Ubuntu: Snapcraft, Bug, Newsletter Issue 535 and Minimal Ubuntu
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New business models on their way for IoT hardware [Ed: by Jamie Bennett, VP of Engineering, IoT & Devices at Canonical]
Snaps are containerised software packages easily managed through Snapcraft, a platform for building and publishing applications to an audience of millions of Linux users. Snapcraft enables authors to push software updates that install automatically and roll back in the event of failure. The likelihood of an errant update breaking a device or degrading the end user experience is, as a result, greatly reduced. If a security vulnerability is discovered in the libraries used by an application, the app publisher is notified so the app can be rebuilt quickly with the supplied fix and pushed out.
As application packages bundle their runtime dependencies, they work without modification on all major Linux distributions as well as being tamper-proof and easily confined. A snap cannot modify or be modified by another app, and access to the system beyond its confinement must be explicitly granted. Precision definition, therefore, brings simpler documentation for installing and managing applications. Taking into account the automatic updates, which eliminate a long tail of releases, applications perform more intuitively for both the publisher and end-user.
Snapcraft also gives managers the tools to organise releases into different release grades, or channels. One set of tools can be used to push app updates from automatic CI builds, to QA, beta testers, and finally all users. It visualises updates as they flow through these channels and helps developers track user base growth and retention. In short, they can simplify a developer’s route, and that of their company’s, to engaging with a vast number of Linux users. Streamlining a route to market not only maximises developer worth, it also opens up new revenue drivers in the process.
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Ubuntu bug allows anyone with physical access to bypass your lock screen
A bug filed on Ubuntu Launchpad in the middle of June has just been made public. The bug in question appears to allow anyone with physical access to the computer bypass the lock screen by just removing the hard drive. The bug was tested on Ubuntu 16.04.4 and it’s unclear whether it affects other versions of Ubuntu or other distributions but there’s an almost certain chance it affects other distributions based on Ubuntu 16.04, such as Linux Mint 18.
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Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 535
Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 535 for the week of July 1 – 7, 2018. The full version of this issue is available here.
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Minimal Ubuntu for containers and clouds
By default, Linux comes with a lot of extras. Usually, that's a good thing. But, sometimes you want just the bare necessities of Linux life for your server, containers, and clouds. That's where Canonical's latest Ubuntu release, Minimal Ubuntu, comes in.
When Canonical says "Minimal", they mean minimal. Weighing in at a mere 29MB for the Ubuntu 18.04 Docker image, Minimal Ubuntu could fit on a CD with hundreds of Megabytes to spare.
This is far from the first time Canonical has offered a small-footprint Ubuntu. The minimal Ubuntu ISO image, about 40 MB, is meant for people who download packages from online archives at installation time.
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Minimal Ubuntu, on public clouds and Docker Hub
Today we are delighted to introduce the new Minimal Ubuntu, optimized for automated use at scale, with a tiny package set and minimal security cross-section. Speed, performance and stability are primary concerns for cloud developers and ops.
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Minimal Ubuntu Can Boot Faster, But Still Not The Fastest Booting On Amazon EC2 Cloud
Canonical today released new Ubuntu Minimal images for cloud computing. The new images are half the size of the traditional Ubuntu Server and are said to boot up to 40% faster, so I decided to run a quick Amazon EC2 Linux distribution boot time comparison today...
Using a t2.micro instance type in the EC2 US-WEST2 region, I ran the systemd boot time benchmark on various Linux distributions... Ubuntu 16.04, Minimal Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 18.04, Minimal Ubuntu 18.04, SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 SP3, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5, Amazon Linux 2 AMI, and Clear Linux 23550.
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today's howtos
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More on Ubuntu today (as above)
Minimal Ubuntu For Clouds: 50% Smaller, Up To 40% Faster Boot
Canonical 'unlikely' to fix bug that allows hackers to bypass Ubuntu's lock screen [Ed: If you want to bypass the lock screen and have physical access, then on most setups you just physically press "Reset"; not as critical as they make it seem.]