Welcome to life in the Fossa lane: Ubuntu 20.04 let out of cage and Shuttleworth claims Canonical now 'commercially self sustaining'
- Reference: 1587643213
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/23/canonical_releases_ubuntu_2004_claims/
- Source link:
Ubuntu 20.04 will be supported until April 2025, for the Desktop, Server and Ubuntu Core editions, and other flavours for three years. Businesses can also get Extended Security Maintenance for 10 years of support. It is built on Linux 5.4, which is also a long-term support release.
In a press briefing attended by The Reg , Canonical founder and CEO Mark Shuttleworth stated that: “This has been a very big year for Ubuntu and for Canonical, it is the year where Ubuntu became commercially self-sustaining.”
He also added in response to a question: “We’re well past the point where Ubuntu itself and all the supporting systems and infrastructure are dependent on me. If I were to meet my maker tomorrow, Ubuntu continues in the very capable hands of the team in Canonical, and the community.”
[2]
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS has been released
Does Canonical still plan to become a public company? “That continues to be our plan of record,” said Shuttleworth. “We are taking a cautious posture this year, because it’s difficult to predict the impact [of COVID-19] on all our customers. I will say that our strength is in public cloud, and the public clouds have seen tremendous demand over the last few months.” He also stated that during the crisis, Canonical is “able to continue and to have no disruption in the delivery of Ubuntu.”
Integration and security
Linux is unlike proprietary operating systems in that a release is composed of multiple independent open source projects. “We integrate thousands of pieces of software from across the open source spectrum,” said Shuttleworth. He said it is a matter of focus, highlighting work supporting AMD’s [3]Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) and on mainframes, IBM’s z15 [4]Secure Execution for Linux .
IBM’s system is the most secure, he opined. “Even if you have complete physical access to the mainframe, you will not be able to get into the virtual machines that are run in this way.”
He also mentioned integration with public cloud security features like AWS Security Hub and CloudTrail, and Azure Security Center and Azure Monitor. Shuttleworth also said that there is increasing demand for [5]Ceph software-defined storage, mentioning that the Cambridge-based Sanger Institute, which he described as “one of the largest users of storage for informatics purposes in the world,” is migrating its storage to Ceph.
The WireGuard VPN protocol is another key feature. “It is built into Ubuntu [20.04] at the kernel level,” he said, “but we will also be back-porting WireGuard to 18.04 and possibly other earlier releases. There is a network effect of security if we can enable WireGuard across existing machines.”
Why WireGuard? “It limits you to much newer and more secure cryptographic protocols, and because it’s implemented in the kernel it has a lower footprint and better performance.” The backport of WireGuard will be done by updating the 18.04 kernel to Linux 5.4.
[6]
Canonical founder and CEO Mark Shuttleworth briefs the press, via video link, on Ubuntu 20.04
Shuttleworth also talked up the Snap package management system and store. The Snap Store is now the default tool for finding and installing packages. A Snap is a container-like technology designed to be a more secure and reliable means of installing applications, at the expense of larger package size. “There are now more than 6000 applications available and almost all of them benefit from system security capabilities that are wrapped around all Snap applications,” he said.
Canonical is attempting to reassure enterprise customers about the security of open source software by extending its Extended Security Maintenance commitment with the inclusion of packages in its Universe repository as well as Main. It’s a commitment to “a full 10 years of coverage for all packages in Ubuntu and to cover the remaining 30,000 packages that we never previously covered with security updates,” he said.
There is an issue, though, with Snaps and security updates. “The approach we take with Snaps is, let’s hide the box that the application runs in, but delegate responsibility for the application itself to the upstream vendor. So we in many cases can’t fix the application inside the Snap. We can remove malicious applications, both from the Snap store and from any affected devices. But we can’t patch that application unless we have a prior arrangement with the Snap, which in some cases we do.” This problem sounds like work in progress.
Year of Linux on the desktop?
On the desktop side, Martin Wimpress, director of engineering for desktop and WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) said that Dell, HP and Lenovo will have certified hardware for Ubuntu and that “device-specific enablement” will be automatically installed on certified devices. He also said that enterprise support will now be extended to Ubuntu running on Windows 10 via WSL. WSL offers a choice of distros, but according to Wimpress, “Ubuntu is overwhelmingly the number one choice for WSL.”
Snap in WSL? “That is something we’re actively collaborating with Microsoft on,” said Wimpress. Ubuntu 20.04 will go live on WSL today, according to Canonical developer advocate Hayden Barnes [7]on Twitter .
[8]
Ubuntu 20.04 is live on WSL immediately
What about running GUI desktop application on WSL? “This is an area of growing customer demand and something we are keen to collaborate with Microsoft on delivering,” Wimpress told us.
He also said that “we're working with Microsoft to drive the WSL roadmap and exciting new features will be unveiled at Microsoft Build,” which begins on May 19th.
Might that include GUI support? Nobody will say, but such a development would be interesting as it would extend the reach of Linux desktop application and allow users an easy comparison between Linux and Windows applications.
Shuttleworth is also keen on WSL, especially since the new 2.0 incarnation which includes a full Linux kernel. “The interesting story is how do use things like Snaps to provide services to the Windows desktop and server environment as if they were Windows processes … to make them feel local to the Windows system,” he said. “We want to make sure that people are able to get access to everything that Ubuntu gives them in the WSL environment. I don’t think any of us know quite where it will go.”
The year of Linux on the desktop? It is not panning out in the way the first users of that phrase expected, back in the 1990s, but if you count WSL 2, it must be 2020.®
Sponsored: [9]How to Build Your Digital Experience Portfolio
[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/27/ubuntu_1804/
[2] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/04/23/ubuntu2004.jpg
[3] https://developer.amd.com/sev/
[4] https://developer.ibm.com/components/ibmz/blogs/z15-and-linuxone-iii-single-frames-build-secure-for-developers/
[5] https://ceph.io/ceph-storage/
[6] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/04/23/shuttleworth.jpg
[7] https://twitter.com/unixterminal/status/1253157909120327681
[8] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/04/23/wsl.jpg
[9] https://go.theregister.co.uk/tl/1936/-8578/how-to-build-your-digital-experience-portfolio?td=wptl1936
Re: I still don't see the purpose of WSL
I don't particularly worry about all that - I'm just glad it's there tbh.
For me it means I only have to remember 1 set of command line behaviours.
Re: I still don't see the purpose of WSL
My company is a mostly windows shop for its laptops, and we use various local docker images to provide various things for developers. Our server infrastructure is all Linux, so having WSL means instructions etc. can all be consistent and gives everyone access to a nice linux command line without having to get a mac.
Re: I still don't see the purpose of WSL
Same here. Corporate laptops are all windows, only official corporate laptops allowed to access company resources such as git. All development done on Linux which corporate doesn't know about.
Unfortunately windows laptops are too locked down to allow WSL so it's ssh from powershell..
@ragnar - Re: I still don't see the purpose of WSL
For a long time I've been watching Windows sysadmins managing systems remotely through RDP sessions and they didn't seem bothered so why managing Linux servers should be different ? apart from launching PuTTY which is not far from opening a command prompt window, what is the difference between getting access to Linux command line with and without WSL ? The command has to run on the target server anyway. I don't think this was causing Microsoft to lose much sleep and make them start working hard to bring WSL to the world.
Re: I still don't see the purpose of WSL
First I want to say I'm a Microsoft Fan, so if I accidentally bash them here, it's not because "LiNuX iS tHe BeSt" - they both have a place in home and work environments.
As for WSL, well, it's certainly not for everyone, and I do get where you're coming from, but it does have a use case, and the more we embrace Linux into Microsoft and Microsoft into Linux the better things will be as only the things worth using will survive.
For me, WSL has a few use cases. I deal with a mix of Windows and Linux servers through work. So having bash in my Windows machine helps with that. Secondly, there are some tools, especially in the networking area of my job that are better and easier to use in a Linux terminal than their Windows counterpart. Nmap would be a good example of this.
I don't have to rely on Putty any more, because I can SSH into a switch or router straight from the desktop. From a development standpoint, yes, Visual Studio is still king as far as I'm concerned, but the offerings on Linux are still extremely strong, especially if you're dealing with things like Ansible/Puppet, LXC/Docker or K8's, and even something OS agnostic like Python.
I use Windows all day at work, so for me a Linux desktop is a nice change when I'm at home. I find it more stable, and spend a lot less time doing maintenance on my home desktop. It's much lighter on resources, so the desktop itself doesn't have to be as Power Hungry.
From using both environments constantly, the only things missing from the Linux desktop is Microsoft Office, which has become the defacto office suite, Visual Studio, though I get by with VS Code just fine, and game compatibility. This is just the desktop we're speaking of here, snubbing Linux in the server space is a massive mistake, there are some really impressive, useful and effective tools to help improve Windows environments out there and not using them "because you're a Windows Shop" is cutting your nose to spite your face. Take a look at projects like Grafana, Observium, OpenVAS, Ansible and ZFS (now it's mainstreaming Linux a bit more) just to name a few. Best of all, they're free to use. Zero licensing costs. And as someone who has had to pass Microsoft Licensing quals in the past it makes life soooooo much easier when you don't need to worry about that kind of thing.
The latter is improving massively, especially with Proton, but I don't think that it's worth game dev's time to make games for Linux yet. If MS Office went onto Linux, I think there would be a slow migration away from the Windows Desktop in small businesses and charities that would then make it more appealing to develop games and other software for. Until then, it's just not going to happen.
Is it the year of the Linux Desktop? No, totally not, and I say that as a Linux fan. It's not ready for your average end user at home, with no support other than google; It's so damned close though.
@ErroneousGiant - Re: I still don't see the purpose of WSL
I retain from your reply two valid use cases for WSL: as a replacement for PuTTY and to run SDK and clients for various cloud platforms (except Azure of course) although Powershell is pretty good at that.
Oh, and a Microsoft fan you should be aware that nmap is very well supported on Windows.
My question still stands, what's in it for Microsoft ? It's not that they are afraid of disgruntled developers who might leave Windows.
Are we there yet?
Not on Ubuntu download page or any mirrors as yet...
I still don't see the purpose of WSL
and I would really appreciate if someone could come up with a serious use case.
First to begin with, Windows shops are not interested in Linux. That's a fact. In all the places I've worked in the past 20 years, Linux was only used by few diehard fans, always looked upon with suspicion by the rest of the organization. If that army of Windows users would have had the slightest interest in Linux, a VM would have been a good start but speaking to any manager would trigger a reply varying from "no time for that" to "we're a Windows shop so we accept only Windows based solutions". I don't see how WSL would change this and what purpose could serve.
Then there is the development workstations. I might be wrong and I would appreciate to be corrected but even to this day there is no commercial software vendor for Linux desktop applications. Perhaps I'm not looking in the right direction but I can't find a market for Linux desktop applications. So all we're left with is server side applications that are developed for Linux which means no GUI needed since application will be accessed via the Internet browser running on Windows machines. The development of these applications has always been done and can still be done on a Windows/Mac machine, source pushed to a CVS repository/GitHub and pulled on the server with no difficulty.
So why is Microsoft insisting and Canonical/others happily obliging into this endeavor ? This is not going to increase the use of Linux. I don't see Windows regular users fiddling with their WSL to discover Linux and even if they would do it, Office will never run on Linux desktop and there will be no exclusive Linux desktop application so their interest will stop just right there. As it has been the situation for the past decades.
So who really benefits from this and what would be that benefit ?