虽然比原定计划晚了几年，但Canonical现有不可变物联网发行版Ubuntu Core的桌面版开发工作已经恢复。工程副总裁Jon Seager在公司Discourse论坛上宣布，Canonical正在“加速Ubuntu Core桌面版”的开发。甚至在他发布公告之前，该项目的GitHub上就已经出现了一些新的活动。这篇帖子解释了这项工作为何进展如此迟缓，设想了三个潜在用例，并简要谈及了为实现最终落地而已经在进行的工作。
It's a few years behind schedule, but development has resumed on the desktop edition of Canonical's existing immutable IoT distro, Ubuntu Core. Engineering veep Jon Seager announced that Canonical is Accelerating Ubuntu Core Desktop on the company's Discourse forum. Even before his announcement, there was some fresh activity on the project's GitHub. The post gives some explanation of why the effort is running so late, envisions three potential use cases, and talks a little about the work that is already going on to enable it to finally happen.
帖子没有给出明确的时间表，但Seager表示，“在即将到来的发布周期中”，团队将弄清楚需要做哪些工作，这意味着“在未来几周内，我们将准备好相关基础设施……用于Ubuntu Core桌面版的每日镜像构建”。“加速”听起来不错，但即便怀着最大的善意，它也几乎不可能让进度变慢。2023年年中，桌面版Ubuntu Core看起来有望在2024年面世，并在当年于拉脱维亚里加举行的Ubuntu峰会上透露了更多细节。
There's no solid timeline given, but Seager says that "over the coming release cycle" the team will be working out what needs to happen, which means that "over the coming weeks, we'll have the infrastructure ready for… daily image builds for Ubuntu Core Desktop." "Accelerating" sounds good, but with the best will in the world, it could hardly slow it down. In mid-2023 it looked like Desktop Ubuntu Core would arrive in 2024, and at that year's Ubuntu Summit in Rīga, Latvia, it revealed more details.
在2024年峰会上，有一场关于KDE版本的演讲——但没有发布。在2025年峰会上，本刊FOSS栏目采访了Seager，我们的第一个问题就是“Core桌面版在哪里？”他在帖子中讨论的三个角色分别是“以浏览器为中心的机器”、“开发者工作站”和“游戏机”。对本刊而言，这些目标意味着两件不同的事。总体来看，这似乎表明该公司警惕过早打造过于专门化的东西，然后发现它不够通用，无法胜任更具挑战性的角色。
At the 2024 Summit, there was a talk about a KDE version – but no release. At the 2025 Summit, the Reg FOSS desk interviewed Seager and "Where's Core Desktop?" was our first question. The three roles his post discusses are the "browser-centric machine", a "developer workstation," and a "gaming machine." For this vulture, these goals imply two separate things. In general, this seems to indicate that it's wary of making something too specialized early on, then finding that it's not versatile enough for more challenging roles.
其次，我们认为该公司正在考虑三个特定的细分领域，而竞争对手的不可变发行版已经成功占据了这些领域多年。目前，“以浏览器为中心”这一领域由ChromeOS和ChromeOS Flex占据。我们使用Flex——它相当不错，尽管由于基于安卓的新GooglebookOS的出现，它的日子已经屈指可数了。
Secondly, we think that the company is thinking of three specific niches that rival immutable distros have occupied successfully for years. Right now, the "browser-centric" one is filled by ChromeOS and ChromeOS Flex. We use Flex – it's pretty good, even if its days are now numbered due to the new Android-based GooglebookOS.
其次，Fedora 的 Atomic 版本已经存在多年——早在五年前就提到了 Fedora Kinoite。除了 Fedora 自有的版本之外，还有基于相同技术、由社区主导的发行版，称为 Universal Blue。我们尝试了几个，虽然目前它们提供的功能不多，但无疑都能正常运行，而且拥有满意的用户。Fedora 的营销面向开发者，而一个带有容器化环境的不可变发行版，不容易因为崩溃的半成品代码而意外损坏。
Secondly, Fedora's Atomic editions have been around for years now – The first mentioned Fedora Kinoite well over five years ago. As well as Fedoras's own versions, there are also community-led distros based on the same tech, called Universal Blue. We've tried several, and while for now they offer nothing much this vulture wants, they undeniably work and they have happy users. Fedora's marketing aims at developers, and an immutable distro with containerized environments on top is harder to accidentally break with crashy work-in-progress code.
第三，游戏机这个细分领域由 Valve 的 SteamOS 掌控。虽然它是原生针对 Steam Deck 的——如果你属于少数幸运者，Steam Machine 和 Steam Frame 也是它的产品——但你也可以在自己的 AMD 硬件上运行它。这三个产品家族都已经稳定运行了五到十年。Canonical 落后了，这本身就是一种微妙承认：它知道谁是领导者。
Thirdly, the games-machine niche is owned by Valve's SteamOS. Although it is native to the Steam Deck – and if you're among the lucky few, the Steam Machine and Steam Frame – you are also free to run this on your own AMD-based kit. All three of these product families have been well-established for between five to ten years now. Canonical is lagging behind, and this is a subtle acknowledgement that it knows who the leaders are.
我们并不怀疑他懂行——一年前，Seager 关于“不可变 Linux 悖论”的博文深入探讨了其中的差异。交付不可变桌面延迟的原因并不是缺乏不可变发行版技术：Canonical 早就有了。十年前就发布了 Ubuntu Core 16，而我们测试 Ubuntu Core 时，那是第四个版本。Seager 的博文指出了延迟其 Core Desktop 的几个问题。
We didn't doubt that he knows his stuff – a year ago, Seager’s blog post about The Immutable Linux Paradox went into the differences in depth. The delay in delivering an immutable desktop is not for lack of immutable-distro technology: Canonical's had that for years. It announced Ubuntu Core 16 a decade ago, and when we tried Ubuntu Core, that was the fourth release. Seager's post identifies some of the problems that have delayed its Core Desktop.
其中之一是，2023 年预览版需要基于 Core22 snap 的专门修改版本。显然，公司更希望它基于现有的 Core 发行版。他还指出了一些不明显的底层技术问题。他提到 Snap Store 已经拥有超过 11,000 个包，但指出许多包仍然使用较弱的“经典”限制——例如 VS Code。这对 Core 来说是个问题，因为 Core 要求严格的限制。
One is that the 2023 preview required its own, specially modified version of the base core22 snap. Obviously, the company would prefer that it was based on the existing Core distro. He also points to some essential underlying tech that is not obvious. He mentions that the Snap Store already has over 11,000 packages, but notes that many still use weak "classic" confinement – such as VS Code. This is a problem for Core, which requires strict confinement.
他还指出了一些不太明显但必须先解决的事项，包括类似智能手机的权限提示、快照之间的依赖关系、内容快照以及快照组件。部分计划虽然雄心勃勃，却是好事。他讨论了桌面 snap 包的模块化需求，以免 Core Desktop 只能局限于 GNOME。这意味着要将显示管理器（即屏幕）与桌面分离，并将桌面与浏览器分离。
He also notes some less-obvious things that need to work first, including smartphone-style permissions prompting, inter-snap dependencies, content snaps and snap components. Some of the plans are ambitious, but in good ways. He discusses the need for modularity in the desktop snap packages, so that Core Desktop won’t be restricted to only GNOME. This means isolating the display manager (that is, the screen) from the desktop, and the desktop from the browser.
在此，他对外部咨询公司 enioka Haute Couture 在 KDE snap 上的工作表示了肯定。普通的桌面 Linux 发行版仍然太容易出现故障。根据这位老手的丰富个人经验，Btrfs 文件系统尤其脆弱。在 2010 年代每日使用基于 Btrfs 的发行版的四年里，我们看到因 Btrfs 卷损坏导致的崩溃次数超过了前二十年。然而，所有基于 Btrfs 的操作系统厂商都坚决否认其真实问题，这导致这些问题始终得不到修复。SteamOS 和 KDE Linux 都使用双…
Here, he gives a nod to external consultancy enioka Haute Couture for its work on KDE snaps. It's still much too easy to break any ordinary desktop Linux distro. In this vulture's extensive personal experience, the Btrfs filesystem is especially vulnerable. In four years of daily-driving a Btrfs-based distro in the 20-teens, we saw more crashes due to corrupted Btrfs volumes than in the previous two decades. However, all the vendors of Btrfs-based OSes are resolute in their denial about its real problems, which means they never get fixed. SteamOS and KDE Linux both use dual