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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

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the one you're replying to, but started my Linux experience with Ubuntu 6.10, was using it all the way up to ~17, and started using Arch Linux after that since during my time of using Ubuntu, I learnt enough Linux that I could setup my own system (and of course, with the help of the awesome Arch Wiki).

Worth noting that Arch has had something resembling the OpenBSD installer for some time. Trying it out doesn't require reading 20 wiki articles as it did back in my day™. You answer a few questions, wait a few minutes, and it's done. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archinstall

Wow, that's great, haven't seen that before! Granted, it was some time ago I did a setup from scratch.

Seems that installer is like 90% on the way to be useful as a general installer. At a glance, seems to missing things like networking setup (as most people use WiFi these days, it seems), but at least it takes care of most things you need for a install.

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

#82

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.

That's more than my laptop-as-a-router using Manjaro uses in total.

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

#83
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's reviled because nobody wants to learn yet another deployment tool. apt has been reliable enough for installing packages and good enough UX that people can't be bothered

Nope, it's reviled because of its hostile user experience. Try finding an official, working way to stop automatic snap updates!

The only way I got it working was via:

   snap set system proxy.http="http://127.0.0.1:1111"
   snap set system proxy.https="http://127.0.0.1:1111"
I started a thread [0] on the LXD container forum in 2019 due to all the issues with automatic snaps

https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/t/disable-snap-auto-refr...

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

#84
post #21

Annoyingly, along with this, the Ubuntu "Minimal" network installer is dead (no 22.04 release) — presumably to "encourage" people to move over to this.

At this point all my from-scratch installs are usually Debian-based where they used to be Ubuntu-based. Canonical seems to completely have lost touch with what the community wants, and with the non-free installer, I find Debian working equally well OOB as Ubuntu has done in the past. The only machines I still keep on Ubuntu are the ones already running it where migrating them will be too much hassle. For my latest la…

I'm using Manjaro on my laptop and it's been smooth so far, aside from an initial wifi chipset hiccup. I'm using it also on a laptop-as-a-router. Disabled all the graphical stuff. It's been very good, thus far and only 213 MB of RAM being used after disabling some (but certainly not all) unnecessary services. I do with they had a minimal install for x86_64 like they do for ARM.

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

#85
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

In our case we were building a solution from scratch. It is very hard to justify upfront costs like that, involving open-source and early in the project. IoT solution costs should move up according to scale. That's why AWS, Azure, and others have grown their IoT offerings. Nobody starts paying $20k upfront to use AWS IoT.

>Nobody starts paying $20k upfront to use AWS IoT.

You have not written anything about upfront or IoT.

AWS IoT? Is that even a thing? (pun intended)

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

#86
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another solution would be Apertis (www.apertis.org). Unlike Ubuntu Core, it uses standard technologies like OSTree, Flatpak etc to provide similar features. Disclaimer: I work on Apertis.

I took a quick look at your landing page, and I've got to say it doesn't do that great a job of telling me what it is or how it works. Are you able to provide a short summary, and maybe compare it to Ubuntu Core and BalenaOS? Would it be suitable for shipping appliances? How do you folks make money? Thanks :)

It is a Debian derivative distribution with a stabilised subset of packages and a recent LTS kernel. Target images use non-GPL-3 software, which some industries require. It also comes with infrastructure for building images, atomic updates and so on.

There's a lot of concept documents on the website going into details on those.

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

#87
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another solution would be Apertis (www.apertis.org). Unlike Ubuntu Core, it uses standard technologies like OSTree, Flatpak etc to provide similar features. Disclaimer: I work on Apertis.

I took a quick look at your landing page, and I've got to say it doesn't do that great a job of telling me what it is or how it works. Are you able to provide a short summary, and maybe compare it to Ubuntu Core and BalenaOS? Would it be suitable for shipping appliances? How do you folks make money? Thanks :)

When using OSTree, you can build images using regular packages installed with apt, and then deploy them atomically while allowing to rollback the update if necessary. Alternatively you can choose to use Flatpak to deploy applications.

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

#88
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another solution would be Apertis (www.apertis.org). Unlike Ubuntu Core, it uses standard technologies like OSTree, Flatpak etc to provide similar features. Disclaimer: I work on Apertis.

I took a quick look at your landing page, and I've got to say it doesn't do that great a job of telling me what it is or how it works. Are you able to provide a short summary, and maybe compare it to Ubuntu Core and BalenaOS? Would it be suitable for shipping appliances? How do you folks make money? Thanks :)

As for money, we have paying customers.

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

#89
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Ubuntu, and looked into using Ubuntu Core for an IoT architecture a few years ago - but the "brand store", which IIRC is mandatory for private deployments, are complete madness. Plus, while the concept behind Snaps is interesting, in practice they seem to be nearly universally reviled.

> Plus, while the concept behind Snaps is interesting, in practice they seem to be nearly universally reviled. It might be worth mentioning that a more open, community driven and decentralized option offering mostly the same concepts exists in the way of Flatpak and Flathub.

And that Linux Mint, a very good derivation of Ubuntu LTS, made the choice to ditch Snap and integrate Flatpak instead in their version of the Software Store.

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

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is really ridiculous. I'm sure some companies out there will pay it without blinking, but how are the little people supposed to evaluate things, heck a former boss at a Fortune 500 I know for a fact will say no thank you, and move on. I would just use DEB packages and setup a package repository myself, what does snap bring that regular debian packaging does not?

> what does snap bring that regular debian packaging does not Snap is like using a python virtualenv, while apt is like using global pip. We all know which one of these usually results in a broken installation. Apt debs more often than not rely on some specific version of a third party package which becomes a headache when there's another package that needs a different version of it. Snap in theory solves that, makin…

I miss the days when "installing" something meant copying a file to the machine.

I don't really remember ever doing this, but I still miss it somehow.

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