We are experimenting with the idea of using Snap packages to distribute Pipewire, Wireplumber and things like libcamera. The primary reason is to make it easier to ship later versions of these stacks on LTS releases so we can retrospectively enable support for new hardware in the LTSs.
This change is not yet confirmed, and we'll be doing opt-in trials for some time before committing to it long term. This capability will also be needed before we can deliver Ubuntu Core Desktop - which is a Snap-based system.
Any AI tools we ship will also be in snaps, but seperate.
Maybe - likely we’ll trade-off the added build/test/storage cost of maintaining each variant - so you might not see amd64v4, but possibly amd64v5 depending on how impactful they turn out to be.
The same will apply to different arm64 or riscv64 variants.
We have two channels for distributing software in Ubuntu: the archive and the snap store. Each are suited to different scenarios.
Irrespective of any view on Snap as a packaging format, the workflow and developer experience is, in my opinion, much simpler to work with. The barrier to contribution is much lower.
The work on debcraft is to try and bring some of the lessons we've learned there to those developers working with debs - while also introducing new primitives that will allow for extended integration testing of the distribution using some of our existing (well tested) machinery.
Indeed, we'll need to be very careful to ensure that a new tool doesn't preclude our contribution to Debian, nor complicate our ability to work as a functioning downstream.
Early versions of debcraft will focus on compatibility with the existing format, and aim to help unify workflow across our Ubuntu Developer community.
Earlier this year, Canonical’s Ubuntu Engineering organisation gained a new team, seeded with some of our most prolific contributors to Ubuntu. Debcrafters is a new team dedicated to the maintenance of the Ubuntu Archive.
The team’s primary goal is to maintain the health of the Ubuntu Archive, but its unique construction aims to attract a broad range of Linux distribution expertise; contributors to distributions like Debian, Arch Linux, NixOS and others are encouraged to join the team, and will even get paid to contribute one day per week to those projects to foster learning and idea sharing
Flatpak works fine with Ubuntu, it's just not enabled/installed by default. The Flatpak website has some instructions which I just tested successfully:
Part 1 of a micro-series of blog posts that outlines my journey toward authoring a Home Assistant Core integration for the Roth Touchline SL heating system.
This first post covers the design and build of a Python API client for Roth's upstream API that controls the underfloor heating systems.
Ha! You’re totally right, I feel bad about this most days!
I haven’t worked out a decent answer yet - part of the complication is the desk is sit/stand so if they don’t move with it, it gets weird when I stand up.
Obviously in this case my setup is... overkill! But I think you can do a lot better than the average laptop camera with a Logitech C920 or Brio, and a Yeti Snowball or similar - I started there and worked my way up to where I am now, and was lucky enough to have been donated a rather nice DSLR along the way.
We are experimenting with the idea of using Snap packages to distribute Pipewire, Wireplumber and things like libcamera. The primary reason is to make it easier to ship later versions of these stacks on LTS releases so we can retrospectively enable support for new hardware in the LTSs.
This change is not yet confirmed, and we'll be doing opt-in trials for some time before committing to it long term. This capability will also be needed before we can deliver Ubuntu Core Desktop - which is a Snap-based system.
Any AI tools we ship will also be in snaps, but seperate.