this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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The .deb format has serious impairments toward validating content.
Security people shake their heads when "how do we know" fails, and build/rel people can't answer the question "is that what's expected" for all files.
It's a major difference between enterprise Linux and debuntus, and I've been in groups where this breakage has eliminated that branch of Linux distros from opportunities.
I don't really have any experience with enterprise Ubuntu (we use RHEL at work and I'm not a sysadmin anyway) but its kind of hard to blame that all on Canonical since they inherited it from debian.
I mean, I'm sure you could change the package format that your nascent distro uses, but at that point you might as well make a completely new, unforked distro since you're basically rewriting the entire system.
That's what Ubuntu's doing with Snaps. Ubuntu Core is their "Oops! All Snaps" project.
There's lots of examples. Mir, Unity, Snap, PPAs, and more.
I think Ubuntu Core is a bad example. Immutable distros is where the industry is headed for a lot of good reasons, and it makes sense for Canonical to jump on that train. Snaps are bad (although honestly I do like that they can package server apps unlike flatpak, that's cool), but the concept for the distro is not.
Ubuntu Core is all snaps. That's the selling point.
The selling point is that it is immutable, not that it uses snaps (which it does). Fedora does the same thing with Silverblue and IoT. You don't install rpms, you install flatpaks. You can install rpms, but you're not really meant to.
Since Canonical refuses to get onboard with flatpak (for now) they use snaps instead of debs, but snaps aren't the direct appeal.
The whole idea is that you have a core system in a known configuration. Updating the system just means using a different image. If an update fails, then you just roll back to the last good configuration. Bazzite uses this to nice effect too.
There are a lot of advantages to end users and enterprise admins with systems in this configuration.