With the Ubuntu appliance program, manufacturer Canonical brings specialized Linux derivatives for very specific applications. This can be particularly interesting for private users and small teams.
A Linux with a single main application – that is the idea behind the Ubuntu appliancesCanonical develops with various partners. Ubuntu appliances for the Plex media server, the self-hosted collaboration solution Nextcloud, the home automation solution OpenHAB and a few others.
One device, one task – the Raspberry Pi philosophy
The Ubuntu appliances turn any small computer, such as the Raspberry Pi, into a device that specializes in fulfilling a single task. If you want, you can of course also turn a fully-fledged, possibly retired PC into a new basis for your home automation or media server.
In this way, Canonical wants to “enable safe, self-healing devices for a single purpose,” says product manager Rhys Davies in the blog post to present the appliance program. Since the Ubuntu appliance will be tailored to a very specific purpose, there is no need for self-installation and configuration, as would have been necessary with a generalized Ubuntu instance.
Canonical is thus picking up on a development that had shown itself in the past few years with the rise of the Raspberry Pi handicraft calculator: Apparently people don’t want the one large home computer that does all the tasks, but rather value small, manageable units that are flexible can be used for very specific purposes.
Specialization offers several advantages
This has obvious advantages. For example, the entire household is not immediately paralyzed if only the specialized media server fails and needs repairs. In addition, the small specialists are much cheaper to obtain than a generalist with reserves for all possible fields of application.
Ubuntu developers have high expectations of their own appliances. So it should be enough to load the corresponding appliance onto the intended device and start it there. To keep the appliances as compact as possible, Canonical uses Ubuntu Core, the around 250 megabyte stripped down embedded version of its Linux OS, which only contains the components required for technical operation, with a particular focus on security.
Appliance images rely on snap package management
Canonical intends to make any necessary updates available via the controversial snap format. This makes sense insofar as the so-called snaps, i.e. the application packages that can be installed via the snap store, the integrated software management, are themselves images.
According to Canonical’s philosophy, this property is precisely the reason that speaks for Snap package management. This means that the snaps only have to be created once per architecture. This is a significant relief from the previous procedure, in which applications had to be created for different versions with different compilers. In addition, the containerization of the apps as a snap package adds an additional level of security to the system. The apps run in a virtual sandbox.
About community participation in Ubuntus Discourse anyone can suggest other useful appliances and discuss them with others. From this Canonical wants to develop insights for the further roadmap.
Fittingly: New trouble for Canonical: Ubuntu’s snap store angered the open source community
