A recent discussion on the Ubuntu Snappy Core mailing list revealed the fact the operating system for embedded and IoT (Internet of Things) devices will feature a new, much cleaner all-snap architecture.

On November 25, someone asked on the Snappy mailing list if he can install the Ubuntu Core operating system on a 64-bit (x86_64) bare-metal network switch manufactured by Open Network Install Environment (ONIE), with the Legacy BIOS mode enabled by default.

"I'd like to do this with a standard ONIE NOS Installer which will preserve ONIE on the disk and allow booting back into ONIE from Snappy's bootloader," said MikeB. "Before I start trying to convert the image file myself, I'd like to know if a Snappy ONIE Installer exists for any x86-64 white box?"

The answer came immediately from Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical and Ubuntu, who wrote that this exact scenario has been already demoed during the OpenStack Developer Summit that took place in Tokyo last month.

According to Mr. Shuttleworth, the Ubuntu Snappy Core 15.04 operating system was installed on Penguin Computing and Quanta network switches using the standard ONIE from the respective devices.

However, the most important thing Mark Shuttleworth revealed today is that Snappy Ubuntu Core 16.04 will be an LTS (Long Term Support) release and will use an all-new, all-snap architecture that supports large-scale environments, such as big data clusters and top-of-rack clouds.

In related news, the Snappy developers have released the Snapcraft 0.5 snap creation utility for Ubuntu Snappy Core, and they've announced plans for releasing Snapcraft 2.0 for the upcoming Snappy Ubuntu Core 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system.