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Ubuntu Core 22 is now available – optimised for IoT and embedded devices

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Re: Ubuntu Core 22 is now available – optimised for IoT and embedded devices

#11

For embedded / iot usage, one major issue is device support https://ubuntu.com/certified/devices It does contain raspberry pi's but the list isn't all that great. I had trouble finding 32 bit ARM precompiled binary distributions from ubuntu (that is not a rpi), and had to compile my own kernel + inline it with debian to get 32 bit arm support.

Smallest thing I've found is a FreeScale SOC running a Cortex-A7.

Re: Ubuntu Core 22 is now available – optimised for IoT and embedded devices

#12

I highly discourage anyone to use Ubuntu Core as part of their solution. It is a secure environment, yes, but it is a nightmare to configure (snaps) and for everything, expect for the most basic stuff, you will need what is called a "brand store", which costs about $20k/year, regardless if you have 1 or 100 devices. (We could not even make one snap talk to another snap, checking another snap status etc). We had comme…

I completely sprinting away with anything canonical. SUSE/openSUSE/Micro RHEL/Fedora/CoreOS nothing else...no more canonical, too many disappointments and trickery into pay massive at the end of the day.

Re: Ubuntu Core 22 is now available – optimised for IoT and embedded devices

#13
post #3

Do you still have to have a canonical sso account just to login to your own devices? EDIT: The answer appears to still be yes. I don't know who canonical is making this for, but no company is going to want to deploy IoT devices that hand over the root of trust for authentication to a third party. And I have to believe that many individuals/hobbyists that would otherwise be excited to use this will choose another dist…

For individuals and hobbyists Ubuntu Server would likely make more sense than Ubuntu Core. I used to recommend it for use on headless Raspberry Pi's over Raspberry Pi OS. Use of cloud-init and netplan made it much easier for deployment of headless RPi's.

Unfortunately for 22.04 they made some changes on the RPi which severely impacted my deployments causing me to move away from Ubuntu on the RPi and to no longer recommend it to others.

Re: Ubuntu Core 22 is now available – optimised for IoT and embedded devices

#14

I highly discourage anyone to use Ubuntu Core as part of their solution. It is a secure environment, yes, but it is a nightmare to configure (snaps) and for everything, expect for the most basic stuff, you will need what is called a "brand store", which costs about $20k/year, regardless if you have 1 or 100 devices. (We could not even make one snap talk to another snap, checking another snap status etc). We had comme…

Does the snap store server process still still use 300+ MB of memory? That alone would seem to disqualify it for IOT or other embedded use cases.

Re: Ubuntu Core 22 is now available – optimised for IoT and embedded devices

#15
post #3

Do you still have to have a canonical sso account just to login to your own devices? EDIT: The answer appears to still be yes. I don't know who canonical is making this for, but no company is going to want to deploy IoT devices that hand over the root of trust for authentication to a third party. And I have to believe that many individuals/hobbyists that would otherwise be excited to use this will choose another dist…

They have no clue what the market wants. Nobody is going to shell out $15k-20k to build a solution. We lost about 4 months betting on it and eventually moved away. We are glad we did.

>Nobody is going to shell out $15k-20k to build a solution.

Well that's not true, if the solution is a success 20k is not much....problem is it rarely is with canonical.

Re: Ubuntu Core 22 is now available – optimised for IoT and embedded devices

#16

I highly discourage anyone to use Ubuntu Core as part of their solution. It is a secure environment, yes, but it is a nightmare to configure (snaps) and for everything, expect for the most basic stuff, you will need what is called a "brand store", which costs about $20k/year, regardless if you have 1 or 100 devices. (We could not even make one snap talk to another snap, checking another snap status etc). We had comme…

Does the snap store server process still still use 300+ MB of memory? That alone would seem to disqualify it for IOT or other embedded use cases.

Na snapd need's just about 220, so perfect for a 1G raspi, if it's the only thing you want to run on.

Re: Ubuntu Core 22 is now available – optimised for IoT and embedded devices

#18
Look for balenaOS (http://balena.io) if you want an alternative IoT solution. We looked into ubuntu core, which seems like an overkill in complexity. With balena you can get started immetiately with all the tools you already know, like docker etc and have a solution that works...

Re: Ubuntu Core 22 is now available – optimised for IoT and embedded devices

#19

For embedded / iot usage, one major issue is device support https://ubuntu.com/certified/devices It does contain raspberry pi's but the list isn't all that great. I had trouble finding 32 bit ARM precompiled binary distributions from ubuntu (that is not a rpi), and had to compile my own kernel + inline it with debian to get 32 bit arm support.

Smallest thing I've found is a FreeScale SOC running a Cortex-A7.

Cortex M* lack MMU, which is necessary for any normal linux distro. Cortex M0 and M4 are just beefy microcontrollers.

Re: Ubuntu Core 22 is now available – optimised for IoT and embedded devices

#20
I would also chip in along the same lines as the other comments here and strongly advise against using Ubuntu Core in any application. It's a tempting idea when you first look at it, but in practice it is seriously difficult to build an application with, comes with a lot of constraints, and requires you forking over repeated large sums of money to Canonical with no way out.

We had a much better experience with https://www.balena.io – quite a different service, but achieves a sweet-spot combination of having an open core with good management tooling that I'm more than happy to pay for.

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