Canonical resumes work on Ubuntu Core Desktop with daily builds planned

Canonical has resumed development of the desktop edition of its immutable Ubuntu Core operating system after several years of delay. Engineering vice president Jon Seager announced the effort as "Accelerating Ubuntu Core Desktop" on the company's Discourse forum, and the project's GitHub has seen fresh activity. Seager says the team will spend the coming release cycle working out what is needed, with infrastructure for daily image builds expected in the coming weeks.

Background and delays

Canonical announced Ubuntu Core 16 a decade ago, and The Register later tried Ubuntu Core in its fourth release. In mid-2023, Desktop Ubuntu Core looked set to arrive in 2024, and Canonical revealed more details at the 2023 Ubuntu Summit in Riga. A talk about a KDE version followed at the 2024 Summit, but no release came. At the 2025 Summit, The Register interviewed Seager and made "Where's Core Desktop?" its first question.

Intended use cases and rivals

Seager's post discusses three roles: a "browser-centric machine," a "developer workstation," and a "gaming machine." The Register reads these as signs that Canonical wants to avoid making something too specialized too early. It also sees them as three niches occupied by rival immutable systems: ChromeOS and ChromeOS Flex for browser-centric machines, with ChromeOS Flex's days now numbered because of the new Android-based GooglebookOS; Fedora Atomic editions and Universal Blue community distros for developers; and Valve's SteamOS for games. SteamOS runs on the Steam Deck and, for some users, the Steam Machine and Steam Frame, and can also run on users' own AMD-based hardware. All three product families have been established for five to ten years, and Canonical is lagging behind.

Technical blockers and next steps

The 2023 preview required its own specially modified version of the base core22 snap, while Canonical would prefer the desktop to be based on the existing Core distro. Seager points to Snap Store scale and confinement: the store has over 11,000 packages, but many still use "classic" confinement, such as VS Code, while Core requires strict confinement. He also cites smartphone-style permissions prompting, inter-snap dependencies, content snaps, and snap components. The post calls for modularity in desktop snap packages so Core Desktop is not limited to GNOME, including isolating the display manager from the desktop and the desktop from the browser, and it credits enioka Haute Couture for work on KDE snaps. Seager's earlier blog post, "The Immutable Linux Paradox," examined the differences in depth. There are still blockers before Canonical can deliver a versatile, modular desktop version of its immutable OS, but the company is trying again, and there is hope for previews in the Ubuntu 27.04 timeframe.

Sources: The Register