// ITS FOSS — LINUX & OPEN SOURCE
Is Ubuntu Eyeing Immutability? Canonical Restarts Core Desktop and Eyes a Firmware Change for LTS
Canonical has restarted development of Ubuntu Core Desktop, an immutable, snap-based take on Ubuntu that sat dormant after a developer preview in 2023. Jon Seager, Canonical's VP Engineering for Ubuntu, says a dedicated team is now working on it.
The objective is for it to grow into the default Ubuntu desktop experience as the project matures. What you know of Ubuntu Desktop is not changing, and Jon says that the various Ubuntu flavors are under no pressure to build Core versions of their own.
Separately, Juerg Haefliger, a Canonical engineer, has proposed a firmware package for Ubuntu LTS releases that would shield older kernels from firmware written for newer ones.
Both are early in development and things could still change.
Ubuntu Core is Canonical's operating system for IoT and embedded devices, and work on it started in 2014. It is immutable and strictly confined, with the kernel, OS image, and apps being kept separate and updated independently of each other.
On Core Desktop, everything is a Snap, from the bootloader and kernel to the desktop environment and your apps. That makes the system harder to break and easier to recover.
The 2023 desktop preview fell short of expectations because it packed much of the desktop, including GNOME and its login screen, into one bulky Snap package. The new approach is to get those pieces separated.
A newly-assigned team of developers has already made good progress moving the old preview onto the newer Core 26 base. Infrastructure for daily image builds is expected to be ready within the coming weeks, and the work is set to run through the 27.04 cycle.
Apps are a big hurdle since Core Desktop only runs strictly confined Snaps, and classic ones like VS Code can't run on it directly. Jon's preferred idea is to host them in a Workshop, Canonical's sandboxed development environment, and show their windows on the main desktop.
Permissions prompting is another piece he considers key to Core's success. Under this, the system would ask users before a confined app touches things like the camera, microphone, or home directory.