As you may know (or not), the Ubuntu Online Summit for Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) is taking place these days, between May 3 and May 5, on the Ubuntu On Air channel, where the Ubuntu devs are laying down plans for the future.

We've already reported the other day that the next major release of the popular Linux kernel-based operating system, Ubuntu 16.10, which has been dubbed by Canonical and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth as Yakkety Yak, won't ship with the long-anticipated Unity 8 desktop interface as the default session.

However, in this article, we would like to tell you about what's coming in the Snappy Ubuntu Core 16 operating system, which should hit the streets in the coming weeks. A group of Snappy Ubuntu developers have gathered together on May 3 to discuss what has been implemented in the upcoming Snappy Ubuntu Core release and what's coming next.

First, you should know that Snappy Ubuntu 16 will be released as an extension to the 15.04 version, which has been announced as part of the Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) operating system last year in April, but since then, almost every bit in the codebase has been changed, and Canonical promises a huge list of improvements for this new version.

In Snappy Ubuntu Core 16, the OS itself is a snap

Unfortunately, there aren't any official images of Snappy Ubuntu Core 16 available at the moment of writing this article, not even Alpha builds, as there are still a few things to be implemented, and some polishing needs to be done before it can be considered ready for deployment on production-ready devices.

Until that happens, we'd like to tell you about its new features, and we'll start with the fact that Snappy Ubuntu Core 16 is a snap. Yes, you're reading right, everything is a snap on the device, the kernel, each application, the gadget that binds it all together, and even the operating system itself.

There's also a new partition layout for Snappy Ubuntu Core 16, which is simpler than it was before, it is taking up less disk space, and it's divided into two main partitions, namely /boot and /writable, where the snaps are stored. There's also the bootloader logic that switches between kernel and OS, and snaps.

What's next for Snappy Ubuntu Core 16

In the next weeks, the Snappy Ubuntu developers are planning on offering pre-built binary images of Snappy Ubuntu Core 16 for various devices, among which we can mention Raspberry Pi 2 and DragonBoard 410c, but also for the 32-bit (i386) and 64-bit (amd64) hardware architectures.

Also, it looks like more snaps will be available in the Snap Store for both Ubuntu Desktop and Server platforms for all kind of applications, more Snappy interfaces will also come soon for things like NetworkManager and BlueZ, and work will continue on the functionality that allows sharing of runtime between snaps.

Lastly, Snappy Ubuntu Core 16 will make more use of assertions, and of course, the Snappy and snapd applications will be continuously updated with improvements, bug fixes, and new features. If you're interested in more details about Snappy Ubuntu Core 16, make sure that you watch the video below.