While experimenting with Ubuntu Core 18 on a 14-year old Dell Latitude X1, I ran into problems and wanted to verify it was a hardware support issue and not a mistake on my part. So I brought my much younger Inspiron 11 (3180) up on Ubuntu Core 18 as well. It verified the issue was indeed hardware support and not my mistake, hampering functionality on the Latitude X1.

After I got my answer, I thought since I've already got this Inspiron 11 up and running, I might as well continue experimenting on it. I proceeded to follow through the rest of the steps in the tutorial for setting up a web kiosk on Ubuntu Core. Since this machine had recent hardware, I encountered no hardware issues and got a dedicated web kiosk machine up and running.

Browsing a few web sites, basic browser functionality seem to be present. The first missing functionality I noticed was a lack of sound. A little poking confirmed that Linux audio system ALSA is not installed as part of Ubuntu Core. If someone wants sound on their Ubuntu Core machine, they'll have to install it. This is fits with my expectation for a bare minimum "Core" OS.

Another feature I noticed is the lack of persistent state. As far as I can tell, everything is ephemeral and lost upon reset. No cookies are preserved across sessions, and it appears the cache is flushed as well. Whether this is a bug or a feature depends on application. It would be desirable for public use web terminal where we really want to wipe everything and start over for every new user.

And it isn't intended to be a general use web browser, anyway. The cursor can be hidden and so can the navigation bar. I enabled the navigation bar expecting a normal browser tool bar, but it is actually a very minimalist bar with a few buttons like back and refresh. There is no URL input field, as appropriate for a kiosk dedicated to serving specific pages.

Sometimes this is exactly what I would need making Ubuntu Core an ideal bare-minimum OS for an Intel-based machine. But in this day and age, those aren't our only options. Projects along these lines are also commonly built with a Raspberry Pi. How well does Ubuntu Core work on a Raspberry Pi, compared to Raspberry Pi's standard Raspbian OS?