snappy vs.apt-get Ubuntu Matrix

With the recent introduction of Snappy Ubuntu, there are now several different ways to extend and update (apt-get vs. snappy) multiple flavors of Ubuntu (Core, Desktop, and Server).

We've put together this matrix with a few examples of where we think Traditional Ubuntu (apt-get) and Transactional Ubuntu (snappy) might make sense in your environment.  Note that this is, of course, not a comprehensive list.

	Ubuntu Core	Ubuntu Desktop	Ubuntu Server
Traditional apt-get	Minimal Docker and LXC images	Desktop, Laptop, Personal Workstations	Baremetal, MAAS, OpenStack, General Purpose Cloud Images
Transactional snappy	Minimal IoT Devices and Micro-Services Architecture Cloud Images	Touch, Phones, Tablets	Comfy, Human Developer Interaction (over SSH) in an atomically updated environment

I've presupposed a few of the questions you might ask, while you're digesting this new landscape...

Q: I'm looking for the smallest possible Ubuntu image that still supports apt-get...

A: You want our Traditional Ubuntu Core. This is often useful in building Docker and LXC containers.

Q: I'm building the next wearable IoT device/drone/robot, and perhaps deploying a fleet of atomically updated micro-services to the cloud...

A: You want Snappy Ubuntu Core.

Q: I want to install the best damn Linux on my laptop, desktop, or personal workstation, with industry best security practices, 30K+ freely available open source packages, freely available, with extensive support for hardware devices and proprietary add-ons...

A: You want the same Ubuntu Desktop that we've been shipping for 10+ years, on time, every time ;-)

Q: I want that same converged, tasteful Ubuntu experience on your personal, smart devices like my Phones and Tablets...

A: You want Ubuntu Touch, which is a very graphical human interface focused expression of Snappy Ubuntu.

Q: I'm deploying Linux onto bare metal servers at scale in the data center, perhaps building IaaS clouds using OpenStack or PaaS cloud using CloudFoundry? And I'm launching general purpose Linux server instances in public clouds (like AWS, Azure, or GCE) and private clouds...

A: You want the traditional apt-get Ubuntu Server.

Q: I'm developing and debugging applications, services, or frameworks for Snappy Ubuntu devices or cloud instances?

A: You want Comfy Ubuntu Server, which is a command line human interface extension of Snappy Ubuntu, with a number of conveniences and amenities (ssh, byobu, manpages, editors, etc.) that won't be typically included in the minimal Snappy Ubuntu Core build. [*Note that the Comfy images will be available very soon]

Cheers,
:-Dustin

Review: Ubuntu and an Intel NUC

Last week, I posed a question on Google+, looking for suggestions on a minimal physical format, x86 machine.  I was looking for something like a Raspberry Pi (of which I already have one), but really it had to be x86.

I was aware of a few options out there, but I was very fortunately introduced to one spectacular little box...the Intel NUC!

The unboxing experience is nothing short of pure marketing genius!

The "NUC" stands for Intel's Next Unit of Computing.  It's a compact little device, that ships barebones.  You need to add DDR3 memory (up to 16GB), an mSATA hard drive (if you want to boot locally), and an mSATA WiFi card (if you want wireless networking).

The physical form factor of all models is identical:

• 4.6" x 4.4" x 1.6"
• 11.7cm x 11.2cm x 4.1cm

There are 3 different processor options:

• Celeron 847
• i3 3217U
• i5 3427U

And there are three different peripheral setups:

• HDMI 1.4a (x2) + USB 2.0 (x3) + Gigabit ethernet
• HDMI 1.4a (x1) + Thunderbolt supporting DisplayPort 1.1a (x1) + USB 2.0 (x3)
• HDMI 1.4a (x1) + Mini DisplayPort 1.1a (x2) + USB 2.0 (x2); USB 3.0 (x1)

I ended up buying 3 of these last week, and reworked my audio/video and baby monitoring setup in the house last week.  I bought 2 of these (i3 + Ethernet) , and 1 of these (i3 + Thunderbolt)

Quite simply, I couldn't be happier with these little devices!

I used one of these to replace the dedicated audio/video PC (an x201 Thinkpad) hooked up in my theater.  The x201 was a beefy machine, with plenty of CPU and video capability.  But it was pretty bulky, rather noisy, and drew too much power.

And the other two are Baby-buntu baby monitors, as previously blogged here, replacing a real piece-of-crap Lenovo Q100 (Atom + SiS307DV and all the horror maligned with that sick chip set).

All 3 are now running Ubuntu 13.10, spectacularly I might add!  All of the hardware cooperated perfectly.

Here are the two views that I really wanted Amazon to show me, as I was buying the device...what the inside looks like!  You can see two mSATA ports and red/black WiFi antenna leads on the left, and two DDR3 slots on the right.

On the left, you can now see a 24GB mSATA SSD, and beneath it (not visible) is an Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235 WiFi adapter.  On the right, I have two 8GB DDR3 memory modules.

Note, to get wireless working properly I did have to:

echo "options iwlwifi 11n_disable=1" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf

The BIOS is really super fancy :-)  There's a mouse and everything.  I made a few minor tweaks, to the boot order, assigned 512MB of memory to the display adapter, and configured it to power itself back on at any power loss.

Speaking of power, it sustains about 10 watts of power, at idle, which costs me about $11/year in electricity.

Some of you might be interested in some rough disk IO statistics...

kirkland@living:~⟫ sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
 Timing cached reads:   11306 MB in  2.00 seconds = 5657.65 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 1478 MB in  3.00 seconds = 492.32 MB/sec

And the lshw output...

    description: Desktop Computer
    product: (To be filled by O.E.M.)
    width: 64 bits
    capabilities: smbios-2.7 dmi-2.7 vsyscall32
    configuration: boot=normal chassis=desktop family=To be filled by O.E.M. sku=To be filled by O.E.M. uuid=[redacted]
  *-core
       description: Motherboard
       product: D33217CK
       vendor: Intel Corporation
       physical id: 0
       version: G76541-300
       serial: [redacted]
     *-firmware
          description: BIOS
          vendor: Intel Corp.
          physical id: 0
          version: GKPPT10H.86A.0025.2012.1011.1534
          date: 10/11/2012
          size: 64KiB
          capacity: 6336KiB
          capabilities: pci upgrade shadowing cdboot bootselect socketedrom edd int13floppy1200 int13floppy720 int13floppy2880 int5printscreen int14serial int17printer acpi usb biosbootspecification uefi
     *-cache:0
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 66MHz
             capabilities: storage msi pm ahci_1.0 bus_master cap_list
             configuration: driver=ahci latency=0
             resources: irq:40 ioport:f0b0(size=8) ioport:f0a0(size=4) ioport:f090(size=8) ioport:f080(size=4) ioport:f060(size=32) memory:f6906000-f69067ff
        *-serial UNCLAIMED
             description: SMBus
             product: 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 1f.3
             bus info: pci@0000:00:1f.3
             version: 04
             width: 64 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             configuration: latency=0
             resources: memory:f6905000-f69050ff ioport:f040(size=32)
     *-scsi
          physical id: 1
          logical name: scsi0
          capabilities: emulated
        *-disk
             description: ATA Disk
             product: BP4 mSATA SSD
             physical id: 0.0.0
             bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0
             logical name: /dev/sda
             version: S8FM
             serial: [redacted]
             size: 29GiB (32GB)
             capabilities: gpt-1.00 partitioned partitioned:gpt
             configuration: ansiversion=5 guid=be0ab026-45c1-4bd5-a023-1182fe75194e sectorsize=512
           *-volume:0
                description: Windows FAT volume
                vendor: mkdosfs
                physical id: 1
                bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0,1
                logical name: /dev/sda1
                logical name: /boot/efi
                version: FAT32
                serial: 2252-bc3f
                size: 486MiB
                capacity: 486MiB
                capabilities: boot fat initialized
                configuration: FATs=2 filesystem=fat mount.fstype=vfat mount.options=rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro state=mounted
           *-volume:1
                description: EXT4 volume
                vendor: Linux
                physical id: 2
                bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0,2
                logical name: /dev/sda2
                logical name: /
                version: 1.0
                serial: [redacted]
                size: 25GiB
                capabilities: journaled extended_attributes large_files huge_files dir_nlink recover extents ext4 ext2 initialized
                configuration: created=2013-11-06 13:01:57 filesystem=ext4 lastmountpoint=/ modified=2013-11-12 15:38:33 mount.fstype=ext4 mount.options=rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro,data=ordered mounted=2013-11-12 15:38:33 state=mounted
           *-volume:2
                description: Linux swap volume
                vendor: Linux
                physical id: 3
                bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0,3
                logical name: /dev/sda3
                version: 1
                serial: [redacted]
                size: 3994MiB
                capacity: 3994MiB
                capabilities: nofs swap initialized
                configuration: filesystem=swap pagesize=4095

It also supports: virtualization technology, S3/S4/S5 sleep states, Wake-on-LAN, and PXE boot.  Sadly, it does not support IPMI :-(

Finally, it's worth noting that I bought the model with the i3 for a specific purpose...  These three machines all have full virtualization capabilities (KVM).  Which means these little boxes, with their dual-core hyper-threaded CPUs and 16GB of RAM are about to become Nova compute nodes in my local OpenStack cluster ;-)  That will be a separate blog post ;-)

Dustin

My Linux Rigs

Steven Ovadia graciously invited me to participate in his collection of Linux desktops surveyed in his blog, My Linux Rig...  My answers to his interview are cross-posted on both his site and mine.  Enjoy!

1. Who are you, and what do you do?

My name is Dustin Kirkland.

I work for Mark Shuttleworth at Canonical, as a Product Manager on the Ubuntu Cloud, building enterprise solutions and server products on top of Ubuntu.  My work on open source software at Canonical often spills over into my nights and weekends, developing free software for fun as well. I have authored, and continue to maintain over two dozen open source projects, including Byobu, eCryptfs, among others.

2. Why do you use Linux?

I have been using Linux since 1997, when I was in college at Texas A&M University.  For one Computer Science class, I was "required" to buy a Zip Drive, which could hold 100MB on a special (i.e. expensive) proprietary disk cartridge.  This seemed like an absolutely awful solution to the problem of carrying data from one place to another (and Dropbox wouldn't be invented for another 11 years).

I negotiated with that professor to let me use a web server on the Internet for uploading and downloading my assignments.  So I bought a few hundred MBs from a web host in 1997.  When I received my credentials, I quickly realized that I would need an SSH client and that I would have to learn Red Hat Linux.  So I bought a book and immediately fell in love!

I used Red Hat Linux until Fedora was released, running that until 2006 when I first installed Ubuntu.  My wife was an elementary school teacher at the time, and I installed Edubuntu on a couple of perfectly-working-but-old computers that her school had basically thrown away :-(  I rescued them out of the trash, and installed Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake).  Days later, I installed MythTV on Ubuntu on several machines I had throughout the house, and I was smitten.  I never really returned to Red Hat based system.  Almost everything in Ubuntu just worked, and where it didn't, there was an abundance of quality documentation.

Professionally, I worked at IBM in Tivoli and the Linux Technology Center in Austin, TX from 2000-2007, on various aspects of Linux security and certifications.  I also spent most of 2005 working for IBM on-site at Red Hat in Westford, MA, making some excellent friends and helping enable RHEL on PowerPC.  In 2008, I started working at Canonical, as one of the early developers building the Ubuntu server and virtualization platform.

We run Linux almost exclusively in the Kirkland house.  Looking at my dd-wrt router for static IP leases, I can count over 40 active Linux devices currently drawing IP addresses!  A couple of laptops (Ubuntu, ChromeOS), desktops (Ubuntu), routers (dd-wrt), TVs, PS3's, phones (Android, Ubuntu Touch), tablets (Android, Ubuntu Touch), Kindles, a Chumby, a Raspberry Pi, Synology NAS, etc.  I do have one Mac Mini running OS X, for a few apps that have no viable workaround on Linux (mostly crappy teleconference software used by Windows/Mac users).

Across the board, Linux has given me the power and flexibility I expect out of computing systems, for nearly two decades.  And what's most amazing is that it just keeps getting better!

3. What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?

Ubuntu.  I am an Ubuntu Core Developer, and I tend to run the development (bleeding edge) Ubuntu Desktop and Server (in virtual machines and containers).

4. What desktop environment do you use and why do you use it?

Unity.  I use Unity mostly in the interest of dog-fooding the default Ubuntu setup.  Frankly, I have very little need of a desktop environment.  Unity works fine for me.  Though so does Gnome, KDE, XFCE, etc.

Basically, I need a browser (Chromium), an IRC client (xchat2), a terminal (gnome-terminal), and my desktop manager to stay out of my way :-)

5. What one piece of software do you depend upon with this distribution? Why is it so important?

Byobu.

I use Byobu all day, every day.  I usually run Byobu in a gnome-terminal, maximized on a 1920x1080 Samsung 40" LCD.  I then use splits (Shift-F2, Ctrl-F2) to carve up my terminal into smaller panes.  Some horizontal (builds or something with lots of scrolling output), some vertical (side-by-side code review), some combinations (dev + test + monitoring) -- whatever makes sense for my current task.  I use the keyboard to navigate around those splits (Shift-Up/Down/Left/Right).  Sometimes I'll create a new window (F2), if I want to background some work in a separate window, with its own splits.  If I need to SSH to a remote system, I open a new tab in gnome-terminal (Shift-Ctrl-t), and attach to a remote Byobu session, where perhaps I've left some other work running in the background.  I use Byobu's status line at the bottom to monitor what machine I'm on, it's distro and version, an updates that are available, uptime count, CPU speed and temperature, battery level, WiFi signal, system load, memory usage, hostname/IP address, and the time/date.  Byobu adds hours of productivity to my work week, every week :-)

6. What kind of hardware do you run this setup on?

I currently use a Thinkpad x230 with a dual-core hyper-threaded i7, 16GB of RAM, 240GB Intel SSD, 9-cell battery.

I absolutely love the 12" form factor, as it's nice an compact for traveling while still offering beast mode CPU/Memory.  The 9-cell battery gives me 8+ hours of up time.  I tend to replace my primary laptop on a yearly basis and sell my gently used model on CraigsList, or give it to a family member.

When I'm not traveling or working from my front/back porch, I keep it in a docking station, attached to a 40" Samsung LCD (primary monitor) and a 23" Samsung LCD (secondary monitor), a Logitech c920 web cam, Klipsch THX 2.1 speakers, gigabit Ethernet, a Simtec entropy key, a Yubikey multi-factor auth, and a Thinkpad USB keyboard.

I have used Thinkpads since about 2000, and I'm generally a pretty big fan.  I simply cannot live without "the dot".  I might consider an HP or Dell laptop sometime, but it absolutely must have a Track point, as I like to keep my fingers on the keyboard, in the home position, and still have access to the cursor.  I disable touch pads with a vengeance, and then curse the engineers who continue to embed them in laptops :-)

7. Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?

Sure.  I usually run my browser/terminal/IRC maximized in the 40" monitor on the left, and use the 23" monitor on the right only when using Skype or G+ Hangouts.  The background is just the stock Ubuntu background.  No icons on my desktop.  Ever, ever, ever.

Cheers!
:-Dustin

5.1 Ubuntu Login Sound now in a PPA!

 

Thanks for all the positive feedback to my last post!  I have made a couple of updates to the 5.1 channel Ubuntu login sound, namely:

1. Remastered based on the original wav files, since my previous version was based on the lossy, compressed ogg files.
2. Adjusted a couple of levels, having actually tested it on as many different 5.1 and 2-channel stereo environments I could find.
3. Updated the ubuntu-sounds package and pushed to bzr and a PPA for easier installation on lucid, maverick, natty, or oneiric!

So now, you can install the 5.1 channel Ubuntu login sound easily from this PPA to any supported Ubuntu release with:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:kirkland/sound
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-sounds

Log out, and then log back in.  If your Ubuntu system is hooked up (correctly) to a 5.1 stereo receiver, then you should hear the login sound start in the center speaker, then spread outwards to the front left and right channels, with the sound moving from the front to the rear for the whoosh and crickets at the end.  Oh, and the bongos should be bumpin' in your sub woofer :-)

If you're interested in the sources, they're in bzr too:

bzr branch lp:~kirkland/ubuntu-sounds/834802

Finally, if you'd like to see this land in Ubuntu, mark bug #834802 as "affects me too"!

I'll embed the audio here, but it sounds really different in the various browsers I've tested (Firefox, Chromium, Chrome).  Sounds like the the multi-channel OGG is being correctly passed to Pulse Audio for proper downmixing/discrete playback in Firefox, but not in Chrome/Chromium.  So your mileage may vary! :-)







Cheers!
:-Dustin

The Ubuntu Login Sound in 5.1 Channel Glory

It was way too hot here in Austin, Texas this weekend, as it hit 110F on Sunday!  So I spent most of the heat of the day inside, toying with something that I think is pretty cool :-)  I couldn't find any OS today (Mac, Windows, or Linux) that has a 5.1 channel login sound...  I'm hoping that Ubuntu might be the first!

I have 7.1 channel surround sound in my home theater, which is great for watching movies.  Hooked up to my projector is (of course) an Ubuntu nettop, which I use to stream and serve most of my media content.

I thought it would be neat to remix the Ubuntu login sound in 5.1 channels, to exercise my theater's surround sound at boot.

So I grabbed the familiar "drums and crickets" OGG file, which you can find at /usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/desktop-login.ogg, and opened it in audacity, a phenomenal open source mixer.  I split that stereo track into two mono tracks, and then added four more blank tracks.

The first two tracks are the Left and Right channels, respectively, followed by the Center channel, the Sub woofer channel, and then the Surround Left and Surround Right channels.  I copied the Left and Right channels to the Surround Left and Surround Right channels.

Then, I opened the original desktop-login.ogg again, and mixed that stereo track to a single mono track.  I took that mono track and copied it to the Center and Sub woofer channels.

Okay, now I had 6 tracks ... time to start playing with them!

I decided that I wanted the "crickets and wind" at the end of the clip to be exclusively in my rear, surround channels.  So I silenced the Surround Left and Surround Right tracks until about the 3.85 second mark, and then faded in from 3.85 seconds to 5.43 seconds, and faded out from 5.43 seconds until the end of the clip.  Since I wanted that sound exclusively in the rear channels, I silenced each of the Left, Right, Center, and Sub woofer channels from the 5.0 second mark, until the end of the clip.  Next, I smoothly faded out the Left and Right channels from about 2.21 until the 4.54 second marks.

For the intro, I wanted the first few drum beats to emanate from the center channel, and then spread wide to the Left and Right channels, right up to the big cymbal crash and the crescendo of the clip.  So I took the Center channel and added a very long fade, from the 0.30 second mark until about 3.97 seconds.  And then I set the Left and Right channels to slowly fade in, from 0 seconds to about 1.48 seconds.

Finally, I took the bass track and de-amplified it way down.  And then I applied a low-pass bass boost filter several times, until the lowest hits of the bass drum are the only audible parts of the track.

Want to hear it for yourself?  Well, you'll have to have 5.1 speakers in a true Surround Sound setup...  If so, grab the [flac, ogg, or wav] file, and open it in smplayer, ensuring that you have 5.1 channel sound enabled in smplayer.

With the right equipment, you should be in for a treat!  The first few drum beats you'll hear in your Center channel along with some solid, thumping bass hits.  The sound should spread quickly from the Center, fanning outward toward your Right and Left channels right up to the big crashing cymbal!  And with that crescendo, the Left, Right, Center, and Sub should all gracefully fall silent, while the crickets and the wooshing wind sweep back to your Rear Left and Rear Right channels!

Don't have 5.1 sound?  Well, you can still listen to each track individually.  Grab the [flac, ogg, or wav] file, and open it in audacity.  You should see 6 channels vertically down your screen.  You can click the Solo button next to each track, and listen to each track one-by-one.  Make sure you un-click the Solo button between plays.  This might give you a decent idea of how each of the channels come together.

Fancy yourself a sound producer?  Remix it again and share :-)  I have the wav sources up at lp:~kirkland/ubuntu-sounds/834802. Better yet, how about creating a whole new Ubuntu login sound?  :-)  Maybe one day....

From the right side of my brain,
:-Dustin

Distro Breakdown in the Netflix/Linux Petition

I was pretty stoked to read earlier this month that ChromeOS and Chrome/Chromium was getting a Netflix app in the Chrome Webstore.  I installed it earlier tonight, but sadly it's not working on Chrome or Chromium on Ubuntu.  I installed it on my Cr-48, and it worked there.  Reports on the page indicate that it's working on Chrome/Windows.  But Chrome/Chromium on Linux -- no dice :-(

So the Netflix-on-Linux blues continue, unfortunately :-(

In looking for workarounds, I came across this web petition for Netflix-on-Linux support:

• http://www.petitiononline.com/Linflix/ 

So I signed the petition and was impressed to see 16,518 other signatures!

In fact, I downloaded all of the signatures and did a little (far from scientific) grepping of my own to see where Ubuntu stood among the other desktops in the signature list.  Ubuntu lands at nearly 70%.  Impressive!

Ubuntu 11433 69.2% Fedora/RH/CentOS 1600 9.7% Mint 1092 6.6% Arch 891 5.4% Debian 856 5.2% SuSE 596 3.6% Other 50 0.3% 16518

:-Dustin