Rest Easy – Deb-Based Ubuntu Will Continue To Be Offered For A While Longer

Canonical is bringing some very significant changes to Ubuntu and that includes a new way of packaging and maintaining the system. That being said, the company will continue to provide support for both the .deb based and .snap based Ubuntu systems for a long time.

One of the most interesting decisions made by Canonical in the past couple of years, if we ignore the Ubuntu Touch systems, is to invest heavily in a new packaging system. An Ubuntu version built on Snappy is already out, but it’s not aimed at desktop users. Now, Canonical is working to provide the first Ubuntu desktop flavors packed with Snappy instead of the classic .deb, but it will take a while.

The original announcement regarding a new Ubuntu desktop based on Snappy packages was made a while back by Will Cooke from Canonical, but it raised a few questions. One of the most important of those questions was pretty obvious. What will happen with the current .deb-based Ubuntu image?

Ubuntu with Debian packages is not going anywhere soon

Canonical has assured users and developers alike that Ubuntu still has a very healthy relationship with Debian, and the company intends to provide the regular image for the foreseeable future. This means that all the other distros based on Ubuntu don’t have anything to worry about.

As it stands right now, Ubuntu still has only one version out, but that will probably change. Very soon, we’ll have two Ubuntu desktops, one that is powered by Unity 7 and X, based on .deb packages, and another that is using Mir and Unity 8, based on Snappy.