want to let Alan and Rhys get back to work if they need to. Everyone who wants to hang around should feel free to, though. I want to Alan and Rhys for spending time with us today, and everyone for a great discussion - contentious but mostly respectful? Is that the right way to characterize it?
If it's not too late, gentlemen, what are your opinions on open source mobile devices? For example, what is present viability vs next 5 years.
OOh Good question.
(why only gentlemen?)
directed at Mr. Pope and Mr. Davies
I worked on the Ubuntu Phone team back before we handed it over to the UBPorts foundation. It was super exciting.
whoops
misread that as general
Thanks Alan and Rhys for taking the time today to answer questions
I recently received a PinePhone and PineBook Pro from the lovely people at Pine64. I am looking forward to playing with them both!
No worries morgan we understand your cynicism nature
I think the current open source mobile devices still have a long way to go for daily driver status, but as a tinkering device, for playing with, they're awesome.
I like that there's stiff competition between the various operating systems for mobile devices for that coveted "third place".
Hello @Roger Light
Very excited about the work of Pine64. I agree, Mr. Pope. Where do you think we will be in 5 years?
I've just been lurking, but wanted to say that learning about "multipass launch appliance: foo" has been totally worth it.
@RunLinuxPls Sat here, discussing Linux still, in 5 years time ;)
:)
Thanks for your time everyone.
(I too only just learned about multipass launch appliance: foo" :D
)
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