Various Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Decisions From This Week's Summit

Aside from trying to make Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Python-3-only, Kubuntu developers planning for Xenial, and Mark Shuttleworth's keynote, there's also been a lot of other interesting sessions to happen over the first two days of this week's Ubuntu Online Summit.

Some of the smaller notes for those that haven't been participating in the UOS sessions:

- Canonical intends to replace the Ubuntu Software Center with GNOME Software (GNOME's "app store") but with some plug-ins/modifications for suiting to Ubuntu's needs. This isn't too much of a surprise as for a while now developers and users haven't been too happy with the Ubuntu Software Center.

- Qt 5.5 might be the default Qt version even though Qt 5.6 will be a Qt LTS release. There's concern of going for Qt 5.6 since it's not landing until December while Qt 5.6.1 will be close to the April debut of Ubuntu 16.04.

- Ubuntu 16.04 LTS should bring support for Snappy packages to the Unity 7 desktop rather than having to wait for Unity 8. Debian packages will, of course, continue to be supported and available.

- Ubuntu 16.04 LTS will have MySQL 5.7. MariaDB 10 should also be updated.

- Ubuntu developers are working towards supporting UEFI capsule updates for doing system firmware updates easily from the desktop, similar to what's found in Fedora 23. However, on the Ubuntu side a lot of it is still a work-in-progress and they aren't yet firmly committing to the support in Ubuntu 16.04.

The Ubuntu Online Summit ends later today so stay tuned for more updates on Phoronix. If I happened to miss anything interesting, please point it out in the forums.