How could Snappy Ubuntu Core be interesting for us?

jonius · 31 May 2018, 08:16

As far as I see Snappy Ubuntu Core has a very similar approach to Ubuntu Touch with a read-only filesystem and there is an official download for the Raspberry Pi. I wonder how this could be interesting for us? Could'nt it even be a good base for Ubuntu Touch at all, assuming we'd want to switch from click to snap packages, if that would be necessary then.

alan_g · 1 Jun 2018, 05:33

Changing the architecture would be a major undertaking. Probably an order of magnitude more effort than the 16.04 migration.

Further, snap core support for graphics is still under development which would add difficulties and the mobile stack hasn't been considered.

So, while this may be a technology to track, it isn't something I'd consider for UT at present.

Aury88 · 6 Jan 2018, 05:46

@alan_g : that surely, when and if the mir technologies will be ready for mobile stack graphic support, would be a very difficult (or impossible, I don't know) task; but is it correct to say that , after that migration, those changes should make the life easier for the developers to maintain the plethora of devices? if I understand correctly with an all snap system you only port snap-ubuntu-core(SUC) on the SoC once and then all the other application/codes, on top of it, can be shared between different SUC devices without code changes. also the code should be the same on various SUC versions (now a port of the unity8 interface and many click applications from the old ubuntu touch to the new one on 16.04 is needed). is it right or is it only a beautiful illusion?

alan_g · 1 Jun 2018, 20:42

@aury88 said in How could Snappy Ubuntu Core be interesting for us?:

if I understand correctly with an all snap system you only port snap-ubuntu-core(SUC) on the SoC once and then all the other application/codes, on top of it, can be shared between different SUC devices without code changes. also the code should be the same on various SUC versions (now a port of the unity8 interface and many click applications from the old ubuntu touch to the new one on 16.04 is needed). is it right or is it only a beautiful illusion?

As I understand the current plan, one "just" ports halium to a SoC and the same userspace stack will work. That aspect of the story wouldn't be very different for Ubuntu Core. The difficulty in both cases would be validating the functionality of the android subsystem.

jonius · 3 Jun 2018, 07:48

Thanks @alan_g for your feedback. Very appreciated.