Download the whitepaper
Rich, smartphone-like interfaces are now standard on industrial controllers, kiosks, and digital signage. But the teams building these devices face a difficult trade-off. Bespoke, close-to-the-metal graphics stacks get the most out of the hardware, yet they need to be redeveloped for every new device. That drives up development costs, slows time to market, and introduces untested code that widens the attack surface.
Ubuntu Frame removes that trade-off.
Ubuntu Frame is a lightweight, open source Wayland compositor built by Canonical to run a single fullscreen application on embedded devices. Packaged as a snap, it handles input, window rendering, and hardware acceleration, so applications built with Flutter, Qt, Electron, or web runtimes run securely without the resource overhead or attack surface of a full desktop environment.
Why this matters
As connected devices take on more complex workloads and increasingly run third-party applications, security and development velocity matter as much as performance. Ubuntu Frame controls access to input and the display, so applications cannot snoop on each other, while snap packaging delivers sandboxing, automatic over-the-air updates, and rollbacks on failure.
Developers can test on their own desktop and deploy the same application to production hardware, reusing code across device ranges instead of starting over. When used with Ubuntu Core and Ubuntu Pro for Devices, Ubuntu Frame receives up to 15 years of support from Canonical.
The results speak for themselves. Elementary Robotics cut device provisioning time from one day to 20 minutes after moving to Ubuntu Frame on Ubuntu Core.
This whitepaper explains
- What Ubuntu Frame is and why it pairs naturally with Ubuntu Core
- How snap packaging and the Mir compositor libraries keep devices lightweight and secure
- How to manage single and multiple displays, including display walls
- How built-in security features isolate applications and protect input and display content
- How to get started, from hardware requirements and image setup to application packaging
- How to extend your device with an onscreen keyboard, remote assistance, and proprietary graphics drivers
- How Elementary Robotics, Proto, and Screenly use Ubuntu Frame in production
Download the whitepaper to discover how to build secure, scalable graphical devices with Ubuntu Frame.