Being the most popular Linux distribution, it is normal that a large percentage of the news about distributions based on the Torvalds Linux kernel is related to Ubuntu. It is not always good news, since sometimes they impose changes that part of the community does not like, but it is what it is. About the one we bring you today, if I had to give my opinion and do it honestly, I wouldn't be able to. I would have to put it to the test first.
And it is that projects of weight in the Linux world are experimenting with the immutability. What's that? Well, while we can sometimes read about this as the property that makes a system read-only, I prefer to think of it as something more restrictive, for the sake of security and reliability. In other words, a system that is more difficult to break, and if we took it to the extreme we would have the original iPhone OS from which it was not even possible to change the wallpaper.
Ubuntu 24.04 would arrive in two versions: the normal and the immutable
But don't be nervous. First, because we are talking about an experiment that we will see for the first time in April 2024, coinciding with the launch of Ubuntu 22.04, and that will be a separate version. Second, because immutable is not synonymous with not being able to do anything. Certain changes may be made, and installing apps will always be a possibility. But, unlike what Fedora proposes (silverblue), this Ubuntu will rely on Canonical's Snap packages, not flatpaks.
For eight years, Canonical has already offered an immutable version of its operating system, but it is not one for the desktop. It's a Ubuntu core which is designed for the Internet of Things (IoT). What they plan to launch in ten months will be a mitigation-proof Ubuntu desktop, and also for anyone who wants to try it.
The question that remains for me is the performance. Snap packages take a while to open the first time they are launched after starting the operating system, but the truth is that the strength of snap packages is that they can package all kinds of software, like drivers and so on. Overall operating system performance should not be affected, but applications may take a little longer to open. And not just Firefox and Telegram. All.
Be that as it may, there are still ten months until we see this Ubuntu Immutable. And the main version will remain the normal one.