Ubiquity NG - was Re: ubiquity migrated to git

[Didier Roche]

Le 05/05/2018 à 08:15, Mark Shuttleworth a écrit :
> Thanks Dimitri for this!
>
> I'd like to start a thread on Ubiquity NG, and this seems like the best
> place and time to start :)
>
> First, a trip down memory lane. MDZ and I were shooting the moon on a
> Saturday afternoon in my apartment in London when the idea for Ubiquity
> formed. A live CD that would let people try out Ubuntu, and then dive
> straight into the install, seemed like science fiction but quickly took
> shape on a piece of paper that I rather wish I'd kept. MDZ created
> Casper (the friendly ghost that most people won't see) and the rest is
> history.
>
> Now, 14 years later, we have a few new kinds of magic to draw on, and
> perhaps Ubiquity NG could take advantage of them.
>
> First, we have Curtin, which knows how to take a description of a
> machine and do-the-right-thing; partitioning, installing, and cleaning
> up. Curtin is neat and efficient, super-fast, and it's used by both MAAS
> and the new Ubuntu Server installer, Subiquity. It knows how to install
> a couple of different flavours of Linux, including Ubuntu and CentOS,
> which could be handy. It's probably the best place for us to handle new
> kinds of partitioning and root filesystem and network storage.
>
> Second, we have MAAS, which has some very nice HTML interfaces for
> configuring network and storage on a machine. All of that lines up with
> Curtin, because MAAS uses Curtin to do the actual install. So we have
> the beginnings of an HTML5 installer.
>
> Third, we have Electron, which is the HTML5 app framework used by world
> class app developers. Skype, Spotify and a ton of GREAT apps on Ubuntu
> are Electron apps.
>
> Fourth, we have snaps, which are just amazingly tasty ways to get the
> latest bits in the hands of your community.
>
> Who's game to sketch this further?
>
> Mark
>
>
Hey Mark,

Some of us on the desktop team are volunteering for that task.

I personnally remember when I received those 2 separate live and install 
CD from Ubuntu 4.10. I was already praising the number of 
simplifications that Ubuntu added in the Debian installer. However, this 
was nothing compared the first time I was able to experience ubiquity 
and this single live/install CD. I was quite amazed that was even 
doable! I still think that even if ubiquity is showing its age, it 
doesn't have any equivalent in term of friendliness, ease of use, and 
limiting the user interaction to the minimum required, while starting 
installing as quickly as possible.

This is one of the reason I'm personally motivated, like others in our 
team to give a help here, shaping the next standard of the existing 
installer space. Marrying those technologies will need some deep dive 
analysis of course, but I'm confident we can get there. Also, it's the 
perfect time for starting this effort as it's obviously a multi-cycles 
work to shape it with a robust, and strongly tested approach.

Just a warning, as most of the interested people are French, we aren't 
sure yet about the need for localization support…</french conspiracy> ;)

Cheers,
Didier