Ubuntu’s Snappy for Docker Containers Now Available on Google Cloud
Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, a leading Linux distributor, announced earlier this month the launch of Ubuntu Core, a stripped-down version of their OS that is specifically designed for large-scale cloud deployments that optimized for running applications within Dockers’ containers. Microsoft was the first cloud vendor to get on board with this, and made it available on Microsoft’s Azure cloud, and as of yesterday it will now also be available on Google’s Compute Engine, the giant’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service offering. An earlier preview edition, dubbed “Snappy,” was released last week.
Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu and Canonical wrote a post on his blog about the launch earlier this month with an accompanying YouTube video (featured below.) The post was titled ‘Announcing Ubuntu Core, with snappy transactional updates!’ It expresses excitement over the new launch, and explained how Ubuntu Core was developed as a result of lessons that have been learned from Canonical’s efforts to get Ubuntu running on phones, in their pursuit to improve reliability and security in the mobile market.
In the blog post Shuttleworth explained, “We call it “snappy” because that’s the new bullet-proof mechanism for app delivery and system updates; it’s completely different to the traditional package-based Ubuntu server and desktop. The snappy system keeps each part of Ubuntu in a separate, read-only file, and does the same for each application. That way, developers can deliver everything they need to be confident their app will work exactly as they intend, and we can take steps to keep the various apps isolated from one another, and ensure that updates are always perfect. Of course, that means that apt-get won’t work, but that’s OK since developers can reuse debs to make their snappy apps, and the core system is exactly the same as any other Ubuntu system – server or desktop.”
