Mark Shuttleworth’s all-snap Ubuntu system dream is soon becoming a reality as the Ubuntu developers are currently discussing a strategy to bring Snaps by default in the upcoming release, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.
Snap, the universal Linux binary format from Canonical, allows us to run the most recent versions of apps on day one. The developers of the Ubuntu MATE official Ubuntu flavor pioneered the concept of Snaps by default for their distribution with the release of Ubuntu MATE 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) by shipping a tiny PulseAudio mixer command-line app to get the pulse of the community.
As things went well on their side and no issues were reported by users so far, now the Ubuntu team laid down plans on a mechanism that should allow users to install Snaps on a freshly installed Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) operating system from the ISO image.
Now that Ubuntu has switched to the GNOME desktop environment by default, the upcoming Ubuntu 18.04 LTS release should come with all the core GNOME desktop apps as Snaps by default. This means that users will be able to run the most recent GNOME apps on Ubuntu next year, and continue to receive new releases as they’re pushed upstream.
“We’ll have a “track” for the stable release, and then add GUI to allow users to switch to things like Beta or Edge very easily. This should mean that 18.04 could be running fresh GNOME apps (even on a later GNOME release) run up until the day support ends in a little over five years,” said Will Cooke, Ubuntu Desktop Director at Canonical.