The Canonical-developed Netplan has served for Linux network configuration on Ubuntu Server and Cloud versions for years. With the recent Ubuntu 23.10 release, Netplan is now being used by default on the desktop. Canonical is committing to fully leveraging Netplan for network configuration with the upcoming Ubuntu 24.04 LTS release and in turn also marking the Netplan 1.0 release.
Netplan is Canonical’s network configuration manager for Linux systems with network interfaces being described via YAML files. Netplan considers itself as a “network configuration abstraction renderer” that in turn interfaces with NetworkManager or systemd-networkd. Netplan finally made its way to the Ubuntu 23.10 desktop by default with having better integration for knowing when connections are created/modified through NetworkManager.
For Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, Canonical plans to polish the Netplan codebase and deliver a Netplan 1.0 release with API/ABI stability. They are also hoping other Linux distributions begin adopting Netplan. Debian so far has decided to go with Netplan for their nework stack on Debian Cloud images.
What is even the value of Netplan on… desktop? Most people just pick their WiFi in the menu in Gnome. That sounds like a lot of unnecessary complexity.
For servers, sure, it’s fairly nice. But, desktop? Why?
24.04 LTS is a distribution intended primarily for servers, desktop is not the priority environment.
Netplan’s been the default since 20.04 on the server side and the article says it’s coming to the desktop release with 24.04.
That’s probably the reason for pushing it to desktop builds.
I think it was actually the default on 18.04 LTS as well.
For what it’s worth I didn’t even notice they changed it. Can’t be the end of the world but I’d like to hear what network admins opinion’s are.
If you’re just using DHCP, you won’t. What Netplan does is take a YAML input file and renders it as a systemd-networkd or NetworkManager configuration file. It’s a very quick and easy way to configure your network, and even have a try command that auto reverts in case you get kicked out of your SSH session.
It seems like what they’re doing for the desktop is hacking up NetworkManager so that it saves back its config as Netplan configs instead of regular NetworkManager configs. That’s the part I’m confused about, because NetworkManager is huge and Netplan doesn’t support close to every option. Their featuresets are wildly different. And last time I checked, the NetworkManager renderer was the least polished one, with the systemd-networkd one being close to a 1:1 match and more reliable.
It made a lot more sense when it was one way only. Two way sounds like an absolute mess.