Desktop

Igor Ljubuncic
22 August 2019

Useful security software from the Snap Store

Article Desktop

Overall, most Linux distributions offer sane, reasonable defaults that balance security and functionality quite well. However, most of the security mechanisms are transparent, running in the background, and you still might require some additional, practical software to bolster your security array. Back in July, we...

Igor Ljubuncic
22 August 2019

Sarah Dickinson
21 August 2019

Jupyter looks to distro-agnostic packaging for the democratisation of installation

Article Desktop

When users of your application range from high school students to expert data scientists, it’s often wise to avoid any assumptions about their system configurations. The Jupyter Notebook is popular with a diverse user base, enabling the creation and sharing of documents containing live code, visualisations, and...

Sarah Dickinson
21 August 2019

Sarah Dickinson
12 August 2019

Julia and Jeff discover the ease of snaps at the Snapcraft Summit

Desktop Desktop

Julia is an open source, high-level, general-purpose, dynamic programming language designed for numerical analysis and computational science, launched in 2012. It solves the “two language” problem: developers can use Julia for both computational and interactive work, instead of needing to work with two different...

Sarah Dickinson
12 August 2019

Canonical
9 August 2019

Enhanced Livepatch desktop integration available with Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS

Article Desktop

Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS has just been released. For the Desktop, newer stable versions of GNOME components have been included, as well as a new feature – Livepatch desktop integration. As usual with LTS point releases, the main changes are a refreshed hardware enablement stack (newer versions of the kernel, xorg & drivers)...

Canonical
9 August 2019

Igor Ljubuncic
8 August 2019

Slow snap? Trace-exec to the rescue!

Article Desktop

Slow applications are never fun. But not knowing why an application is not behaving correctly can be even more frustrating. A well-designed system that can diagnose performance or startup issues and inform the user about the problem goes a long way toward mitigating the frustration, and may even help resolve the root...

Igor Ljubuncic
8 August 2019

didrocks
7 August 2019

Enhancing our ZFS support on Ubuntu 19.10 – an introduction

Article Desktop

Ubuntu has supported ZFS as an option for some time. We started with a file-based ZFS pool on Ubuntu 15.10, then delivered it as a FS container in 16.04, and recommended it for the fastest and most reliable container experience on LXD. We have also created some dedicated tutorials for users who want to become

didrocks
7 August 2019

Sarah Dickinson
29 July 2019

Manjaro, snaps and the spirit of collaboration

Desktop Desktop

Linux distributions are all about freedom of choice for the end-user. However, there is a natural element of competition too. So, why did Philip Müller, one of the founders of the Manjaro distribution, come to the 2019 Snapcraft Summit in Montreal? There are several good reasons, according to Philip. First, he says,...

Sarah Dickinson
29 July 2019

Igor Ljubuncic
25 July 2019

Handy productivity software for your home and office

Article Desktop

Discovery is an integral part of any store experience. Sometimes, you know what you want and need, and the experience can be short and transactional. On other occasions, you want to explore, and search for new things. This applies equally to shopping malls as it does to software. In this article, we would like to

Igor Ljubuncic
25 July 2019

Sarah Dickinson
23 July 2019

Community Snapcrafter on MicroK8s, summits and the evolving nature of snaps

Article Desktop

In January 2018, Dani Llewellyn joined her first Snapcraft Summit in Seattle in her role as a community Snapcrafter. At that event, we discussed her views on everything snap related from most requested snaps, new feature requests and popular discussion topics. Since then, snaps has grown across every metric and seen...

Sarah Dickinson
23 July 2019

Sarah Dickinson
18 July 2019

CMake leverages the Snapcraft Summit with Travis CI to build snaps

Article Desktop

CMake is an open-source, cross-platform family of tools designed to build, test and package software. It is used to control the software compilation process and generate native makefiles and workspaces that can be used in any compiler environment. While some users of CMake want to stay up to date with the latest...

Sarah Dickinson
18 July 2019

Igor Ljubuncic
18 July 2019

Handy snapcraft features: Remote build

Article Desktop

As you probably know, there are many ways you can build snaps: locally using snapcraft, with CI systems like Travis, through Launchpad, and also via the free online Snapcraft Build Service. Now, a new preview feature called Remote build also allows you to build snaps for multiple architectures directly from the command...

Igor Ljubuncic
18 July 2019

Sarah Dickinson
15 July 2019

Octave turns to snaps to reduce dependency on Linux distribution maintainers

Article Desktop

Octave is a numerical computing environment largely compatible with MATLAB. As free software, Octave runs on GNU/Linux, macOS, BSD, and Windows. At the 2019 Snapcraft Summit, Mike Miller and Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso of the Octave team worked on creating an Octave snap in stable and beta versions for the Snap Store. As...

Sarah Dickinson
15 July 2019

Alex Hung
8 July 2019

Analyze ACPI Tables in a Text File with FWTS

Article Cloud and server

I often need to implement tests for new ACPI tables before they become available on real hardware. Fortunately, FWTS provides a framework to read ACPI tables’ binary. The below technique is especially convenient for ACPI firmware and OS kernel developers. It provides a simple approach to verifying ACPI tables without...

Alex Hung
8 July 2019

Igor Ljubuncic
4 July 2019

Faster snap development – additional tips and tricks

Article Desktop

Recently, we published several blog posts, aimed at helping developers enjoy a smoother, faster, more streamlined experience creating snaps. We discussed the tools and tricks you can employ in snapcraft to accelerate the speed at which you iterate on your builds. We want to continue the work presented in the Make your...

Igor Ljubuncic
4 July 2019

All you need to know about the fast, free, and user friendly Ubuntu desktop operating system.

All you need to know about the fast, free, and user friendly
Ubuntu desktop operating system.